What you will study
Living psychology: from the everyday to the extraordinary approaches psychology as a fundamentally applied discipline, firmly grounded in the real world.
Each study week takes a specific real-world topic and leads you through some of the ways that psychologists have explored it, outlining key theories, findings, practical issues, and research methods. Some of the real-world contexts explored in this module may involve issues that are sensitive to you personally. The issues to be covered will be outlined before the topic is presented, together with suggested ways in which you might engage with it if it is personally relevant to you.
The module is structured into five blocks, with four topics in each.
Block 1 explores the theme of ‘understanding minds’. In this block you will learn how people are able to understand each other’s thoughts and feelings, whether this ability is shared by other animals, what happens when people have difficulty understanding each other, and whether it might be possible to build an artificial ‘mind’ that would think and feel like a human mind.
Block 2 moves on from the individual focus of Block 1 to consider how people relate to others as social beings. In this block you will learn about the importance of self-esteem and the effect that other people can have on it, how problems can arise and be resolved in intimate relationships, how social interactions can affect creativity, and how issues of nationality and migration can affect people’s identities, both as groups and individuals.
Block 3 shifts the focus from the social world to people’s interactions with the physical world. In this block you will learn about how psychologists have defined the ‘self’, including the role of the physical body on the sense of self. You will also learn about the effect that the surrounding environment, both ‘natural’ and human-made, can have on people’s physical and mental health, and how psychology can help to address environmental issues such as climate change.
Block 4 considers how people make sense of the world around them. In this block you will learn how people develop an understanding of the information provided by their physical senses, and how that understanding can be both highly efficient and often wrong. You will also learn why many people believe in things that seem extraordinary, such as astrological predictions, psychic readings and conspiracy theories.
Block 5 focuses on four important, and contemporary, issues that psychologists have explored and problems that they have tried to help solve. In this block you will learn about the psychology of extreme circumstances such as living through traumatic events; you will explore historical and current psychological theories on human sex and sexuality; you’ll find out about the growing area of internet psychology, including problems such as trolling and cyber-bullying; and you’ll take an evaluative approach to the ‘self-help’ industry.
Throughout the module, you will also learn about a wide variety of research methods that have been used by psychologists to explore these issues. The methods covered include surveys, interviews, experiments, clinical assessments, and case studies.
The module is built around a two-volume textbook Living Psychology: From the Everyday to the Extraordinary and an extensive module website built around an online study guide. The website contains further teaching to support the chapters in the textbook, as well as additional topics taught entirely online. The teaching on the website includes video and audio interviews with key psychologists featured in the material, behind the scenes insights into the research process, and a variety of interactive activities to help develop and consolidate your knowledge. You will also spend some of your study time using online resources from The Open University library.
You will learn
You will learn about:
- academic and applied areas of psychology, including aspects of cognitive, developmental, social, clinical, counselling and forensic psychology
- the interaction between real-world issues and psychological theories and research.
You will develop skills in:
- accessing, interpreting and critically evaluating information from a variety of sources
- presenting information and arguments in response to academic and applied questions.