Department of Psychology: Research Unit 04
Content of Teaching
Differential Psychology
Differential Psychology is a branch of the basic subjects of psychology focussing on describing and explaining differences between people in how they are experiencing, thinking, feeling and acting. It generally uses the methods of the empirical sciences for this purpose. To describe inter-individual differences, differential psychology focusses on a range of constructs. For example, psychologically relevant morphological and physiological characteristics (such as BMI and attractiveness) play a role in differential psychology, as do motives, interests, attitudes, abilities (e.g. intelligence or creativity) and temperamental characteristics (e.g. emotionality and activity). Evolutionary, (epi-)genetic and neurological approaches as well as learning theory, humanistic and social-cognitive theories are used to explain inter-individual differences. Differential Psychology is a basic subject of the Bachelor's degree programme in Psychology.
Personality Psychology
The term personality is not used uniformly in the literature. On the one hand, Personality Psychology can be understood as a sub-area of Differential Psychology that deals with relatively enduring and contextually consistent inter-individual differences in people's thinking, feeling, striving and acting. On the other hand, approaches that describe and explain the development of relatively stable but context-dependent individual characteristics and psychological processes within people in their experience and behaviour are also referred to as Personality Psychology. It can therefore be seen as a borderline science that has significant overlaps with other basic psychological disciplines. Personality Psychology is a basic subject of the Bachelor's degree programme in Psychology.
Psychological Assessment
Psychological Assessment is a methodology in the service of psychological research and applied psychology. It can focus on the characteristics of people, groups or organisations. Insofar as people are the carriers of the characteristics, its main task is to capture (i.e. measure and test) inter-individual differences in behaviour and experience as well as intra-individual processes and changes, including their relevant conditions. This should be done as accurately as possible so that sufficiently precise predictions of future behaviour and experience as well as their potential for change and thus well-founded psychological decisions in defined situations and contexts are possible. Psychological Assessment is therefore a central and professionally relevant examination subject for all Bachelor's and Master's courses in Psychology.
Behavioural Genetics
Behavioural Genetics deals with the question of the extent of genetic contributions to inter-individual differences in characteristic patterns of emotions, cognitions, motivations and behaviours. In one question: To what extent do genetic differences account for individual characteristics? Behavioural genetics focuses not only on variable aspects of the human genome, but also on differences in the environments that individuals experience and shape. Behavioural genetics uses very different study designs, such as extended twin family designs (ETFDs) or genome-wide association studies (GWAS), to disentangle complex genetic factors and various environmental influences and their interactions on inter-individual differences in experience and behaviour.
Lectures and Courses
We are responsible for three modules and support other modules in the Bachelor's and Master's programmes in psychology. We cover the range of content listed above. For more information on courses offered in the winter and summer semesters, please refer to the electronic course catalogue (ekvv):
http://bisintern.uni-bielefeld.de/kvv_edit/edit/Meine_Veranstaltungen.jsp