This course, taught by Professor David Martin, is an outstanding introduction to psychology, beginning with its history and looking ahead to its future. Its 36 lectures work smoothly as an easy-to-follow primer and offer an ideal starting point for satisfying curiosity about how the mind works, perspectives from a variety of social scientists, and directions for further learning.
Psychology of Human Behavior
Get an accessible yet amazing introduction to a complex subject led by a renowned professor.
Rated 5 out of
5
by
Sharpie from
Educational and Informative.
Finally finished this course. Liked the format. Professor said what each lesson would cover. He covered the material. And then recapped what he had said. As a retired educator, this is an excellent and effective mode of teaching. It makes learning and understanding easy.
Date published: 2022-11-03
Rated 4 out of
5
by
Salatiso from
Great Introuductory course, some audio issues
I enjoyed the course and the topics covered. The presenter is skilled at conveying the message and the content was understandable to a layman like me.
I did experience some audio problems for lectures 31 & 32 on my Bluetooth headphones as only the left side was audible. I listen mostly to the audio versions as a I am doing other tasks and I must say the experience can be improved, compared to Wondrium content through Audible for example the Wondrium app experience is below par. I'd also like to have a once-off setting to either use or not use mobile data instead of the notifications each time despite having agreed to use cellular data.
Great content overall,
Date published: 2022-02-23
Rated 2 out of
5
by
Susan1234 from
Interesting but boring
I have enjoyed over 50 Great Courses programs. All have wonderful content. Unfortunately, the lecturer for Psychology of Human Behavior is so boring that it is difficult to remain engaged in the presentation or pay attention during each segment.
Date published: 2021-12-06
Rated 5 out of
5
by
Bill1874 from
Psychology Overview
We have watch about a quarter of the lectures and find them well organized and informative, and we also like the presentation.
Date published: 2021-10-07
Rated 3 out of
5
by
TheDoc from
Great content Poor iPhone interface
The subject matter is good but really difficult to access on the iPhone. Jerky audio Limited controls. Easily jumps to a previous or next chapter when trying to pause. In the end I gave up Was unlistenable
Date published: 2021-06-15
Rated 3 out of
5
by
kalb from
disappointing
while broadly informative, it was interesting only in spurts. The professor's presentation usually was fairly good, but unless you were seriously into the topic, it was too often too boring, with some of the lectures being very boring. A couple of pointed comments - in lecture 34, dealing with male aggression & violence, the prof explained it all in terms of sex & male need for women. Not a word that aggression/violence had anything to do with money, need or power. And, in the closing lecture (#36), he spends the first 18 (of 30) minutes briefly recapping the previous 35 lectures! In technical terms, that would be called a total waste. And, he then spends the last 12 minutes talking about 3 areas he didn't get to in the first 35 lectures + addressing expectations of the future. there's a major disconnect here.
Date published: 2020-04-15
Rated 5 out of
5
by
Bob Wilson from
Excellent over view
I have 2 Granddaughters taking Psychology courses in College. I purchased each a copy plus my e-copy. We now have a real basis for communication. Professor is excellent
Date published: 2019-08-20
Rated 1 out of
5
by
shellyfp from
ok
I have purchased and viewed over 50 of your courses over the past few years and have always enjoyed the content and presentation until this one. It was very difficult to concentrate on the material as the 'professor' was difficult to understand and had absolutely no ability to generate any interest due to his very boring manner of presentation.
Date published: 2019-01-23
Overview
About
Dr. David W. Martin is Professor of Psychology at North Carolina State University. He earned his B.A. in Psychology from Hanover College in Indiana, where he also finished the necessary coursework for a major in physics. He earned an M.A. in Experimental Psychology and a Ph.D. in Engineering Psychology from The Ohio State University. Professor Martin is the recipient of the Roush Award for Teaching Excellence and was named to the Academy of Outstanding Teachers at NC State. He is a member of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the Psychonomic Society, and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. Dr. Martin is author of Doing Psychology Experiments, an experimental methods text now in its 6th edition and adopted at more than 100 colleges. He has also engaged in professional consulting and has more than 75 publications and papers.
