Psychology

Courses span clinical, cognitive, critical, cultural, developmental, political, and psychoanalytic psychology; cognitive and affective neuroscience; and the psychology of language, music, and perception. Students are encouraged to explore psychology from multiple perspectives, since integrating a range of approaches will lead to richer investigations and the construction of new questions.

Courses in psychology employ a variety of methods. Some use ethnographic and other interpretive/participatory research methods to explore psychology in relation to society, culture, and subjective constructions of human experience. Others focus on observational and experimental research approaches, introducing students to a range of methodologies for exploring attention, language, memory, neuroscience, emotion, social cognition, and music perception while providing opportunities for students to become involved in the research process. Students are encouraged to formulate critical questions about the field of psychology itself and to evaluate how we come to understand psychological processes.

Students at Hampshire are encouraged to extend their knowledge of psychology to other disciplines. While some students go on to pursue graduate study in clinical, developmental, or cognitive psychology; psychoanalysis; neuropsychology; or social work, others use psychological perspectives to inform their work in literature, the arts, and other fields.

Student Project Titles

• "We're Making History": Understanding Children's Perspectives of Historical Change
• Power, Struggle, and Resilience: Life Inside a Children's Behavioral Health Hospital
• Clinical Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience with an Emphasis on Substance Abuse
• Kidz n Dogz: Exploring Social Cognition between Species
• When East Adopts Modern Psychiatry: The Practice of Psychiatry in China and Korea
• Social Pretend Play: How Young Children Make Meaning of their Experience
• Socioeconomic Status and Autism Spectrum Disorder
• The Influence of Race and Urban Clothing on Implicit Stereotyping
• The Resounding Unknowable - Lacanian Perspectives on Sonic Aesthetics
• Music as a Rehabilitative Tool for Cochlear Implant Users
• Born a Sociopath, Made a Sociopath
• Narrating Neuropathology: Women and Bipolar Disorder
• Assistive ERP and Neuropsychology
• The Effects of Personality on Attitude Change

Sample First-Year Course

Culture, Brain, and Development: Developmental Psychopathology

Why is autism, a disorder with known biological correlates, suddenly so prevalent? Is it something in our culture? Our environment? Our genetics? This course examines developmental psychopathologies such as ADHD, conduct disorder, Tourette's syndrome, and others from multiple perspectives. We examine the role of culture, experience, and the brain in the development of these disorders using psychological and neuroscientific perspectives. Students do not need to have any specific background but should be willing to read scientific articles and be open to understanding not only the role of culture and society in development but the biological underpinnings as well. Students are expected to read primary research, write several short papers, as well as complete a course-long project that is presented to the class.

Sample Courses at Hampshire

• Adolescent Development
• Advanced Topics in Psychoanalytic Theory
• Autobiographical Memory
• Brain and Cognition II: Electrophysiology of the Mind
• Child Psychology: How Did I Get Like This?
• Cognitive Development
• Consuming Childhood
• Consumption and Happiness
• Critical Ethnography
• Development Seminar
• Hybrid Identities, Authentic Selves
• Imagining Mental Illness: Making a Case for a Measure of Abnormality
• Introduction to Experimental Psychology
• Memory Systems: Getting it, Using it, and Keeping it
• Meeting Lacan
• Minds, Brains, and Machines: The 50 Key Ideas
• Psychoanalytic Approaches to Psychotherapy with Children and Adolescents
• Psychology of Language
• Rethinking Childhood
• Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences
• The Plastic Brain: Culture, Experience, and Environment in Mind/Brain Development
• Sex on the Brain: Gender, Sex and Biology

Through the Consortium

• Adolescent Development (MHC)
• Food and Eating Disorders (AC)
• Intro to Research Methods (SC)
• Personality (AC)
• Research Methods in Psychology (MHC)
• Statistics in Psychology (UMass)

Facilities and Resources

Event-Related Potential (ERP) Lab
Hampshire's own Event-Related Potential (ERP) Lab allows students to design and run their own unique experiments, often with substantial funding.