In addition to being a member of one area, graduate students may choose to join one or both of our two interdisciplinary programs, which bring together researchers from different areas, within the department as well as from other departments, with shared interests. Here are our programs.
Interdisciplinary Neuroscience
Students in the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience program have the opportunity to do research with Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience faculty in the Psychology Department or Neurobiology faculty in the Biology Department. Students interested in the interdisciplinary neuroscience track apply to the Ph.D. program in either the Psychology or Biology Department, depending upon whether the student's primary interests align more closely with those of a faculty member in Psychology or Biology. Once accepted into one of these programs, students may choose to follow the interdisciplinary neuroscience track.
This program is in the process of expanding to include Computer Science, Physics, and Chemistry.
Affective Science
Open to graduate students in any of our areas, the Affective Science concentration studies emotion from perspectives that include neuroscience, developmental psychology, and cultural psychology.
Graduate students from any of our areas can elect to participate in an affective science interdisciplinary training program. Emotion is best studied from different perspectives. Active contributions come from disciplines as diverse as philosophy and neuroscience. An Affective Science Initiative is being planned that will include a consortium of universities.
Courses
In addition to the following courses, we have an Emotional Training Program that hosts a series of speakers.
PS 530 Theories of Human Emotion
Professor Russell
This course surveys historic and contemporary theories of emotion.
PS 531 Social Pyschology of Emotion
Professor Barrett
This seminar will survey both classic and more contemporary social psychological approaches to the study of emotions.
PS 533 Affective Neuroscience
Professor TBA
Until recently, psychologists assumed that emotions are discrete, natural kinds that are defined by distinct biological systems. This course tests this assumption.
PS 561 Seminar in Social and Emotional Development
Professor Rosen
In this seminar, we will explore qualitative changes that occur in social and emotional functioning from birth through adolescence.
PS 657 and PS 658 Emotion Pro-Seminar
Professors Russell and Barrett
This year-long, team-taught proseminar will examine emotion theory and research in depth.
Affective Science Faculty
Lisa Feldman Barrett studies the experience of emotion, affective responding, and the perception of emotion in self.
Karen Rosen studies social and emotional development during infancy and early childhood, parent-child attachment relationships, and sibling relationships.
James Russell studies the expression and recognition of emotion through faces, children's understanding of emotion and the development of emotional experience, cultural influences on emotion, and the distinction between mood and emotion and scientific taxonomies of each.