01: Modern Psychology in Historical Context
This lecture introduces psychology as the study of human behavior either from a clinical or scientific perspective-with several examples of the varieties of approaches each may take-and also traces some of the discipline's history....
33 min
02: Experimentation as a Research Method
Experimentation is one of the primary research methods of psychology. This lecture shows how properly conducted experiments are set up and explains the key terms used....
30 min
03: Nonexperimental Research Methods
Psychological researchers are not confined to experimentation in doing their work. We look at some of the other methods available, beginning with correlational observation, in which researchers attempt to determine whether there is a relationship between two behaviors....
31 min
04: Evolutionary Theory and Modern Psychology
During most of the history of psychology, human behavior has been considered to be largely a function of environmental influences with few innate behaviors. This lecture explores the recent trend to view behavior within an evolutionary context....
31 min
05: Freud's Thinking
We look at psychology's most prominent theory of personality: the psychoanalytic theory proposed by Sigmund Freud around 1900, which set forth the three personality components of id, ego, and superego....
30 min
06: Details of Psychoanalytic Theory
Freud proposed that psychosexual energy is focused on various anatomical parts during a series of developmental stages, and that there are unconscious defense mechanisms at work to protect our psyches. Are his ideas still useful?...
31 min
07: Classification of Mental Illnesses
This lecture begins a five-lecture exploration of mental illness, beginning with a look at the various criteria used to make up the multidimensional definition of abnormal behavior....
31 min
08: Anxiety and Mood Disorders
Two of the major classifications of mental illness are anxiety-once called neurosis-and mood disorders. This lecture discusses some of the major examples of each and discusses how modern psychology attempts to treat them....
31 min
09: Disorders of Brain, Body, Self, Drugs, Sex
There are several categories of mental disorders-cognitive, somatoform, disassociative, substance-related, and sexual-and varieties of treatment....
31 min
10: Schizophrenic Disorders
Occurring in only 1 percent of the population, schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder in which there is a break with reality that nearly always involves both positive symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, or disorganized speech and behaviors; and negative symptoms such as emotional flattening, lessened speech, or deficient will....
31 min
11: Childhood, Retardation, Personality Disorders
We conclude our introduction to mental illness by looking at attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism, Tourette's syndrome, mental retardation, and types of personality disorders....
30 min
12: Physical Therapies-Drugs
This lecture begins our examination of physically oriented therapies with an examination of various psychopharmacological interventions, including a primer on how drugs work once they reach our nervous system....
31 min
13: Physical Therapies-ECT, Surgery, Genes
Several physical interventions besides drugs have been used to treat mental illnesses. This lecture looks at some of them, beginning with chemical and electrical means of introducing convulsions and continuing on to discuss surgical and genetic approaches to treatment.
32 min
14: Talking Therapies-Psychoanalysis
Psychotherapies are talking therapies based on the assumption that behavioral problems are caused by inappropriate thoughts and feelings. This lecture focuses on the therapy Freud developed, based on his own landmark psychoanalytic theory, to help patients find out what the contents of the unconscious are so that the unconscious can be restructured....
31 min
15: Therapies-Humanistic, Cognitive, Group
This lecture continues the sequence on talking therapies by looking at approaches other than traditional psychoanalysis that have proven useful.
31 min
16: Behavior Therapies-Classical Conditioning
Behavior therapies are based upon the assumption that the client has learned an inappropriate way of responding. The goal of behavior therapies based on classical conditioning is to substitute a new appropriate response for the old inappropriate response and strengthen the new stimulus-response connection to eliminate the old response....
30 min
17: Behavior Therapies-Operant Conditioning
Some behavior therapies (sometimes called behavior modification) are based upon operant conditioning, a form of simple learning that occurs when a voluntary response is reinforced, thereby making that response more likely to recur....
