Professor:

» Dr. June Gruber

Teaching Fellows:

» Kirsten Gilbert
» Elena Wright
» Mark Sheskin

» Ruth Ditlmann
» Eric Tipler
» Naveed Rashid

Recent News & Updates:

» Research Project: Due Thursday, April 1 (in class)

» Psych Majors (Current or Potential): For Spring 2010 Only, Human Emotion will count towards a List A or List B requirement.

About The Course:

Welcome! This course will introduce students to a diverse array of theoretical and empirical issues related to the study of human emotion. Some questions the course will address include: What are our emotions? What purpose do they serve? How do emotions relate to our thoughts, memories, and behaviors towards others? What happens when our emotional responses go awry? Although these questions date back to early philosophical texts, only recently have experimental psychologists begun to explore this vast and exciting domain of study. The course will begin by discussing the evolutionary vs. societal origins of distinct emotions such as love, anger, fear, and disgust. Later, we will move on to examining how emotions color our cognitive processes such as thinking and memory, relationship between emotions and brain functions, development of emotions in childhood, and how emotions are intertwined with our everyday social interactions. We will also consider how these methods can be applied to studying mental illness in both children and adults. We conclude by studying the pursuit of happiness. This course is beneficial to both psychology majors and non-majors who want to gain exposure to this exciting and mysterious branch of social science.