2023/24 Undergraduate Module Catalogue

PSYC1626 The biological psychology of sex, drugs, and politics

20 creditsClass Size: 250

Module manager: Stephanie Wake
Email: S.Wake@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable

Year running 2023/24

Pre-requisite qualifications

BSc Psychology or MPsyc, BSc Advanced Psychology or BA Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Thought, or BSs Psychology with Education programme entry requirements.

This module is not approved as a discovery module

Module summary

Brain functioning underlies human and animal behaviour, and so is critical to our understanding of psychological phenomena. This module will outline the biological basis of human and non-human animal behaviour. This will be applied to different psychology topics, such as intelligence, reproductive behaviour, and politics. Complementary research perspectives, such as neuroscience, neuropsychology, evolutionary and comparative approaches will be discussed. In particular, this module will pay close attention to the ethical and historical aspects of Biological Psychology.

Objectives

This module will introduce students to biological psychology theory, its application to real world questions, and relevant evolutionary, ethical, historical, and political perspectives. This module draws upon complementary evidence from both human and animal research.

Learning outcomes
Students will be able to:
1. Demonstrate an understanding of the biological bases of behaviour of humans
2. Demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between human and non-human animal behaviour
3. Demonstrate an understanding of the role of learning in behaviour
4. Demonstrate an understanding of the evolutionary, ethical, conceptual, cultural, historical, and political aspects of biological psychology
5. Evaluate the research methods used in biological psychology
6. Develop communication skills through group and independent work

Syllabus

1. Introduction: The fundamentals of Biological Psychology
2. Politics: Biological influences on socio-political attitudes and intelligence
3. Drugs: Biological mechanisms and their reflection in policy and society
4. Sex: Biological psychology of reproductive behaviour

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Group learning	10	1.50	15.00
Lecture	4	1.00	4.00
Independent online learning hours			13.60
Private study hours			167.40
Total Contact hours			19.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			200.00

Private study

Independent online learning – online pre-recorded lectures in max. 20 min segments. Approximately 10 per topic = 13.6 hours.
Private study:
Essay: 58 hours
Group assignment: = 45 hours x 2 = 90 hours
Independent reading: 19.4 hours

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

Students will have the opportunity to submit a formative, reflective piece of work in order to help students to prepare for the essay. This will ask about their approach to the essay, and their understanding of the topic. Students will also be provided with feedback in the group-based teaching sessions. Group-based teaching sessions will be an opportunity for students to work on their group assignments and so staff members can provide formative feedback during these sessions. Students will also work on tasks during the group teaching sessions, staff will be able to provide students with feedback during these sessions, which will help students to clarify their understanding of the module content. This will be helpful for the completion of their group assignments and essay coursework.

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Essay or Dissertation	1,500 word	40.00
Group Project	There are two group tasks. For group project 1, students must assess an alien lifeform to determine if it is intelligent.	30.00
Group Project	There are two group tasks. For group project 2, students have autonomy to choose a format to describe biological process (e.g., blog, podcast, poster, etc.).	30.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)		100.00

All assessment components must be completed to a passable standard. However, each component can be resat individually without resitting the whole module. Each component contributes independently to the module mark, such that failure in one component will not mean that the whole module mark is capped at 40 upon resit. Peer evaluation by group members will constitute 10% of each of the group assignments grade.

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 28/04/2023 14:59:39

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