31 min
18: Models of Motivation
"What motivates human behavior?" Historically, answers to this question have ranged from the gods, to biological systems, to the unconscious. This lecture introduces some of the answers that have intrigued psychologists....
31 min
19: Emotion-What Do We Measure?
Emotion is one of the most important things for psychologists to study, but it is particularly difficult to do so because emotions are private events and not publicly observable. What can be measured, though, are emotion's by-products....
31 min
20: Emotion-Theories
What are emotions, anyway? Are they the cause of a physiological response or the result? We look at some of the theories proposed over the years to explain them....
31 min
21: Psychoactive Drugs-Processes, Stimulants
Legal or not, most people use psychoactive drugs to change the way they feel or act. We begin our examination with a discussion of how such drugs work and a look at some of the more common stimulants, including caffeine, nicotine, methamphetamines, and ecstasy....
30 min
22: Drugs-Depressants, Narcotics, Hallucinogens
We turn to other kinds of psychoactive drugs, beginning with depressants-the most dangerous class of drugs because of the risk of death that comes with their use....
31 min
23: Social Psychology-Influence and Reciprocity
This lecture, the first of two on social psychology, is concerned with social thinking, social influence, and social relations. We examine the phenomenon of reciprocity as a "triggering mechanism" to persuade others....
31 min
24: Social Psychology-Additional Mechanisms
Reciprocity is far from being the only triggering mechanism. This lecture examines some of the others, including commitment, social proof, authority, and scarcity....
31 min
25: Simple Learning-Classical Conditioning
We begin a two-lecture sequence on simple learning with a deeper look into a subject introduced earlier and discovered by Ivan Pavlov as he was studying glandular processes in dogs....
32 min
26: Simple Learning-Operant Conditioning
We conclude our discussion of simple learning with an examination of the kind of learning that takes place when a voluntary response is reinforced-a process famously pioneered by B. F. Skinner....
31 min
27: Complex Learning
This lecture examines several forms of complex learning, along with the argument that it cannot simply be built from the building blocks of classical and operant conditioning. Our discussion will include the differing views put forth by B. F. Skinner and linguist Noam Chomsky....
31 min
28: Memory-Characteristics
We begin our examination of memory with a look at the various ways of assessing how much we remember and conclude with a discussion of memory's fidelity and the ease with which false memories can be implanted for later recall....
31 min
29: Memory-Memory Aids and Forgetting Theories
Are there ways to improve our memories? Why, in fact, do we forget? We look at both of these issues and spend some time exploring mnemonics, or memory aids....
30 min
30: Perception-Forming Internal Models
Humans are not in direct contact with the external world, but pick up cues as to what is in the external world and form internal models from these cues. This lecture looks at how we do this, as well as how we can be deceived....
31 min
31: Perception-Finding and Organizing Cues
This lecture continues our examination of perception with a look at several different analyses, including those of the Gestalt and perpetual constancy schools and the work of Dale Purves....
31 min
32: Evolutionary Psychology-Basic Concepts
Because behaviorists and their blank-slate concept of learning held sway for many years, it is only recently that the theory of evolution has had an impact on psychology. But since the subfield of evolutionary psychology was founded in the 1990s, its impact has become major....
31 min
33: Evolutionary Psychology-Altruism and Mating
What evolutionary advantage would accrue to helping others? Is our evolutionary wiring still determining how we choose our partners? We explore these provocative questions....
31 min
34: Evolutionary Psychology-War, Family, Food
This lecture examines the ways evolutionary psychology can help explain some of the problems with aggression, parenting, and overeating in today's world....
30 min
35: Engineering Psychology
Engineering psychology is concerned with specifying the characteristics and limitations of the human operator in a human-and-machine environment. This lecture looks at the branch of psychology that is part of the interdisciplinary area of human factors, or ergonomics....
31 min
36: Recap, Omissions, and Into the Future
This final lecture reviews what we have covered in the course and looks into the future to see what may yet be made possible by psychology's most cutting-edge approaches....
31 min
