Psychology

Located in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province and a major hub of transportation in China, Central China Normal University (CCNU) is a key comprehensive university under the direct administration of the Ministry of Education. The picturesque campus of over 1.20 million square meters is nestled on Guizi Hill, bordering South Lake. As one of the universities on the list of “211..

1. Educational Objectives:

General requirements: The psychology major aims to train students to possess high-level psychological knowledge and technology, and to be morally, intellectually and physically mature and healthy social citizens.

The requirement details are as follows:

Students should fully understand the basic theories in psychology, master systematic and specialized knowledge in psychology and practical skills in certain subfield of psychology. Students should know well about world history, current political situations and the trends of social development. Students should qualify themselves to work as scientific researchers in psychology or professional teachers in psychology.

 

2. Research areas

1. General psychology

(1) Brain and Cognition

In recent years, brain and cognitive science mainly do research on perception and attention, language and creative thinking, cognitive development as well as social cognition. The research direction requires systematic training of experimental methods and skills, including programming techniques of psychological experiments, experimental designs, methods for data analyses, eye movement techniques, ERP techniques, fMRI techniques and so on.

(2) Personality and Social Psychology

Personality psychology focuses on investigating human cognitions, motives, emotions, will and behaviors from a holistic prospective, which systematically explores human nature. Personality psychology emphasizes on individuals and their differences using trait theories, biological theories, psychoanalysis, behaviorism, humanism and cognitive theories. It studies specific personality variables by using empirical methods to reveal any causal or correlational relationships.

Social psychology studies social and cultural behaviors of human beings, which attempts to develop different theoretical research and practical fields. Based on the essential theories, the history and the methods of social psychology, social psychology explores fields including social cognition, socialization, social motive, social attitude, social emotion, social behavior, international relationship, social belief, social value, group behavior, social pathological psychology and behavior, the relation of personality and culture, social development, applied social psychology, research method of social behavior and so on.

2. Developmental and Educational Psychology

(1) Socialization and personality development area:

Socialization and personality development area is an important research area in developmental psychology. It mainly studies on socialization and personality development theories and its role in individual and organizational performances. Specifically, it investigates children and adolescent socialization, peer relationship, creativity development, children and adolescent psychological counseling, family education and personality development, children development guidance, college student development and advice, aging problems, etc..

(2) Cognitive Development

This area is the basic research area in developmental psychology, which mainly focuses on the basic cognitive development of children’s and adolescent’s object cognition, social cognition, conceptulization, problem solving, and memory, investigates general questions. research issues, and cognitive developmental strategies.

(3) Learning and Teaching Psychology

This area pays attention to learning psychology under traditional and computer-based learning environments, including the relationship among motives, emotions, cognition, and self-regulated learning, how individual and environmental factors play a role in children’s learning (including family, teaching, teacher, peer factors), capabilities in problem solving and promotions in self-regulated learning. It also pays close attention to the influence of modern technologies on children’s learning, for example, children’s learning characteristics under multi-media learning, hypermedia learning and internet learning conditions.

(4) School Counseling

This area closely relates to psychological health education and practice, and introduces role functions of western school psychologists to current teaching. This area is practice oriented, and emphasizes students’ psychological and educational assessment, highlights psychological counseling practice abilities. This area includes trainings as school psychological health education scheduling, psychological course designs and drills, psychological file establishments, psychological education assessments, “researcher-practioner” training mode, school psychological counseling in specific fields.

3. Applied Psychology

Following the principle of ‘researcher-practitioner’ training mode, applied psychology aims to cultivate high-level applied and compound professionals in fields of managerial psychology, human resource management, talent evaluation, career guidance and counseling. Managerial psychology assesses individuals and groups in organizations. It researches on individuals, groups, organizations and the interaction among them by qualitative and quantitative methods, so as to promote individual and organization performances. Students should master diverse theories and techniques of staff recruitment, talents selection, performance management, salary management, psychological assistance of staff, potential development of staff and staff training.