Human Emotions: A Free Course from Yale

Taught by pro­fes­sor June Gru­ber, this Yale course explores the world of Human Emo­tion and cov­ers the fol­low­ing ground:

What are our emo­tions? What pur­pose do they serve? How do emo­tions relate to our thoughts, mem­o­ries, and behav­iors towards oth­ers? What hap­pens when our emo­tion­al respons­es go awry?

Although these ques­tions date back to ear­ly philo­soph­i­cal texts, only recent­ly have exper­i­men­tal psy­chol­o­gists begun to explore this vast and excit­ing domain of study. The course will begin by dis­cussing the evo­lu­tion­ary ori­gins of dis­tinct emo­tions such as love, anger, fear, and dis­gust. We will ask how emo­tions might col­or our cog­ni­tive process­es such as think­ing and mem­o­ry, the rela­tion­ship between emo­tions and the brain, devel­op­ment of emo­tions in child­hood, and how emo­tions shape our social rela­tion­ships. We will also con­sid­er how these meth­ods can be applied to study­ing men­tal ill­ness in both chil­dren and adults. The course will con­clude by study­ing the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness and well-being, try­ing to under­stand what makes us hap­py.

You can watch the 58 lec­tures from the course above, or find them on YouTube. Get more infor­ma­tion on the course at this ded­i­cat­ed web­site.

Human Emo­tion will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. There you can find a spe­cial­ized list of Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy and Neu­ro­science Cours­es.