Psychology and Management

Developing transferable study and employability skills are both important aspects for studying a degree, and securing employment. This module is tailored to the psychology discipline and provides students with an essential foundation to successfully build their degree, as well as equipping students with practical employability skills.

This 100% coursework module allows students to develop key transferable study skills to increase their employability to work in a range of industries. Key topics of study include understanding assessment and feedback, critical thinking, forming an academic argument, personal resilience and success, writing CVs and cover letters, and effective methods of communication. These skills are combined with developing knowledge of finding and securing voluntary and paid work experience, placements and jobs.

Students who complete this module will be equipped with skills to; write essays and lab reports, critically appraise information from a range of resources, produce a CV and cover letter for a prospective employer, present psychological information with confidence and clarity, and be able to find psychology-related opportunities, placements, and jobs, with an understanding of how to secure them.

Cognition is the mental process of acquiring and using knowledge; it underpins our ability to perceive the world around us. This module will equip students with a strong foundation of the conceptual knowledge and terminologies used in cognitive psychology.

Students will be introduced to key topics in cognitive psychology, such as attention, perception, categorisation, language, memory, problem solving, and decision-making. These core topics will be explored using key theories, classic paradigms, and experimental approaches, looking into both past and current research.

Once the module is complete, students will be able to describe key theories, processes, illustrate classic paradigms, and experimental approaches used in cognitive psychology. This will provide a foundation for those continuing with psychological studies in Part II.

Developmental psychology is a scientific discipline that explains how humans develop across the lifespan.

Students will study topics including Piagetian and Vygotskian theoretical frameworks, the nature vs nurture debate, and children’s development of crucial abilities to engage in the social world. Students will develop a strong understanding of the relationships between psychological theory and experimental evidence, drawing upon classic and state-of-the-art scientific literature, including current cutting-edge investigative research going on in our Psychology Department.

Gaining an understanding of psychology as a discipline, and how the field is informed by research, students will be able to discuss important developmental topics in an informed and critical manner using theory, literature and research frameworks. This will equip students with an excellent foundation of knowledge to continue studying developmental psychology in Part II.

Neuroscience gives us an insight into the brain, which underpins human behaviour; neuroscience helps us to understand the essence of being human.

This module provides students with an introduction to neural mechanisms that are central to human behaviour. Students will understand the anatomy of the nervous system, the main structures of the brain, the functions of neurons, which are specialised cells that receive, send and process information in the nervous system.

Once key neural mechanisms are understood, students will look at the effects of drugs on neural mechanisms including the brain, vision, hearing, control of movement, sleep and dreaming, learning and memory.

On successful completion of the module, students will understand brain anatomy, neural processes and mechanisms, identify areas of the brain that control movement, discuss the role of sleeping and dreaming, and understand the relation between neural function and learning and memory. Students will also be able to critically evaluate psychological research and express their understanding of such topics through discussions and assessments.

The aim of this course is to introduce students to the fascinating world of management and organisation(s) via a series of lectures and seminars and reading groups.

Over a period of ten weeks, we will attempt to familiarise ourselves with some of the main themes and issues that make up our ‘organised’ world. Our main objective will be to map out the ways in which we understand ourselves in relation to work, management and organisations. In order to so, we will attempt to trace how the meaning we give to these important themes has developed historically. To do so, we will analyse the thought of some of their main critics and contributors.

The course begins by providing a perspective on capitalism (as the social order in which the forms of managing and organising we are interested in takes place), before moving on to look at management more concretely and ends with a focus on people (both managers and workers) in contemporary organisations and society.

This module aims to provide you with a broad introduction to management covering a wide range of topics that are relevant to work, business and organisations. The module begins by locating organizations, work and technology in a broad historical context. It considers the meaning of work and different debates regarding alienation and technology. It then introduces different metaphors through which we can understand and analyse organisations. Finally, it considers the changing nature of employment relations by considering the shift from industrial relations to Human Resource Management (HRM).

The module is constructed to encourage you to think critically and to reflect upon taken-for-granted assumptions about the world of work and management’s role in relation to it. As a means to achieve this, the second part of the course explores the contemporary issue of human resource management and development which fundamentally contributes to the development of employee-engaged and productive organisations. The final part of the module continues the theme of encouraging critical reflection and explores key issues and debates related to gig employment, globalization, sustainability and business ethics that are intimately related to management.

