140 courses with the subject PSYCH, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
PSYCH 1101Introduction to Psychology3
Why are people superstitious? Why do people blush when they are embarrassed? What is intelligence (and are IQ tests a good way to measure it)? Why don't psychopaths feel guilty when they harm others? How reliable are childhood memories? Why do we laugh? Do violent video games make people act violently? Why do some people seem instantly trustworthy and others seem creepy? How do we choose whom to sleep with, date, or marry? How does stress affect our body? While questions like these have been asked for centuries, psychology has begun to provide answers to these - and other questions about the human mind - by applying the tools of scientific investigation. In this course you will receive a broad introduction to the science of psychology: from the history of the field and its major advances, to the latest research on topics such as perception, memory, intelligence, morality, sexuality, mental illness, religion, language, and creativity. You will also learn about the tools and methods psychologists use to investigate the mind, such as observing how the mind of a child changes and develops over time, looking at people across cultures, measuring brain activity, and experimentally manipulating everything from the shape of a figure presented on a computer screen, to the smell of a room, or the attractiveness of the experimenter.
This course provides an introduction to the science of the mind. Everyone knows what it's like to think and perceive, but this subjective experience provides little insight into how minds emerge from physical entities like brains. To address this issue, cognitive science integrates work from at least five disciplines: Psychology, Neuroscience, Computer Science, Linguistics, and Philosophy. This course introduces students to the insights these disciplines offer into the workings of the mind by exploring visual perception, attention, memory, learning, problem solving, language, and consciousness.
This section is highly recommended for students who are interested in learning about the topics covered in the main course through writing and discussion.
Personality and Social Psychology area are interested in understanding how people think, feel, and act in real-world social situations. There is a particular interest in how people make sense of the social world around them, as represented by research programs on judgment and decision making, attribution, self-knowledge, affect and emotion, and stereotyping/prejudice. Frequent topics of inquiry include whether people reach accurate or erroneous judgments about themselves and others, how people arrive at their decisions, and how those decisions can be influenced by emotions or factors outside of awareness and more.
Behavioral & Evolutionary Neuroscience Psychology seeks to understand behavior and cognition through investigations of the integrated roles of evolution, development, and mechanisms. The emphasis is on naturalistic behaviors of animals and ecologically relevant behaviors of humans. Comparative perspectives are well represented, the full range of development, including aging, is investigated, and both social and non-social behaviors are explained. Core questions are, what are the mechanisms (brain, sensory, endocrine, and behavioral) that enable animals (including humans) to behave appropriately? How do these mechanisms work? How do they develop? How did they evolve?
Introduction to Human Development provides a broad and foundational overview of field of human development, starting from conception and ending through process of death and dying. The course will start with an outline and explanation of the lifespan perspective in human development. The biological beginnings of life and prenatal development will serve as the start of the discussion of human development, followed by an exploration of physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development at each subsequent stage within the lifespan (e.g., infancy, early childhood, middle & late childhood, etc.). Discussion of each developmental stage will highlight major research findings and their real-world application.
PSYCH 1140FWS: Perception, Cognition, and Development3
How do we perceive, learn about, and store information about the environments around us? How does what we have learned affect how we perceive and understand? PCD researchers in the graduate field of psychology at Cornell study human perception, language, and memory, as well as the development of various cognitive functions in infants. The methods they use are diverse, and range from human behavioral experiments in development, perception, and psycholinguistics, through computational modeling and simulation of auditory, visual, and language processes, to human electrophysiology by means of event-related potential (ERP) analysis.
Who gets to decide what is right and wrong? Are there any universal moral rules? Do moral norms benefit some more than others? What are the implications when age, gender, race, ethnicity, education, income, social status, and other individual differences interact with morality? This course is designed for students who are ready to dive to the core of morality. This format of the course is a series of guest talks and active discussions.
PSYCH 1500Introduction to Environmental Psychology3
Environmental Psychology is an interdisciplinary field concerned with how the physical environment and human behavior interrelate. Most of the course focuses on how residential environments and urban and natural settings affect human health and well-being. Students also examine how human attitudes and behaviors affect environmental quality. Issues of environmental justice and culture are included throughout. Hands-on projects plus exams.
PSYCH 1501Introduction to Environmental Psychology - Writing in the Major1
Environmental Psychology examines how the physical environment and human behavior interrelate. We focus on how the physical environment affects human health and well-being as well as how human attitudes and behaviors affect environmental quality. The 1501 section examines topics in more depth and provides writing and presentation skills while taking DEA 1500 concurrently.
Over the centuries, artists in a wide variety of media have employed many approaches to the creative process, ranging from the philosophical to the mechanical to the virtual. This course unravels some of the mysteries going on inside software used for art and music. It looks at ways of breaking things apart and sampling and ways of putting things together and resynthesizing, and explores ideas for creation. This course does not teach software packages for creating art and music. The course complements ART 2701 and MUSIC 1421. (MUSIC-MT)
Research, theory, and application in sport psychology. An interdisciplinary approach which applies social and personality psychology, motivation, clinical psychology, exercise physiology, and biochemistry to the study of competitive domains. Topics will include: achievement motivation, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, group and team dynamics, leadership, aggression, stress, and youth sports. Where possible, fieldwork experiences will be conducted in exercise physiology and exercise testing, as well as biofeedback.
Basic perceptual concepts and phenomena are discussed with emphasis on stimulus variables and sensory mechanisms. All sensory modalities are considered, vision is discussed in detail.
A comprehensive introduction to current thinking and research in developmental psychology that approaches topics from both psychobiological and cognitive perspectives. We will use a comparative approach to assess principles of development change. The course focuses on the development of perception, action, cognition, language, and social understanding in infancy and early childhood.
This section is highly recommended for students who are interested in learning about the topics covered in the main course through writing and discussion.
