Psychology Undergraduate Program Elective Course Contents

PSY 300	Internship	(Pass/Fail-2 ECTS)
This course provides students an opportunity to work in a professional setting and integrate their academic knowledge with firsthand experiences. Students will have the opportunity to make observations and applications related to clinical, organizational, social, and developmental psychology as well as special education in various institutions. It is the students responsibility to locate an internship site and on-site supervisor.
PSY 310	Creativity	6 ECTS
This course aims to examine creativity from four main perspectives: product that meets criteria for being creative; process that leads to conceiving of a creative product; person that is capable of engaging in such process; and people that form social context for creativity. Students will obtain the main theories and research in psychology of creativity, starting from looking at definitions for creativity, through biological, psychological and social perspectives on creativity.
PSY 322	Cognitive Development	6 ECTS
This course review different accounts of how mental abilities develop as well as scientific methodologies scientists use to investigate cognitive development. A particular focus will be latest breakthroughs in the study of cognition in infancy and early childhood as these are areas where rapid scientific processes are being made. Major research areas that will be covered are memory, language, reasoning, executive functioning, planning, pretend play and imagination, social cognition and atypical cognitive development.
PSY 415	Cross Cultural Psychology	6 ECTS
This course focuses on theories and research in cross-cultural psychology, examining human behavior and experience as it occurs across cultures and/or is influenced by cultural factors. Course coverage will include such topics as, enculturation, dimensions of culture, major theories of culture, levels of culture, culture and personality, culture and cognition, culture and gender, culture, language, and communication, culture and social behavior, intergroup relations theory, culture in organizations.
PSY 413	Forensic Psychology	6 ECTS
This course examines the legal system’s basic assumptions and procedures in light of social scientific evidence pertaining to human behavior relevant to the rights of defendants, victims, children, and mental patients, including areas of clinical psychology in which psychologists act as expert witnesses and consultants.
PSY 314	Human Memory	6 ECTS
This course examines theories and studies about acquisition, storage and retrieval processes of knowledge. Major topics are working memory, sensory and short-term memory, information coding and retrieval processes, implicit and explicit memory, long term memory, restructuring processes in the memory, eyewitness memory, memory deficits, neural bases of memory and computational models of memory.
PSY 400	Psychophysiology Laboratory	6 ECTS
In this course, students will gain knowledge in psychophysiology literature and experience in recording of skin conductance (SCL), heart-rate (HR), heart-rate variability (HRV) respiration, facial electromyography (EMG) and analysis of skin conductance (SCL).
PSY 416	Social and Personality Development	6 ECTS
This course is designed to provide an introductory level overview of current theory and research on social and personality development with a particular focus on social, emotional, and moral development and socialization in cultural context. Topics include classical and recent theories and perspectives on social and personality development, early social and emotional development, development of the self and social cognition, achievement, gender-role development and sex differences, aggression and antisocial conduct, prosocial moral development, and socialization in cultural context.
PSY 408	Applied Developmental Psychology	6 ECTS
This course shows how developmental psychology research findings have played critical important roles in the design and implementation of effective public policy initiatives involving children. Topics cover a collection of work by the leading researchers in this field on applied topics in lifespan development such as infant care practices, children's cognitive and social development within the context of poverty, and design and evaluation of interventions in nursing homes. Students are required to do research and practice in the field of developmental psychology to understand how research and practice can strengthen each other.
PSY 411	History and Philosophy of Psychology	6 ECTS
This course focuses on a study of the historical and philosophical foundations of psychology. The course begins by discussion of 18th and 19th century developments of philosophy and physiology and how these led to appearance of psychology as a separate science. Particular emphasis will be placed on how different schools of thought, in conjunction with new physiological research, influenced the foundational ideas that give rise to psychology as a separate discipline of empirical science.
PSY 404	Introduction to Clinical Evaluation and Interview Methods	6 ECTS

PSY 414	Sports Psychology	6 ECTS
The course provides students with thorough theoretical and practical grounding in sport psychology. Students will explore a number of established and contemporary fields of research that have the potential to affect athletes’ performance and well-being, including mental toughness, self-confidence, motivation, stress and anxiety and concentration. Students will be able to apply psychological skills pertaining to sport and exercise in the design of programs and in discussions with athletes and recreational exercisers.
