Psychology

Course summary

Psychology has become integral to an understanding of our society. Its ramifications extend to sport, education, health, crime and personal development. Modern Psychology has its roots in philosophy but has moved away from an armchair stance to a ‘handson’ approach which aims to observe and measure human nature objectively through experimentation and logical inference. One of the first lessons in Psychology aims to instil in students the difference between common sense Psychology, based on personal anecdote, and academic Psychology, based on theory and research. The Psychology that we study can be described as the scientific study of human behaviour, emotions and mental processes; it is essentially about people and why they behave as they do and it is uniquely challenging as, unlike other disciplines, we are actually studying ourselves.