Psychological Science and Society Lab

Catalog description

This course will prepare students to be informed, critical, and active consumers of empirical psychological research. Students will learn to understand the research process by dissecting published papers and tracing the transition of research findings into popular writings about psychological research. By the end of the course, students will be able to critically examine the status and origin of claims based on psychology research in the popular media (“getting back to the sources” and debunking myths); possess a basic understanding of the societal relevance of several bodies of psychology research; understand how to correctly interpret statistics in the context of research; and possess basic skills of communicating and writing about psychology research aimed at a general audience (e.g. Scientific American, Psychology Today).