The most significant problems that humans face - climate change, sectarian violence, political polarization, the spread of misinformation, etc. - are problems that we've made for ourselves. In this lecture course, we will probe the depths of human stupidity by exploring research on the nature of human reasoning, decision-making, beliefs, and more.
Since its inception the US legal system has been a system of social cognition and judgment: Humans perceiving and judging other humans to determine their fate. There are things about the system to admire, but major problems persist. Innocent people get convicted; guilty people go free. Why? Historically, that system built on social cognition has been ignorant about how human judgment actually works—producing errors as a result. This course explores the science of how we think about other people—our perceptions, memories, and judgments—can shape decisions and outcomes in the legal system, sometimes with devastating consequences. Grounded in psychological science and research on social cognition, we’ll examine how mental shortcuts, impression formation, moral judgment and group dynamics influence everything from eyewitness testimony to police investigations, from jury deliberations to sentencing. We will apply classic and cutting-edge research to identify what went wrong in real-world cases and how we could do better. Students will learn how understanding the psychology of social thinking can help explain—and ultimately improve—the legal system.
Provides an introduction to the psychology of language. The purpose of the course is to introduce students to the scientific study of psycholinguistic phenomena. Covers a broad range of topics from psycholinguistics, including the origin of language, the different components of language (phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics), processes involved in reading, computational modeling of language processes, the acquisition of language (both under normal and special circumstances), and the brain bases of language.
Introduction to psychology from a biological perspective, which focuses on brain mechanisms of behavior. Topics include the structure and function of the nervous system, physiological approaches to understanding behavior, hormones and behavior, biological bases of sensation and perception, learning and memory, cognition, emotion, and communication.
This course provides an overview to common psychological disorders, The course begins with foundational lectures on the history and scientific evolution of the field, followed by in-depth examination of specific clinical disorders and an introduction to their treatment.
Where do dreams come from? Why are our muscles paralyzed for 25% of the night? Why do night-shift workers have higher rates of cancer? How do sleep disorders occur in some communities more than others? We spend roughly one-third of our lives asleep, yet sleep remains one of the most mysterious aspects of human experience. This course explores sleep from multiple perspectives: the neuroscience of how sleep is generated and regulated, the psychology of why sleep matters for cognition and emotion, and the sociology of how culture, history, and social structures shape who sleeps well and who doesn’t. Sleep is not merely an individual behavior—it is profoundly influenced by economic conditions, cultural beliefs, physical environments, and historical reverberations, making it both a personal experience and a matter of public health and social justice. We will examine what happens when sleep goes wrong, from insomnia to narcolepsy, and learn to critically evaluate the flood of sleep advice and products in today’s marketplace. Throughout the semester, you will also turn the lens on yourself, tracking your own sleep and conducting a personal experiment to connect course concepts to lived experience.
There is no getting away from the brain. Everything a person does, creates, thinks, feels, believes, and experiences (including making sense of course descriptions!) depends on it. But, how? How could a three pound mass of cells and the body in which it exists see, decide, or remember, let alone navigate a busy city, play soccer, or write poetry? This course will provide students with the foundational concepts and tools they will need to begin to address these questions, providing insight into how modern cognitive neuroscientists understand the brain, how it works, and how the mind emerges from all of this. Students will learn core principles of modern human cognitive neuroscience (e.g., brain structure versus function, connectivity, reuse) and their application to cognition (e.g., action, perception, attention, memory, emotion, language, cognitive control, and consciousness). Topics in neuroanatomy, human neuroscience methods, and neurological conditions will also be covered.
PSYCH 2350Multilingualism and Multiculturalism in Early Childhood3
Children who grow up in multilingual environments have a profoundly different experience compared to monolingual children. In this course, we examine the nature and impact of this experience on the socio-emotional, cognitive, and linguistic development of young children, focusing on the complex multilingual and multicultural reality in Israel as our main case study. Specifically, we explore the multilingual development of children from several minority and immigrant groups in Israel: Arabs, Former Soviet Union (FSU) and Ethiopian immigrants, Israeli-born children of labor migrants, deaf communities, among others.
What counts as a community? How do communities shape who we are? How can we engage in action to transform the communities we are a part of? These questions guide our inquiry in this introductory community psychology course. Community psychology examines the interrelationship between individual wellbeing and the multiple social structures and contexts with which individuals interact. Community psychologists are united by a shared commitment to understanding individuals using a multidisciplinary perspective, including developmental psychology, education, and sociology. Beyond seeking to understand, community psychologists also emphasize values, applied and participatory research, and action to promote the well-being of entire communities from a strengths-based perspective. This lecture-based course will provide an overview of theory, research, and action in community psychology. We will focus on (a) essential community psychology theories, (b) methodological strategies for studying alongside communities, and (c) practical applications related to understanding social and environmental contexts as essential components of the human experience. Throughout the course, we will discuss the role of communities in shaping our understandings of diversity, equity, and social justice.
This course is an introduction to the moral mind from philosophical and psychological perspectives. Many traditional philosophical problems about morality are being illuminated by current work in cognitive science. In this course, we will look at several of these problems. In each case, we will begin with a presentation of the philosophical problems, and we will proceed to examine recent empirical work on the topic. A wide range of topics will be covered, including moral judgment, agency, the self, and punishment.
The Pursuit of Happiness is even mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, but what does this mean? This course will explore the kinds of happiness found in human experience, including financial success, public service, romantic and family life, political and cultural identity, as well as the power of music, literature, art and film to affect mood and self-awareness.
In a complex environment with many sources of variability, how can one tell with confidence whether a particular observed effect is real? And how much confidence is appropriate? This course introduces the principles of statistical description and inference as strategies to answer these questions, with emphasis on methods of principal relevance to psychology, neuroscience, and the behavioral sciences.
