Classes

Styles of thought

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2018

We think all the time. But what are thoughts made up of? And what are the many different
ways in which we think? Do we think in pictures or in words? When you’re hungry, do you
think about “food” or about “almond pancakes with Vermont maple syrup”? Do children
think differently from adults? Who is more creative, a verbal thinker or a visual thinker, and
why? Is abstract thinking “deeper” or “better” than concrete thinking? Are pictures more
“emotional” than words? And do situational factors play a role in the way we think, or is it all
about stable individual...

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Nudge: How to use social psychology to create social change

Semester: 

N/A

Offered: 

2017

How can we make people eat healthier food, protect the environment, save money for retirement, or behave ethically? How can we reduce negative behaviors such as police violence and discrimination of underrepresented groups? Using an interdisciplinary approach, in this course we will learn how to “nudge”—how to change people’s behavior through psychological insights, without forbidding options or changing economic incentives.  In particular, we will learn about cognitive and emotional biases in decision-making; then we will focus on “nudging...

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Senior Seminar

Semester: 

N/A

Offered: 

2014

This course is intended for and limited to senior psychology concentrators who are not writing a thesis. The goal of the seminar is to have an experience of the world of a researcher. Research is a creative, collaborative, and critical process. In our meetings, we will discuss a selective set of research topics chosen from a range of interesting questions in psychology. After each discussion meeting, we will congregate in small groups that are similar in many ways to “real” research groups. The goal of the small groups is to think through how to generate interesting questions that emerge...

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Us and Them: Challenges and Possibilities in Intergroup Relations

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2014

The area of intergroup relations focuses on the psychological processes involved in how individuals in groups perceive, judge, remember, reason about, feel about, and behave toward people in other groups. In this course, we will consider topics such as social identity, power and social hierarchy, social prejudice, perspective taking, and reconciliation processes between groups. For example, we will ask: What is the role of “basic” cognitive processes in intergroup conflict? How many social identifications can a person have? How can we measure concealed negative attitudes that people hold...

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Psychology Live

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2012

Are you interested in a deeper dive into what psychologists are currently working on?
Harvard's Department of Psychology will showcase a series of teachers who will
explain their favorite topics, how they go about studying it and why, what they have
learned from their failures and why the study of the mind is so exciting today. After
each presentation, the class will discuss research papers on the same topic,
assigned by the week's speaker. Through these discussions, we will also examine
connections between different research questions, methods, and findings with the
...

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