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Welcome to Psychology at Haverford

The aim of the Psychology Department is to provide students with an understanding of human behavior that will support their ability to participate as informed members of our society, to help others, and to add to scientific knowledge.

One path to this goal involves mastery of the theoretical concepts psychologists use in describing and understanding behavior; the other involves competence in the use of the scientific methodologies employed in the study of behavior. We emphasize the importance of both concepts and methods across diverse topic areas within psychology, including biological, cognitive, social, and personality. In addition to teaching courses in these areas, our faculty members are actively involved in research programs designed to answer a variety of questions about human behavior, including:

• Why can some people tolerate pain better than others?
• How do people tell their life stories?
• Why do people in romantic relationships stay together and break-up?
• What happens in your brain when you make a mistake?
• Why is it that, on some occasions, our perception of time becomes distorted?

A central feature of our curriculum is to involve students directly in our research as we pursue the answers to these and other questions about the mind and behavior.