PSYCH 2580Six Pretty Good Books: Explorations in Social Science4
This course is modeled after Great Books literature courses in the humanities, but with two important differences: we read non-fiction books in the social sciences rather than the humanities, written by highly prominent contemporary social scientists. The course title refers to the fact that the books are new, hence their potential greatness has yet to be confirmed by the test of time. We choose living authors to give students a unique opportunity: to interact with each of the six authors in Q&A sessions via live or recorded video conferencing. Great Books courses are organized around books rather than the more traditional theme-based approach in most undergraduate classes, and each book is intended to stand on its own. Although the topics vary widely, each of the books addresses fundamental puzzles that motivate social science inquiry regarding human behavior and social interaction. These puzzles cut across disciplinary boundaries, hence the course is co-taught by psychologist Steve Ceci and sociologist/information scientist Michael Macy who provide continuity by calling attention to similarities and differences in theories, concepts, assumptions, and methods between sociologists (who focus on what happens between individuals) and psychologists (who focus on what happens within individuals). The authors vary from year to year but include famous social scientists such as Claude Steele, Daniel Kahneman, Nicholas Christakis, Beverly Tatum, Malcolm Gladwell, and Steven Pinker.
Why and how do humans become moral beings? And what is a moral being anyways? Humans have written about these questions for as long as they have written about any deep question. Over the past century, however, empirical scientists have joined the investigation into moral development. This course will use empirical evidence to evaluate major theories of morality and its development. In the process, we will learn about topics like: cultural differences and similarities in moral orientations, the origins of helping and harming, and the development of moral reasoning and emotions childhood to adulthood.
This course explores how cognitive, social & clinical psychology are used in law. Law makes many assumptions about human psychology, and lawyers and judges regularly rely on psychological research in their cases. The course examines the psychology underlying criminal confessions; children's testimony; the insanity defense; risk assessment; judge and jury decision making; criminal punishment; constitutional law; and common law (tort, contract, and property) disputes. The course assesses the use and misuse of psychology in these subjects.
What is personality? How is it scientifically studied and measured? To what extent, do biological, social, and cultural factors shape personality? Is personality an expression of our genetic make up and biology, the culmination of social influences, the interplay of both, or the result of random events? In this course, we will review the major theoretical paradigms of personality psychology, discuss contemporary research, theory, and methodology, and learn about key historical debates in the study of personality.
Introduction to research and theory in social psychology. Topics include social influence, persuasion, and attitude change; culture, social interaction and group phenomena; evolution, altruism, and aggression; stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination; everyday reasoning and judgment.
PSYCH 2801Introduction to Social Psychology: Writing in the Majors1
Writing in the Majors section of PSYCH 2800. In addition to attending all the lectures in PSYCH 2800, students will attend an additional weekly seminar and all assessment is based on writing instead of exams. This course is an introduction to research and theory in social psychology, covering the same material as in PSYCH 2800 (social influence, persuasion, and attitude change; social interaction and group phenomena; altruism and aggression; stereotyping and prejudice; everyday reasoning and judgment).
This course will introduce students to the basics of research design and will review several methodologies in the study of human development. The focus of the course will be on descriptive and experimental methods. Students will learn the advantages and challenges to different methodological approaches. The course also places an emphasis on developing students' scientific writing and strengthening their understanding of statistics.
PSYCH 2940Better Decisions for Life, Love and Money3
Effective judgments and decisions are critical to success in every avenue of life. This course will explore research on the principles of sound judgment and decision making, and on the ways in which people's judgments and decisions are prone to bias and error. The course aims to improve students' critical thinking skills and to enable them to make better judgments and decisions in an increasingly complicated world. The course is taught by a team of psychologists and economists who draw on recent research in psychology and behavioral economics that can benefit the lives of students.
This is a course on applications of data science in social science using R. We will cover fundamentals of statistical and causal inference, exploratory data analysis and data reduction, supervised learning, and recent, prominent applications of machine learning in social science.
This course will expose students to a wide range of commonly used methods in neuroscience research (theory behind the method, common applications of the method, how data are collected and analyzed using the method, strengths and weaknesses of the method, etc.). The goal for students is that by the end of the course, they will be able to read and critically evaluate primary literature from many areas of neuroscience and to understand how the methods used in the study helped the researchers come to their conclusions. This course will explore methods including (but not necessarily limited to): microscopy, methods to visualize neuronal structure and function, electrophysiology, methods to measure neural activity, methods to measure and manipulate expression of genes/mRNA/protein, machine learning methods for behavioral analysis, and whole brain imaging methods in humans and non-human animals.
In this course, we will explore how language interacts with power: how does language reflect, shape, threaten and reinforce power relations in human society? From childhood through old age, language is an ever-present source of symbolic power. We use it to develop and express our identities, to position ourselves in hierarchies, and to establish group membership and exclusion throughout life. Language shapes ourselves, our families, our social lives, and our institutions. Understanding how people use language can provide a window into hidden aspects of both individuals and the social world.
Morality seems to be a universal feature of humananity. People across time, place and culture have a strong sense that certain things are right or wrong, that some people are good and some are evil. Where does this moral sense come from? Why do some people disagree so strongly about what is right and wrong? How did evolution shape this moral sense? How does it develop? Are there any universal aspects of moral psychology? The goals of this course are to offer an introduction to the psychological science behind what humans know as morality.
This course states and motivates the observation that cognition is fundamentally a computational process and explores the implications of this idea. Students are introduced to a variety of conceptual tools for thinking about cognitive information processing, including statistical learning from experience and the use of patterns distilled from past experience in guiding future actions. They learn to apply these tools to gain understanding of perception, memory, motor control, language, action planning, problem solving, decision making, reasoning, intelligence, and creativity.Applications of the newly acquired computational cognitive science concepts and tools to ecological issues - in particular, the accelerating climate catastrophe - are discussed in this course on a regular basis.
