PSYC 421 Environmental Psychology

Description

A simple fact about our existence is that we are influenced by the physical environment and our actions in turn shape the environment in which we live. This course focuses on the interaction between the environment and human beings, examining how the features of the environment impact our cognition, behavior, and well-being, and how our actions in turn produce immediate and long-term consequences on the environment. This course will also provide an overview of several pressing environmental challenges (e.g., climate change), and explore how these issues impact individual human beings, and what we can do to promote sustainability.

Important: This course is NOT about memorization. This course teaches you HOW: how to think, how to evaluate evidence, and how to produce new knowledge.

Learning objectives

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

1. Critically evaluate research articles on environmental psychology
2. Design a research project with rigorous methods to examine a research question
3. Identify psychological barriers and motivators to pro-environmental actions
4. Conduct a research project throughout the term, collect and analyze data, present findings in class, and write up a research report