Lecture Description
This lecture reviews what evolutionary theories and recent studies in psychology can tell us about sex and gender differences. Students will hear how psychology can help explain many of the differences that exist in whom we find attractive, what we desire in a mate, and sexual orientation.
Course Description
What do your dreams mean? Do men and women differ in the nature and intensity of their sexual desires? Can apes learn sign language? Why can't we tickle ourselves? This course tries to answer these questions and many others, providing a comprehensive overview of the scientific study of thought and behavior. It explores topics such as perception, communication, learning, memory, decision-making, religion, persuasion, love, lust, hunger, art, fiction, and dreams. We will look at how these aspects of the mind develop in children, how they differ across people, how they are wired-up in the brain, and how they break down due to illness and injury.
Related Resources
Lecture Transcript and Reading Assignment
Course Index
- Introduction to Psychology
- Foundations: This is Your Brain
- Sigmund Freud
- Foundations: Skinner
- What Is It Like to Be a Baby: The Development of Thought
- Language in the Brain, Mouth and the Hands
- Conscious of the Present; Conscious of the Past: Language (cont.); Vision and Memory
- Conscious of the Present; Conscious of the Past: Vision and Memory (cont.)
- Evolution, Emotion, and Reason: Love (Guest Lecture by Professor Peter Salovey)
- Evolution, Emotion, and Reason: Evolution and Rationality
- Evolution, Emotion, and Reason: Emotions, Part I
- Evolution, Emotion, and Reason: Emotions, Part II
- Why Are People Different?: Differences
- Psychology, Sex, and Evolution
- A Person in the World of People: Morality
- A Person in the World of People: Self and Other, Part I
- A Person in the World of People: Self and Other, Part II
- What Happens When Things Go Wrong: Mental Illness, Part I
- What Happens When Things Go Wrong: Mental Illness, Part II
- The Good Life: Happiness