STEM · Full roadmap · ~95 min read · 29 steps
🧠Psychology (Aotearoa NZ)
Understand the mind, judge the studies, and know the NZ context
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Unit 1
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Course overview
What psychology actually is
Psychology is the science of mind and behaviour
Psychologist, psychiatrist, and counsellor in NZ
Three different roles people mix up
The biological perspective
Mind as a product of the brain and body
The behavioural perspective
Behaviour is shaped by rewards and punishments
Unit 2
The cognitive perspective
The mind as an information processor
The psychodynamic and humanistic perspectives
Hidden depths, and the drive to grow
The evolutionary perspective and putting the lenses together
No single lens is the whole answer
Te Whare Tapa Whā, a NZ model of wellbeing
Health as a house with four walls
Te Wheke, and holistic versus individualist models
Wellbeing as something woven together, not split apart
Unit 3
How psychologists actually study the mind
Different methods answer different questions
Why correlation is not causation
Things moving together does not mean one causes the other
Milgram and obedience, then the fine print
Famous results need their caveats
Asch, conformity, and the power of the group
People will doubt their own eyes to fit in
Stanford Prison and the replication crisis
Some classics did not hold up at all
Unit 4
Neurons, the brain's basic unit
Cells that signal each other with electricity and chemistry
Three myths about the brain
The brain facts everyone gets wrong
Sensation versus perception
Raw signals versus the brain's interpretation
How we learn, classical and operant conditioning
Learning by association and by consequence
Memory is not a recording
Encoding, storage, retrieval, and reconstruction
Unit 5
Thinking and cognitive biases
Useful mental shortcuts that misfire
Emotion and motivation, Maslow read carefully
What drives behaviour, and a famous pyramid that is shakier than it looks
How we develop, attachment and Piaget
Minds and bonds grow in patterns
Personality, Big Five over MBTI
A measurable model versus a popular quiz
Social psychology, the power of the situation
We misread why people do things
Unit 6
Stress, health, and the mind body link
Chronic stress wears the body down
Mental health in Aotearoa, and where to get help
The NZ picture, plainly, with the major categories
Being a smart consumer of psychology
A checklist for any claim about the mind
Where to go next
Where to go next