Program Level Goals for Psychology Majors
- Understand basic concepts that characterize psychology as a field of scientific inquiry, and appreciate the various subfields that form the discipline as well as things that differentiate it from other related disciplines
- Develop an understanding of the central questions/issues in contemporary psychology as well as a historical perspective of psychological theories and key emperical data
- Develop a thorough understanding of one of the major content areas of psychology (i.e., Social/Personality, Developmental, Clinical, Cognitive, Biological)
- Develop skills to critically evaluate the presentation of scientific ideas and research in original scientific papers as well as in the popular media.
- Become familiar with research methods used in psychological research, and become proficient in basic concepts of statistical analyses and familiar with more advanced methods in data analyses and modeling
- Learn to develop, articulate, and communicate, both orally and in written form, a testable hypothesis, or an argument drawing from an existing body of literature.
- Apply a psychological principle to an everyday problem, or take an everyday problem and identify the relevant psychological mechanisms/issues