PSYCH 3150Obesity and the Regulation of Body Weight3
Multidisciplinary discussion of the causes, effects, and treatments of human obesity. Topics include the biopsychology of eating behavior, the genetics of obesity, the role of activity and energy metabolism, the psychosocial determinants of obesity, anorexia nervosa, therapy and its effectiveness, and social discrimination.Multidisciplinary discussion of the causes, effects, and treatments of human obesity. Topics include the biopsychology of eating behavior, the genetics of obesity, the role of activity and energy metabolism, the psychosocial determinants of obesity, anorexia nervosa, therapy and its effectiveness, and social discrimination.
Covers comparative and evolutionary approaches to the study of the relationship between peripheral hormones and neuroendocrine mechanisms in vertebrates, including humans, with sexual behavior, affiliative bonds and social grouping, parental behavior, aggression, mating systems, stress, learning and memory, and biological rhythms.
This course is designed to provide an introduction to experimental research on the neural basis of behavior and cognition in animals. Topics will include basic neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, neural and hormonal control of behavior, and learning and memory. Students will gain extensive hands on experience with a variety of laboratory techniques, and animal species, and behaviors.
PSYCH 3300Introduction to Computational Neuroscience4
Covers the basic ideas and techniques involved in computational neuroscience. Surveys diverse topics, including neural dynamics of small networks of cells, neural coding, learning in neural networks and in brain structures, memory models of the hippocampus, sensory coding, and others.
Why do some children grow up well-adjusted and others do not? This course applies a developmental framework to understanding psychological disorders. We will consider the common disorders of childhood and adolescence; the individual contexts which promote risk versus resiliency; trends and trajectories in disorders over time; and the complex ethical issues associated with the diagnosis and treatment of disorders early in life.
Surveys the approaches that have been or are currently being used in order to understand the biological bases for learning and memory. Topics include invertebrate, simple system approaches, avian song learning, hippocampal and cerebellar function, research using MRI in humans. Many of the readings are from primary literature.
PSYCH 3420Human Perception: Application to Computer Graphics, Art, and Visual Display3
Our present technology allows us to transmit and display information through a variety of media. To make the most of these media channels, it is important to consider the limitations and abilities of the human observer. The course considers a number of applied aspects of human perception with an emphasis on the display of visual information. Topics include three-dimensional display systems, color theory, spatial and temporal limitations of the visual systems, attempts at subliminal communication, and visual effects in film and television.
This course examines infant development from conception through toddler hood, emphasizing the interconnected growth of the whole child—biological, cognitive, emotional, and social. Drawing on contemporary research and inclusive perspectives, students explore how culture, care giving, and individual differences shape early development.
Humans are said to be social animals. This seminar provides an in-depth exploration of what it means to be social. Examples of topics to be covered include the fundamental need to belong and the affiliative system underlying cooperation; attachment and the proclivity to form strong affective ties throughout the life span; the biological bases of attraction and relationship formation; and the various consequences of thwarted relational needs, including the end of relationships through break-up, divorce, or death, and social alienation and chronic loneliness. We will focus on people's most intimate relationships - with partners, parents, and close friends - but will explore how our social nature is expressed in diverse ways - with unknown others, in social networks, and with political leaders, celebrities, and objects. These topics will be considered from diverse theoretical perspectives including work from social neuroscience, social, personality, developmental, cognitive, and evolutionary psychology, as well as drawing from work in communications, information science, sociology, and political science. Articles will be a combination of theoretical, review, or perspective pieces as well as empirical papers.
How do we form and change our first impressions of other people? What kinds of events put us into happy versus sad moods? What explains why we persist in holding stereotypes of groups? Can we explain why we think an act is immoral? This course addresses these types of questions (and many more!) using social and cognitive psychological theory and methods. Using a variety of sources - from empirical journal articles, textbooks, TED talks, and blog-posts - we examine cutting-edge psychological research on the causes and consequences of our own and other people's judgments, feelings, attitudes, and behaviors. We use different teaching methods to accomplish these learning goals, including lectures, group activities, and small group discussions.
Social group membership - based on race and ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, sex, gender and gender identity, etc. and their intersection- can profoundly influence one's experience of the world and each other. Through this course we will cover the basic experimental social psychology research on thoughts and beliefs (stereotypes), evaluative attitudes (prejudice), and behaviors (discrimination) that are based on group membership. We will explore how empirical research developed from primarily examining explicit (blatant) prejudice in the 20th century to recent examinations of implicit forms of stereotyping and prejudice. We will explore how stereotyping and prejudice can arise from basic perceptual and categorical processes, discuss strategies for minimizing expressed bias in interpersonal situations, and examine the experience of high status - and the consequences of losing it. The ultimate aim is to enhance your ability to evaluate and analyze the scientific merit of this research and apply it to real world social issues.
PSYCH 4110Writing, Inquiry, and Communicating in STEM3
In STEM, including biology and psychology disciplines, so much of what you do is writing. Be it writing personal statements, grant and fellowship applications, theses or manuscripts… we spend a lot of time and are predominately evaluated on writing. Despite this, disciplinary specific training in writing is limited. Most people learn as they go: from practice and working directly mentors. This course is designed to give you specialized disciplinary specific writing support.
Seminar on the essential features and qualities of culture and how it impacts human endeavors. Because understanding culture necessarily requires interaction across multiple areas of study, this interdisciplinary seminar will be based on discussions of recent research at the interface of cognitive science and the humanities. Topics may include: animal cultures, the evolution of language, the symbolic revolution, knowledge acquisitions, play, rituals and the arts.
PSYCH 4190STEAM, Outreach and Community Engagement3
This course presents and provides space to practice a trans-disciplinary approach to developing and implementing STEM outreach materials and working with community partners. This course is associated with a community engaged program, meaning the efforts will be applied. Students will be exposed to participatory design research and will keep reflective journals to support their own critical reflection on how to create inclusive and accessible outreach experiences. The applied part of this course will take place through A Birdsong Program – an established community partnership between the Lab of Ornithology, BOCES and the instructor.
