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Accessibility statement
This module draws on classic and contemporary theories and research in psychology and applies them to a broad range of contexts. You'll learn how psychologists have studied practical and theoretical issues, such as nationalism or sexuality, with a particular emphasis on understanding and solving problems that directly affect people’s lives. You'll explore core academic areas of psychology set out by the British Psychological Society (e.g. social, cognitive, developmental) and applied aspects of professional practice (e.g. clinical, forensic, counselling). You'll also develop your understanding of psychological research methods, along with other useful academic and employability skills.
This module 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'll 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 the first block to consider how people relate to others as social beings. In this block, you'll learn about the importance of self-esteem and the effect that other people can have on it, how issues of nationality and migration can affect people’s identities, how conflict, aggression and violence can be explained and understood using the example of terrorism, and finally how wellbeing can be shaped by people’s sense of and shared experience of community.
Block 3 shifts the focus from the social worlds people inhabit to covering topics of sex and relationships. you'll learn about how psychologists study the role people’s experience of sex in their lives. You'll also study the occurrence of conflict in close relationships and how people relate to each other digitally using the internet as the platform for social relationships. Finally, you'll learn about the topic of sexual harassment through a psychological lens.
Block 4 considers how people make sense of the world around them. You'll 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'll also learn why many people believe in things that seem extraordinary, such as astrological predictions, psychic readings and conspiracy theories.
Block 5 focuses on interaction and collaboration using four important, and contemporary, issues that psychologists have explored and the problems that they have tried to help solve. You'll learn about people’s interaction with nature, interactions between humans and technology, including in high-risk working environments, working collaboratively with others in creative pursuits and interactions in the context of judgement and decision-making within the legal context of the jury process.
Throughout the module, you'll 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'll also spend some of your study time using online resources from The Open University library.
This is an OU level 2 module, and you need to have the study skills needed for both higher education and distance learning, obtained either through OU level 1 study or by doing equivalent work at another university. You are not expected to have any special knowledge of psychology.
If you have any doubt about the suitability of the module, please speak to an adviser.
You’ll get help and support from an assigned tutor throughout your module.
They’ll help by:
Online tutorials run throughout the module. While they’re not compulsory, we strongly encourage you to participate. Where possible, we’ll make recordings available.
Course work includes:
You’ll be supplied with module textbooks and have access to a module website, which includes:
The OU strives to make all aspects of study accessible to everyone, and this Accessibility Statement outlines what studying DD210 involves. You should use this information to inform your study preparations and any discussions with us about how we can meet your needs.
To find out more about what kind of support and adjustments might be available, contact us or visit our Disability support website.
Living psychology: from the everyday to the extraordinary starts once a year – in October.
This page describes the module that will start in October 2025, when we expect it to start for the last time.
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