PSY 324	Sensation and Perception	6 ECTS
During this course students will be confronted with modern research on sensation and perception in general and vision in particular. Both behavioral and neural studies on perceptual mechanisms will be addressed. Students will perform lab research that will demonstrate classical experimental paradigms.
PSY 329	Programming in Experimental Psychology	6 ECTS
This course covers various methods of utilizing computational tools available within Psychtoolbox framework installed on MatLab in order to gain executive control of basic computer hardware (i.e. monitor, keyboard, audio output, etc.) for purposes of behavioral experimentation. In this course student will gain experience in writing programming scripts whereby highly precise data can be collected from human participants.
PSY 312	Group Relations	6 ECTS
The objective of the course is to understand the psychological origins of group behavior. Students will gain knowledge about what makes a group, patterns of group behaviors both within the group and between groups.
PSY 400	Psychology of Organizational Behavior	6 ECTS
In this course, the application of behavioral theories in organizational settings is examined. Topics include individual differences in employee motivation and job satisfaction, group development, team building, organizational leadership, and culture.
PSY 400/ 490	Independent Study in Psychology I & II	4 ECTS / 4 ECTS
This course is designed to provide knowledge and hands-on experience in how to plan and conduct research in psychology for Psychology students who are in their 3rd or 4th year. The objective of the course is to present students with responsibilities and opportunities to conduct research in psychological science, at various stages of the research process (e.g., literature review, research proposal writing, research design, data collection, data analyses, tabulation and presentation of research findings). The course will enable students to put their existing knowledge in psychology, research design, and statistics into practice. Based on the requirements of the specific instructor, the student will either contribute to an ongoing research project, or propose and implement his/her own research project. Details regarding course content and requirements will be provided by the individual instructor.
PSY 418	Adolescence and Transition to Adulthood	6 ECTS
This course aims to examine developmental changes during adolescence and transition to adulthood period. In this course major topics are physical and cognitive development, self and identity development, changes in relationships with parents, peers, friends, and siblings as well as school success and starting to professional life.
PSY 425	Training and Development in Organizational Psychology	6 ECTS
This course is a review of various methods of training and developing employees, including both off-site and on-site. Methods of evaluating training programs are covered, including a discussion of performance appraisal methods as well as designs used in evaluation training. In this course students will gain designing and conducting training programs.
PSY 313	Motivation and Self-Regulation	6 ECTS
This course examines theories and research on motivation as it applies to various domains of human life such as education, learning and achievement. In this course, how individual (e.g., needs, cognitions and emotions) and social factors (e.g., family, school, and culture) involve in motivational processes will be discussed.
PSY 315	Attachment and Relationships	6 ECTS
The course examines the attachment theory and research in relation to relationships shaped during infancy and across the lifespan. Development of attachment theory, evolutionary approaches to bonding, influence of parent-child mental health and other domains in life, attachment in intimate relationships and measurement issues in attachment literature.
PSY 409	Systems of Psychotherapy	6 ECTS
The aim of this course is to introduce different psychotherapy perspectives and theories. In addition, basic concepts, helping process in various psychological disorders, and psychotherapy research will be reviewed. The students are required to critically evaluate case examples and methods in psychotherapy approaches. In the course, students will understand nature of psychotherapy and gain knowledge on new methods in psychological help.

PSY 310	Creativity	6 ECTS
This course aims to examine creativity from four main perspectives: product that meets criteria for being creative; process that leads to conceiving a creative product; a person that is capable of engaging in such process; and people that form a social context for creativity. Students will obtain main theories and research in psychology of creativity, starting from looking at definitions of creativity through biological, psychological and social perspectives on creativity.
PSY 310	Political Psychology	6 ECTS
The objective of the course is to understand the psychological origins of political behavior. Students will gain knowledge about patterns of political behaviors, including leadership, group behavior, voting, nationalism, and war.
PSY 316	Group Relations	6 ECTS
The objective of the course is to understand the psychological origins of group behavior. Students will gain knowledge about what makes a group, patterns of group behaviors both within the group and between groups.
PSY 317	Complex Cognition	6 ECTS
The objective of the course is to gain and apply knowledge of complex cognitive processes such as reasoning, problem solving, and decision making. This course focuses on complex cognitive processes including, but not limited to, knowledge representation and acquisition, language and thought, deductive and inductive reasoning, problem solving, decision making, and inference.