What have we learned about the psychology of Native Americans and what questions are needing answers? In Native American Psychology, we will investigate these questions. This course will provide an overview of the psychology of Native Americans; accounting for current theories and research on the experiences, behavior, and identities of Native Americans. The course will offer students an immersive, in-depth experience of the topics and themes that scholars are investigating in Native American Psychology. The course will start with an outline and discussion of the major theories of Native American psychology, as well as, prominent scholars who have contributed to Native American psychology. Discussions will then examine the psychological experiences of Native Americans across an array of content areas of psychology and contexts in the world. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of Native American experiences, the course will examine these two experiences with an intersectional lens, examining these experiences with issues of gender, sexual orientation, ability, age, and social class in mind.
The course covers basic concepts and recent findings on the psychology of misinformation. In this class, we will ask questions such as: Why do people fall for fake news? What leads people to share misinformation online? What can be done to undermine the spread and influence of misinformation? The course will draw on concepts from across psychology, including social, cognitive, developmental, neuroscience, and clinical. Furthermore, although our focus will be on the underlying psychological processes, the course materials will intersect with other disciplines, including journalism, communication, computer science, political science, and others.
PSYCH 4230Navigation, Memory, and Context: What Does the Hippocampus Do?3
Although the hippocampus has been the subject of intense scrutiny for nearly 50 years, there remains considerable disagreement about functional contributions the hippocampus makes to learning and memory process. This course will examine the diverse functions attributed to the hippocampus with an eye toward integrating the differing viewpoints in the literature. After a brief historical overview, students will discuss cutting-edge literature on the hippocampal role in spatial navigation, learning, and memory, and context processing.
This seminar will address core issues and techniques related to developing, evaluating and disseminating mental health programs. The course is particularly well suited for students who are interested in developing their own intervention or prevention techniques in the future. Students will be guided in applying the knowledge they learn in this course while completing a semester-long project. This project will include identifying and exploring an area of clinical interest, using scholarship and creativity to outline a novel mental health program, creating a plan for evaluating the program, and reflecting on issues related to program dissemination. This course is designed to be highly interactive. Students will engage in discussions and oral presentations as well as providing constructive feedback to help classmates improve their proposed programs.
Digital mental health interventions (DMHIs) are rapidly becoming an important part of the mental healthcare landscape. Their growth represents a unique opportunity to provide scalable evidence-based care and address inequities in access to high-quality mental healthcare. This seminar will survey the current DMHI landscape (including use of AI, VR, online programs, smartphone apps, telehealth, and hybrid-DMHI models) with a particular focus on the current strengths and limitations of DMHIs and how they might best be utilized in the future. Students will harness knowledge gained during the course to propose their own novel DMHI as part of a semester-long project. This course is designed to be highly interactive. Students will engage in discussions and oral presentations as well as providing constructive feedback to help classmates improve their proposed programs.
Seminar surveying a cross-section of modern theories, methods, and research pertaining to the origin and evolution of language. Considers evidence from psychology, the cognitive neurosciences, theoretical biology, comparative psychology, and computational modeling of evolutionary processes. Topics for discussion may include: What is special about language? What can we learn from comparative perspectives on neurobiology and behavior? Can apes really learn language? Did language come about through natural selection or cultural evolution?
A seminar series examining current and classical ideas in human sciences and the humanities. Themes vary from semester to semester.Topic: Changes by semester. For the recent and upcoming topics, see the instructor's web page: https://shimon-edelman.github.io
PSYCH 4331Event Cognition: How Minds, Brains and Bodies Experience Events3
People experience and remember complex and dynamic environments as events. This seminar draws on work from cognitive neuroscience to characterize how people shape experience into events, and how these processes support adaptive behavior. The course will start with discussions of historical and modern perspectives about the relationships between minds, bodies, and experience. We will then cover topics ranging from the perception of motion and causality to social learning and interaction. The primary goals are for you to be able to (1) read and evaluate research in psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience, and (2) describe and understand the implications of this research for how minds and bodies are adapted to everyday situations.
This course will cover the psychology of imagination, possibility, and fiction looking across multiple disciplines including cognitive science, philosophy, neuroscience, and more.
The intricate relations between language and thought have stirred a heated debate from ancient philosophy to the era of modern science. Does language precede thought or vice versa? Do different languages create a different understanding of one's physical and social environment? In this course we will examine some leading theories and empirical studies on the interconnections between these two complex abilities of the mind; and explore their developmental trajectories and interactions from infancy to adulthood.
This course explores what is known, and what remains unknown, about the neural circuits that control social behavior, including parental behavior, sexual behavior, aggression, and vocalization. How do neural circuits control and coordinate distinct social behaviors? How are sex-typical social behaviors generated? How do past experiences and internal states influence social behavior, and what are the neural mechanisms for these effects? This course focuses mainly, although not exclusively, on research performed in non-human animals, and we'll also examine differences and similarities in the neural circuits for social behavior across species.
Music is present in all known human cultures, yet it varies substantially across societies. Which musical features are shared across cultures, and why? What neural, cognitive, and cultural mechanisms support music-making? What processes shape the musical structures we observe around the world, such as tuning systems, scales, meters, and key systems? What forces drive musical evolution, and how does music change in response to shifting fashions, social dynamics, and external events? In this seminar, we will read key papers from the music cognition and music perception literature and develop nuanced answers to these questions. We will trace a range of methodological approaches, including behavioral experiments, corpus studies, computational modeling, case studies, music analysis, and ethnography, and consider how each contributes to our understanding of music perception, production, and cultural transmission. The seminar is intended for advanced undergraduate students and requires the ability to read and discuss scientific papers. It is suitable for students in cognitive science, psychology, music, linguistics, computer science, anthropology, and related fields who are interested in developing an in-depth understanding of the music cognition literature.
