This course aims to familiarize the student with the basic principles that shape human behaviour. It will help students develop a greater understanding by delving into theoretical concepts and major components, including the biological, developmental, personality and social aspects of psychology. Students will be able to explain the importance of theoretical perspectives, research methods, and research findings in psychology. In addition to that, students will be acquainted with the upcoming trend of positive psychology and examine Singapore’s developing field of psychology.

This course covers the nature of critical thinking from a psychological perspective. Focusing on the nature of thinking, the course emphasizes the development of critical thinking applied to scientific inquiry. Through an interactive classroom environment that includes lecture/discussion, debate, and writing exercises, critical thinking skills such as problem solving, determining cause and effect relationships, analyzing arguments, fallacies in thinking, comparing facts with opinion, and understanding probabilities are developed. There will be emphasis on the application of critical thinking skills to everyday issues.

This course is designed to introduce students to the purpose of statistics in the field of social science through the understanding of terms and formula’s specific to the study of social sciences. Students will be introduced to the rigour of scientific inquiry and processes, and how the scientist infers information from data collected. Students will do simple exercises using basic research methods, hypothesis testing whilst being cognizant of the important of validity and reliability when conducting research.

This course will assist the student to develop their confidence in academic and research writing skills in psychology. The field of psychology has its own rules and expectations for academic writing. This module emphasizes the use of plain language, conciseness and clarity of language, evidence-based reasoning, and use of the American Psychological Association (APA) style of referencing. During the learning journey, the student would have gained reasonable amount of exposure to the process involved in planning, development and production of academic and research paper writing skills.