If you do well in this course, you will be able to:

• Define psychology as the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
• Identify and explain the primary objectives of psychology (e.g. describing, understanding, predicting, and controlling behavior and mental processes).
• Describe how psychology emerged and evolved as a scientific discipline.
• Identify overarching themes, persistent questions, or enduring conflicts in psychology, such as the interaction of heredity and environment.
• Identify and describe the major contemporary perspectives of psychology (e.g. psychodynamic, behavioral, humanistic, biological, and cognitive).

• Describe the scientific method and its role in psychology.
• Explain the strengths, limitations, and conclusions that can be drawn from various research designs and data collection methods (including case study, observation, survey, correlational, and experiment).
• Describe systematic procedures used to improve the credibility of research findings (e.g. blind or double-blind designs, control or placebo groups, peer-review, replication).
• Explain the ethical obligations of researchers toward their research participants, both human and animal.

• Discern differences between personal views and scientific evidence in understanding.
• Apply psychological concepts, theories, and research findings as these relate to everyday life.

• Discuss social and cultural diversity.
• Discuss psychological research examining diversity among individuals.

• Identify the major divisions and subdivisions of the human nervous system.
• Identify the parts of the neuron and describe the basic process of neural transmission.
• Differentiate between the structures and functions of the various parts of the central nervous system.
• Discuss the mechanisms of, and the importance of, plasticity of the nervous system.
• Identify tools used to study the nervous system.

• Identify states of consciousness.
• Distinguish between processing which is conscious (i.e. explicit) and other processing which happens without conscious awareness (i.e. implicit).
• Describe characteristics of sleep and theories that explain why we sleep and dream.
• Characterize the major categories of psychoactive drugs and their effects.

• Describe processes of sensation and perception and how they interact.
• Explain the concepts of threshold and adaptation.
• Describe the capabilities and limitations of sensory processes.
• Explain the interaction of the person and the environment in determining perception.

• Describe the differences between working memory and long-term memory.
• Discuss types of memory and memory disorders.
• Identify factors and strategies influencing how memories are encoded, stored, retrieved, or forgotten.
• Explain how memories can be malleable.

• Explain psychological processes of thought, reasoning, problem solving, and decision-making.

• Discuss different perspectives on intelligence (e.g. general intelligence, multiple intelligences).
• Discuss the history of intelligence testing, including historical use and misuse in the context of fairness.

• Describe the principles of classical conditioning (e.g. acquisition, extinction, generalization, discrimination).
• Describe the principles of operant conditioning (e.g. reinforcement, punishment, shaping, reinforcement schedules, extinction).
• Describe cognitive approaches to learning (e.g. observational learning, social learning).
• Describe applications of learning theories in real life (e.g. phobias, animal training, habit change).

• Discuss theories of cognitive, moral, and social development.
• Describe the role of sensitive and critical periods in development.
• Identify the major physical, cognitive, and psychosocial changes across the lifespan, including influences on prenatal development.
• Explain the interaction of environmental and biological factors in development.

• Describe the structure and function of language.
• Discuss the relationship between language and thought.
• Describe theories and development stages of language acquisition.
• Explain the relationship between language and the brain.

• Identify relationships between thought processes (e.g. attributions, attitudes, bias, and perception) and social behavior.
• Discuss obedience, conformity, and compliance in relation to behavior and their impact on the power of the situation.
• Describe how group dynamics influence behavior.
• Discuss the nature and effects of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination.
• Discuss influences upon pro-social (e.g. altruism) and anti-social (e.g. aggression and conflict) behaviors.

• Compare and contrast the major theoretical approaches to personality (e.g. psychodynamic, trait, humanistic, and social-cognitive theories).
• Identify techniques of personality assessment.
• Discuss biological and situational influences on personality.
• Discuss stability and change of personality.
• Explain how culture and gender influence personality.

• Describe the biological and cognitive components of emotion.
• Differentiate among theories of emotional experience.

• Describe major theories and perspectives of motivation.

• Define psychologically abnormal behavior.
• Describe major models of abnormality.
• Describe the classification of psychological disorders.
• Describe symptoms and causes of major categories of psychological disorders (including schizophrenic, mood, anxiety, and personality disorders).

• Explain different perspectives on treatment of psychological disorders.
• Identify biomedical and psychological treatments.
• Evaluate the efficacy of treatments for particular disorders.

• Define stress as a psychophysiological reaction.
• Identify and explain potential sources of stress.
• Identify and explain physiological, cognitive, and behavioral strategies to deal with stress.
• Identify behaviors and attitudes that promote health.