PSYCH 4420The Psychology and Ethics of Technology3
New technologies are changing our world at a rapid pace. In many cases, the society does not fully understand the impact of technology and is not prepared for the speed of the change that is occurring. This course will explore a few of these new technologies and investigate their effects on the users and on the society at large. The topics that will be explored include face recognition, virtual reality, violence in media, general AI, and the technological singularity. We will look at the ways in which these technologies affect our lives, with a focus on education, entertainment, employment, politics, and the future of humanity.
This course on the climate crisis acquaints students with the psychological factors underlying ecocide and anthropogenic climate change and the possible avenues for its mitigation, with a particular focus on climate justice and Indigenous knowledges and ways of relating to nature. In parallel with reading and discussing primary literature on these topics, students work on research projects, complementing theory with practice and placing it in the local geopolitical context.
This course will give an opportunity to learn how to communicate concepts and knowledge from the psychological sciences. We will examine the challenges associated with science communications, including ways to engage the perspectives of diverse audiences, and evaluation of the effects of the interaction on the audience's knowledge and attitudes. Most of our activities will focus on the development of exhibits for the Sciencenter of Ithaca. We will develop exhibit prototypes, evaluate the public's engagement and learning from them, and use the feedback to refine our prototypes. The goal will be to effectively convey current understanding of psychological processes to the general public, with an emphasis on engaging young children.
PSYCH 4510Research Seminar on the Relational Mind1
This seminar focuses on research findings and methods for understanding the relational mind, exploring questions such as: how do we perceive and evaluate others, make sense of social situations, and navigate the social world? Students will read and discuss papers on the relational mind and generate and present research ideas. The seminar will highlight best practices in contemporary psychological research and the use of a variety of methodologies.
This course will cover the psychology of wisdom. Among the topics to be covered are the definition of wisdom, theories and models of wisdom, development of wisdom, measurement of wisdom, relations of wisdom to other characteristics, state versus trait characteristics of wisdom, teaching for wisdom, wisdom and leadership, wisdom and society.
PSYCH 4560Black Girlhood Studies: Rememory, Representation, and Re-Imagination3
How has history shaped our notion of Black girlhood? What is our collective understanding of Black girlhood? How do we see and understand Black girls? Black Girlhood Studies is a multidisciplinary field that draws on education, literature, psychological, and sociological perspectives as tools to see and honor Black girls' lived experiences. In this seminar course, we will use a mixture of lectures and facilitated discussions to provide an overview of Black girlhood as it relates to historical and current-day social, political, and cultural constructions of Black girlhood within and beyond the United States. We will also interrogate how Black girls deconstruct and interrupt these social constructions by engaging in scholarly works, popular press articles, poetry, music, film, and novels. Throughout the course, we will make space to imagine a world where Black girls' ways of knowing, being, and experiencing the world are honored.
This is a capstone seminar for seniors who are interested in graduate or professional study in scientific disciplines that focus on human behavior and social interaction. The intent is to provide seniors with an opportunity to summon, integrate, and apply insights that they have acquired over the course of their undergraduate education, and give prospective graduate students the opportunity to lead discussions in a large introductory lecture course, Six Pretty Good Books. Each seminar member is part of a two or three-person team that leads the discussion together, under the supervision of a graduate teaching assistant. Seminar meetings are devoted to building lesson plans for leading an effective discussion of each of the six books. The authors vary from year to year but include Malcolm Gladwell, Michelle Alexander, Nate Silver, and Nicholas Christakis. All authors have agreed to participate in a Q&A session with the students which seminar members are required to attend.
Neurons generate action potentials. Brains underlie feeding, fighting, fleeing, and reproduction, also navigation, attention, sociality, art, and science. What about the middle part? This advanced seminar course examines the construction and transformations of neural representations that enable animals to comprehend and interact effectively with their environments. The curriculum emphasizes integration across levels of analysis and organization, including cellular and synaptic physiology, the emergent properties of networks, energy and information management, quantitative modeling, cognitive algorithms, and adaptive behavioral outcomes.
Each year, more than 100 million people worldwide develop clinically recognizable depression. Because of its prevalence, depression is sometimes called the common cold of psychopathology. This course provides a wide-ranging examination of the theories, methods, and major controversies in mood disorders research, including coverage of social, cognitive, and biological perspectives.
PSYCH 4710Advanced Undergraduate Research in Psychology1-6
Advanced experience in planning, conducting, and reporting independent laboratory, field, and/or library research. One, and preferably two, semesters of PSYCH 4700 is required. The research should be more independent and/or involve more demanding technical skills than that carried out in PSYCH 4700.
The Advanced Developmental Seminar is topical, focusing on different issues each year. Please see the application or contact the instructor, Dr. Michael Goldstein (mg26@cornell.edu) for a description of this year’s topics.
Any moral and religious systems tell us to keep a “pure heart,” and that immoral acts “pollute” our souls. We dislike dirty plays and dirty players in sports, and we keep our children away from dirty movies. We are also motivated to maintain purity in the less metaphorical sense—most cultures have norms about keeping bodies and living spaces clean. We even have an emotion—disgust—that seems especially attuned to certain kinds of dirtiness (such as bodily fluids and rotten food). The concept of purity, then, appears to be a deep aspect of human psychology—from the basic motivation to maintain physical purity, to the metaphors of purity and cleanliness that feature heavily in morality and religion across cultures. In this course we will look at the psychology of purity by reading widely on the topic, including historical, religious, anthropological, and psychological topics that center on purity in both the physical and moral/spiritual sense. Our aim will be to understand how this basic notion of pure/impure or clean/dirty has come to shape our psychology and our culture.
The human mind has a fundamental need to create categories. In this course we will examine how historical, developmental, cognitive, and motivational factors give rise to the construction of the social category race in the United States. We will also consider how racial group membership - and its intersections with other group memberships - can profoundly influence one's experience of the world and each other. To understand the construct of race and its consequences we will perform close reading and critical analysis of theoretical and empirical work in social psychology. As social psychologists, we are uniquely poised to answer why it is we are so drawn to categorizing people based on race, how our minds construct these categorizations, and what the downstream consequences of these categorizations are - ultimately guiding our ability to intervene. The aims of the course are to enhance students' ability to evaluate and analyze existing theory and research and to apply these readings to aid understanding of real world discrimination, disparities, and violence.
