Psychology, B.S.

Bates Hall
Telephone: (203) 576-4158

Program Description

The Bachelor of Science degree in Psychol­ogy prepares students for work that requires liberal arts training as well as psychological knowledge and skills. The major provides students with a detailed awareness of the field of psychology, including its historical background, paradigms, methods, research findings, and applications. The major ad­dresses the general areas of developmental, personality, social, cognitive, and abnormal psychology. It fosters the development of verbal, quantitative, analytical, and techno­logical skills that are useful for work in psy­chology and related fields.

The major requires thirteen psychology courses (39 semester hours), including PSYC 103 - Introduction to Psychology , PSYC 205 - Lifespan Developmental Psychology , PSYC 230 - Abnormal Psychology , PSYC 240 - Social Psychology , PSYC 303 - Personality Psychology , PSYC 307 - Cognitive Psychology , PSYC 321 - Research Methods , PSYC 385 - Statistical Methods in Psychology  and five other elective psychology courses (fifteen se­mester hours total of psychology electives). A total of 120 credits are required for gradu­ation. Students wishing to obtain a minor in Psychology must take Introduction to Psy­chology plus any five additional psychology courses (18 semester hours total including PSYC 103 ).

Learning Outcomes

By completing the B.S. in Psychology pro­gram, students will:

1) have learned the pre-history and the history of Psychology includ­ing the evolution of its main issues, topic areas, methods and applications;

2) know the major perspectives in Psychology including perspectives such as: Psychoanalytic/Psycho­dynamic, Behaviorist, Humanistic, Biological, and Socio-Cultural,;

3) understand the lifes­pan approach to human biological, cognitive and psychosocial development;

4) be able to provide examples of the major forms of psy­chological research including methodologies such as naturalistic observation, surveys, case studies and archival research, and the main features and techniques of psychological ex­perimentation;

5) understand basic data orga­nization, presentation and analysis including both inferential and descriptive statistics;

6) understand characteristics of psychological research including the limitations of correla­tion research, experimental biases, placebo effects and ethical issues regarding human subjects;

7) be able to critically evaluate the psychological research presented in the pop­ular press;

8) be able to relate key psycho­logical concepts and theories to their own personal lives;

9) understand how key psy­chological concepts and theories are applied in clinical, medical, educational, human ser­vices and corporate settings; and

10) under­stand connections between Psychology and such other disciplines as Philosophy, Biology, Sociology, Religion, and Human Services.