This module introduces students to key topics and debates within psychological research relating to personality and individual differences.

Through the exploration of topics including personality, intelligence and psychometric testing, students will gain key skills to examine and evaluate the impact of individual differences on cognition, behaviour and social relationships.

Completing this module provides students with an understanding of biological, environmental and cultural influences on personality, intelligence and other traits, methods of psychometric testing and their role in psychological research, the ability to critically evaluate key theories and to assess the impact on real-world issues.

Psychologists engage in the scientific process of developing and testing theories that explain and understand human psychology and behaviour. This module introduces students to the scientific processes and practices surrounding the development and testing of psychological and behavioural theories.

Students will understand the importance of transparent psychological research to assess the openness and reproducibility of current studies. Practical skills will be at the heart of students’ learning, as they are equipped with practical skills to conduct their own research using a ‘reproducibility toolkit’, helping students study the relationship between theory, method, statistics and research.

Students will gain an understanding of how their research has an impact on psychological knowledge, as well as learning how to avoid problematic practices in the future. They will gain a well-rounded understanding of the research process, be aware of the importance of reproducibility, and knowledge of how to critically engage with theoretical and empirical research.

Key transferable skills are also learnt on this module including data collection, evaluation of primary and secondary sources, assessing the quality of other studies, and knowledge of the relationship between theories, concepts and research methods.

How do we determine what is true in science? How do we know which theories are well supported by evidence, and which ones are not? This module focuses on the research process, particularly drawing upon how to identify and avoid questionable practices, in favour of those that are open, transparent and reproducible.

Students will build upon their knowledge of the research process learnt in Research Integrity and Open Science 1. Looking at some of the problems faced by researchers, and how research findings are assessed in light of these issues, students will develop tools to help overcome and prevent future issues.

Topics of study includes the problem of false-positive findings, questionable research practices, researcher degrees of freedom, fraud, detecting errors and meta-analysis. These topics will allow students to understand how to embed open, transparent and reproducible research methods into their own practices, supporting students’ ability to plan a research study and provide clear, accurate descriptions of proposed methods and planned analyses.

Once students complete this module, they will have a deeper understanding of the research process, from concept, design, to post-publication. Students will have advanced knowledge of the reproducibility crisis, equipped with skills critically evaluate psychological theory and research in order to identify and avoid questionable research practices, and to ensure their own practices are open, transparent and reproducible.

Whether we want to understand more about ourselves, or the world around us, social psychology can offer valuable insights into psychology that is relevant to our everyday lives. This module equips students with key knowledge of the novel application of our everyday technology that governs most of our social and occupational organisation.

Students are introduced to core topics including attraction, attribution and leadership, and learning how the digital age continues to affect our social world through the exploration of social interaction in digital contexts. The module also provides an excellent basis for students to understand different research approaches by learning how theory guides the collection and interpretation of empirical data, including research paradigms, methods and measurement techniques.

The module will equip students with an understanding of core theories and methodologies to explain the significance of key research papers in social psychology, allowing students to understand how to tackle real-world issues.

Psychology is an evidence-based discipline, and understanding how to carry out psychological enquiry through statistical analysis of data plays a key part in research. This module is designed to equip students with a strong understanding of how data is used to inform decisions about the validity of psychological theories.

Students will learn theoretical principals behind introductory statistical analysis techniques in psychological research, developing an understanding of scientific research methods to perform their own statistical analysis using numerical data collected in laboratories.

By the end of this module, students will understand how to implement methods of research, make evidence-based inferences on psychological concepts, and develop skills to competently handle numerical data in order to calculate statistical analyses.

Psychology is an evidence-based discipline, and understanding how to carry out psychological enquiry through statistical analysis of data plays a key part in research. This module builds on students’ knowledge acquired in Part I, allowing them to broaden their skills and develop a deeper understanding of statistical analysis techniques in psychological research.

This module equips students with a core understanding of statistical concepts and specialist knowledge of applying a range of statistical methods. Students will expand their knowledge of statistical tests and continue to practice the implementation of these with data relating to psychological theories.

Students will take their statistical analysis skills to the next level, with their ability to calculate a range of statistics including correlation, chi-square and ANOVA, perform statistical analyses using software packages, and develop confidence in identifying the right statistical test required for a given design.