The focus of this course is on discussion and critical analysis of selected articles from very recent issues of the most selective social psychological journals. Readings are chosen for their importance, their coverage of contemporary topics in social psychology, and their potential for generating stimulating discussion . Students write brief thought papers before each class in which they offer suggestions for class discussion based on their close reading of the day's assigned articles. They also write a term paper (details at first class meeting).
This course reviews core findings and recent advances in social neuroscience-a growing interdisciplinary area that merges theories and methods across neruoscience and social psychology. We will focus on how neuroscience approaches help address classic questions of social psychology from new and informative angles and how studying social phenomena can advance our understanding of neuroscience. The course will give you a broad background in social neuroscience so that you may (a) be a critical consumer of this literature, (b) broaden the way you think about connections between the mind, brain, and behavior in the context of the social world, and (c) apply these ideas to inform your own ideas and future research in psychology. We will explore these questions through a mix of review articles, in-depth analyses of select empirical studies, and discussions of their implications.
Research methods are the tools that allow psychologists to test the validity of hypotheses. This course provides a survey of the methods used by scientists in personality and social psychology as well as related behavioral sciences to empirically test hypotheses. Specifically, this course will discuss the following topics: (1) philosophy of science; (2) research designs and methods; (3) data collection, analysis, and validity; (4) report writing; and (5) recurrent and emerging trends and issues in the field of research methods and quantitative analysis. The final project consists of writing a research proposal and giving a short oral presentation.
Moral Psychology in Action is an applied psychology course for students who want to make a difference in the world through ethical leadership and positive contributions in organizations, and who are drawn to scholarly work on psychology, ethics, and morality. The course is experiential and takes place mostly outside the classroom through students' individualized partnerships in community organizations, businesses, and institutions. Learning outcomes include enhanced critical reflection, intercultural competence, ethical practice, and the practice of applied moral psychology research methods.
This course is a rigorous introduction to graduate statistics for social sciences. We will briefly review descriptive statistics and probability theory. We will discuss fundamental inferential frameworks at length, with a focus on Frequentist and Bayesian statistics. The remainder of the semester will be focused on the analysis of randomized studies.
This second part of the graduate statistics sequence is intended to teach more advanced techniques of modern quantitative data analysis, with a focus on the analysis of non-randomized studies. We will cover a variety of models, including models with linear and non-linear effects, model with random effects, and models for limited dependent variables.
This course is designed to introduce first-year graduates to the Psychology Department faculty through a weekly series of presentations of current research.
This course enhances the graduate experience and prepares first-year psychology graduate students for success. The student receives a formal introduction to conceptualizing and articulating a research project, science writing, the grant proposal and review processes, and numerous other aspects of professional development. The course serves as an opportunity for preparation for graduate studies and a career in academics or a related profession.
This course will expose students to a wide range of commonly used methods in neuroscience research (theory behind the method, common applications of the method, how data are collected and analyzed using the method, strengths and weaknesses of the method, etc.). The goal for students is that by the end of the course, they will be able to read and critically evaluate primary literature from many areas of neuroscience and to understand how the methods used in the study helped the researchers come to their conclusions. This course will explore methods including (but not necessarily limited to): microscopy, methods to visualize neuronal structure and function, electrophysiology, methods to neural activity, methods to measure and manipulate expression of genes/mRNA/protein, machine learning methods for behavioral analysis, and whole brain imaging methods in humans and non-human animals.
This course states and motivates the observation that cognition is fundamentally a computational process and explores the implications of this idea. Students are introduced to a variety of conceptual tools for thinking about cognitive information processing, including statistical learning from experience and the use of patterns distilled from past experience in guiding future actions. They learn to apply these tools to gain understanding of perception, memory, motor control, language, action planning, problem solving, decision making, reasoning, intelligence, and creativity.Applications of the newly acquired computational cognitive science concepts and tools to ecological issues - in particular, the accelerating climate catastrophe - are discussed in this course on a regular basis.
PSYCH 6226Special Topics in Quantitative Psychology1
This course is offered to graduate students and focuses on discussion of topics in quantitative methods, with an emphasis on current books. Each semester students will work through a contemporary advanced monograph on methods. We will be using social annotation software to prepare for readings and then have class discussion of chapters. There will be a special emphasis on causal inference and foundational research methods.
PSYCH 6230Navigation, Memory, and Context: What Does the Hippocampus Do?3
Although the hippocampus has been the subject of intense scrutiny for nearly 50 years, there remains considerable disagreement about functional contributions the hippocampus makes to learning and memory process. This seminar will examine the diverse functions attributed to the hippocampus with an eye toward integrating the differing viewpoints in the literature. After a brief historical overview, students will discuss cutting-edge literature on the hippocampal role in spatial navigation, learning, and memory, and context processing.
We will focus on foundational concepts that guide the disciplines of psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. Each semester we will select readings from the most innovative thinkers in the field.
Seminar surveying a cross-section of modern theories, methods, and research pertaining to the origin and evolution of language. Considers evidence from psychology, the cognitive neurosciences, theoretical biology, comparative psychology, and computational modeling of evolutionary processes. Topics for discussion may include: What is special about language? What can we learn from comparative perspectives on neurobiology and behavior? Can apes really learn language? Did language come about through natural selection or cultural evolution?
Morality changes constantly. What is wrong in one situation is right in another. Children acquire new moral principles as they grow older. And over human history, societies have transformed their views on how to treat its members. How is moral change possible? And what is its direction-if it has one? In this seminar, we will engage with diverse perspectives on moral change. Readings will come from developmental, cognitive, and social psychological research on morality, as well as philosophy, history, and other related fields. Students will participate in weekly discussions, give a class presentation, and submit a final paper.
