Course content

This course offers students an opportunity to expand their knowledge of evolutionary psychology, an overarching framework subsuming multiple branches of psychology. In addition, this course provides students with the practical methodological and theoretical basis necessary for the development of original hypotheses derived from theory. To accomplish this, the students will work on a theoretical semester assignment where they will independently find and make use of scientific literature, displaying their ability to perform independent, critical academic discussions.

The focus will be on sexual strategies theory and sexual conflict theory. The topics for the debate-based teaching will first include an introduction to general evolutionary psychology as well as parental investment theory, sexual strategies theory and sexual conflict theory. This will be followed by a detailed investigation of specific areas of research such as sexual behavior; mate preferences; jealousy, sexual regret and other emotions from a functional perspective; sexual over-perception, error management theory and other evolved cognitive biases; assortative mating; sociosexuality and other individual differences.

Learning outcome

Knowledge

The candidate has in-depth theoretical, empirical and applied knowledge of evolutionary psychology and knows how to apply relevant peer-reviewed literature in a theoretical, empirical and practical context.

Skills

The candidate knows how to analyze and evaluate theories, methods and findings within evolutionary psychology independently and according to academic criteria.

The candidate knows how to analyze and apply knowledge from evolutionary psychology to new areas within psychological research and practice.

General competence

The candidate can apply knowledge from evolutionary psychology to contribute to innovation within the field of psychology.

The candidate knows how to communicate about, and disseminate, knowledge from evolutionary psychology to other research fields, specialists and the public at large.

Learning methods and activities

The teaching in this course consists of three main parts. 1) Discussion lectures with two lecturers presenting different perspectives on theory and findings. 2) Teaching related to the exercise in personality testing and writing of a report. 3) Meetings with students, where one discusses themes related to the semester assignment, theory, and findings with the course coordinator.

Recommended previous knowledge

None

Required previous knowledge

None