This is a course in introductory psychology. It is considered a survey course. Although a lot of the material we cover may seem quite detailed and overwhelming at first, we actually just touch the surface of ten different areas in the field of psychology. What you will find out as the course progresses is that experimental and research psychologists study people. That's one of the reasons that so many programs strongly recommend, or even require that students take an introductory psychology class. Think about this. When you buy a car, or a computer, or a TV, or whatever, you probably spend at least some time looking through the owner's manual, finding out how the thing works, and what to do if something goes wrong. Well, your introductory textbook, and this course, are like an owner's manual for you. You will find out how you work, and how things can go wrong. Psychology is a search to understand what makes normal, everyday people behave the way they do. Most of us go through life on auto-pilot; we seldom stop to reflect on our own behavior, or the behavior of others, unless that behavior is strange or out of the ordinary.

We'll look at how your nervous system and brain work, the ways you take information in from the environment and process that information in your brain, how these processes allow you to remember and learn, individual differences in behavior and how those differences might emerge, the ways in which psychologists study behavior and mental processes, and what psychological research studies have shown us about social interactions.

This course covers a lot of different areas in psychology; this is why introductory psychology is considered a survey course. It is designed to expose you to a number of different areas within the larger field of psychology.

The students who are the most successful in this course will be those who show a high level of self-discipline. It is important that you keep track of all the deadlines during the semester, and that you submit your assignments and complete your quizzes in a timely manner. Also, the material in this course tends to be cumulative; and later lessons refer back to concepts from earlier lessons.