This course will cover the psychology of imagination, possibility, and fiction looking across multiple disciplines including cognitive science, philosophy, neuroscience, and more.
This course examines how morality, rules, their intersection, and related topics shape human thought and behavior. We will investigate why rules exist, what influences how people make moral judgments about those who break rules (and those who follow them), how rules relate to social institutions, and more. Drawing on research from philosophy, social, cognitive, and moral psychology, we will explore questions about moral judgment, norm enforcement, and more. Our discussions will also consider broader contexts—drawing on perspectives from philosophy, law, political science, and evolutionary biology to examine rules not only as psychological phenomena but as central features of institutions and social life.
PSYCH 6420Human Perception: Applications to Computer Graphics, Art, and Visual Display3
Our present technology allows us to transmit and display information through a variety of media. To make the most of these media channels, it is important to consider the limitations and abilities of the human observer. The course considers a number of applied aspects of human perception with an emphasis on the display of visual information. Topics include three-dimensional display systems, color theory, spatial and temporal limitations of the visual systems, attempts at subliminal communication, and visual effects in film and television.
Humans and machine learning information processing systems create internal representations that enable them to perceive additional information, categorize it, make decisions, and plan actions. How can we measure the extent to which these representations align? Are machine learning representations that resemble human ones more effective? What insights about human representations can we gain from machine learning models? How can we make human and machine representations more similar? In what ways can we address ethical and safety concerns? With recent advancements in machine learning and cognitive science, these questions have become focal points of research. This course will explore this dynamic area, involving a close examination of foundational and recent papers in the emerging field of representational alignment, alongside cutting-edge research.
Neurons generate action potentials. Brains underlie feeding, fighting, fleeing, and reproduction, also navigation, attention, sociality, art, and science. What about the middle part? This advanced seminar course examines the construction of neural circuits and systems that enable achievement of behavioral goals. The curriculum emphasizes integration across levels of analysis and organizations, including cellular and synaptic physiology, the emergent properties of networks, energy and information management, quantitative modeling, cognitive algorithm, and adaptive behavioral outcomes.
In this journal-club-style class we will read and discuss papers exploring a content-area in Cognition. For Spring 2026, readings will focus on relationships between language and thought (i.e., Linguistic Relativity). Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? If so, do people who speak different languages think differently? These seemingly innocent questions were considered taboo by scientists and philosophers throughout much of the 20th century. Today, however, these questions are the subject of productive scientific inquiry, and ongoing experiments are producing answers that rewrite the story of language, culture, and the human mind.
Any moral and religious systems tell us to keep a “pure heart,” and that immoral acts “pollute” our souls. We dislike dirty plays and dirty players in sports, and we keep our children away from dirty movies. We are also motivated to maintain purity in the less metaphorical sense—most cultures have norms about keeping bodies and living spaces clean. We even have an emotion—disgust—that seems especially attuned to certain kinds of dirtiness (such as bodily fluids and rotten food). The concept of purity, then, appears to be a deep aspect of human psychology—from the basic motivation to maintain physical purity, to the metaphors of purity and cleanliness that feature heavily in morality and religion across cultures. In this course we will look at the psychology of purity by reading widely on the topic, including historical, religious, anthropological, and psychological topics that center on purity in both the physical and moral/spiritual sense. Our aim will be to understand how this basic notion of pure/impure or clean/dirty has come to shape our psychology and our culture.
The human mind has a fundamental need to create categories. In this course we will examine how historical, developmental, cognitive, and motivational factors give rise to the construction of the social category of race in the United States. We wll also consider how racial group membership - and its intersections with other group memberships - can profoundly influence one's experience of the world and each other. To understand the construct of race and its consequences we will perform close reading and critical analysis of theoretical and empirical work in social psychology.
The focus of this course is on discussion and critical analysis of selected articles from very recent issues of the most selective social psychological journals. Readings are chosen for their importance, their coverage of contemporary topics in social psychology, and their potential for generating stimulating discussion. Students write brief thought papers before each class in which they offer suggestions for class discussion based on their close reading of the day's assigned articles. They also write a term paper on a social psychological topic of their own choosing.
This course will survey the emerging field of Social Neuroscience, and examine how theories and methods of neuroscience may be used to address classic questions of social psychology from new and informative angles. The goal is to give students the tools to become critical consumers of this literature, broaden their thinking about connections between the mind, brain, and behavior in a social context, and apply these ideas to their own future research in psychology.
Research methods are the tools that allow psychologists to test the validity of hypotheses. This course provides a survey of the methods used by scientists in personality and social psychology as well as related behavioral sciences to empirically test hypotheses. Specifically, this course will discuss the following topics: (1) philosophy of science; (2) research designs and methods; (3) data collection, analysis, and validity; (4) report writing; and (5) recurrent and emerging trends and issues in the field of research methods and quantitative analysis. The final project consists of writing a research proposal and giving a short oral presentation.
One of four introductory courses in cognition and perception. A comprehensive introduction to current thinking and research in developmental psychology that approaches problems from both psychobiological and cognitive perspectives. We will use a comparative approach to assess principles of development change. The course focuses on the development of perception, action, cognition, language, and social understanding in infancy and early childhood.
Covers comparative and evolutionary approaches to the study of the relationship between reproductive hormones and sexual behavior in vertebrates, including humans. Also hormonal contributions to other social behavior (parental behavior, aggression, mating systems) stress, learning and memory, and biological rhythms.
First semester of a year-long discussion-seminar course intended to give graduate students an in-depth understanding of current research and theory in social psychology. Emphasizes social cognition, but other topics, such as group dynamics, social influence, moral psychology, and emotional experience, are covered.
Second semester of a year-long discussion-seminar course intended to give graduate students an in-depth understanding of current research and theory in social psychology. Emphasizes social cognition, but other topics, such as group dynamics, social influence, moral psychology and emotional experience are covered.