PSY 319	Introduction to Educational Psychology	6 ECTS
The aim of the course is to gain not only essential knowledge about theory but will also to apply this information via different school settings. This course is to introduce a variety of major theories and concepts related to human learning, development, and motivation to prospective teachers, school counselors, and others who want to work with children.
PSY 321	Qualitative Methods in Psychology	6 ECTS
This course is designed to provide an introductory level overview of current theory and research on social and personality development with a particular focus on social, emotional, and moral development and socialization in cultural context. Topics include classical and recent theories and perspectives on social and personality development, early social and emotional development, development of the self and social cognition, achievement, gender-role development and sex differences, aggression and antisocial conduct, prosocial moral development, and socialization in cultural context.
PSY 403	Health Psychology	6 ECTS
The primary goal of the course is understanding health psychology from a wider perspective and its practical applications. The course will focus on main elements, theories and primary topics in health psychology (such as stress theories, how health-risk behaviour and health-protective behavior develops, underlying mechanisms of substance use).
PSY 405	Public Health and Exercise Psychology	6 ECTS
The objective of this course is to learn the basic concepts and research and intervention strategies related to public health and exercise psychology. To become familiar with the basic theoretical background of major areas of public health such as physical activity epidemiology, health benefits of exercise, disease prevention strategies. Students will also learn and discuss research findings, theories in exercise psychology and their implications for public health.
PSY 406	Psychotherapy Seminars	6 ECTS

PSY 407	Psychology of Trauma	6 ECTS
The aim of this course is to provide students with a basic understanding of the physiological, emotional, cognitive, behavioral and relational effects of traumatic experiences, resilience and adaptation. This introductory course explores the impact of exposure to potentially traumatic life events on individuals, families and communities from a biopsychosocial and political perspective.
PSY 412	Selected Topics in Cognitive Psychology	6 ECTS
The aim of this course is to comprehend advanced level cognitive psychology research and using this knowledge to create and perform actual research. During this course the students will be confronted with modern research on embodied cognition.
PSY 417	Self and Identity	6 ECTS
The objective of the course is to understand the psychological origins of the self and identity. Students will gain knowledge about the history of concept of self, how this evolved into personal and/or collective identities, and the way identity influences our relationships.
PSY 420	Selected Topics in Industrial/Organizational Psychology	6 ECTS
This course serves as a vehicle to deepen student’ knowledge of subjects addressed in Industrial and Organizational Psychology course and explore new trends and developments in the field.
PSY 421	Human Sexuality	6 ECTS
The objective of the course is to guide students in gaining knowledge in human sexuality across the lifespan and also to provide a systemic understanding of human sexuality with ecological and family systems theories. This course provides students with a basic knowledge of human sexuality as it pertains to family relations.
PSY 422	Family Psychology	6 ECTS
The major goal of this course is to introduce students psychological formulations of family life. In this course, an overview of different theoretical frameworks is provided to understand family system patterns and dynamics. This course explores family functioning and how families organize interactional processes.
PSY 423	Clinical Application of Creative Arts Therapies	6 ECTS
The class aims to introduce students to the some of the major philosophical and theoretical perspectives of CATs including the application of this field in clinical setting. CATs is an evidenced-based mental health profession which applied by a qualified Creative Arts Therapist, with a strong research foundation that actively apply supportive science to the creative, emotional, and energizing experiences of arts to accomplish individualized clinical goals.
PSY 426	Selected Topics in Social Psychology	6 ECTS
The aim of this course is to introduce a critical perspective in understanding and evaluating theoretical and methodological aspects of the major topics in social psychology. This course is designed to create an advanced approach to social psychology. Through the course, students encounter different theoretical and methodological approaches to social psychology, both classic and contemporary, and be asked to critically evaluate their theoretical basis and methodological approach.
PSY 428	Consciousness and Cognition	6 ECTS
The aim of this course is to introduce research and theories on the relationship between consciousness and cognition from a multidisciplinary perspective. During this course the students are confronted with early, modern and contemporary ideas on consciousness, methodologies for investigating the relationship between consciousness and different mental faculties, and the so-called neural correlates of cognition.
PSY 430	Relationships and Families	6 ECTS
The objective of the course is to introduce the students to the research on the link between marital, family, and romantic relationships and wellbeing. This course includes topics on individual, couple, and family functioning that has been documented with relationships research.
PSY 432	Attitudes and Persuasion	6 ECTS