Self-Regulation

Full course description

Many physical and psychological health problems involve difficulties with self-regulation. People who cannot stop drinking or smoking, engage in excessive exercise, frequently lose their temper, ruminate and worry too much, buy everything they see, spend several hours each day scrolling through their social media – to name but a few examples. This course is, broadly speaking, about the ways in which self-regulation occurs, why it is sometimes lacking, and how it can be improved.

To improve self-regulation skills, and to help others to do so, it is necessary to understand how self-regulation works. Although psychologists know a bit about self-regulation processes, many things still are unclear. In this course, we will focus both on what we currently know about self-regulation as well as all the things that we still need to learn about self-regulation. Apart from studying theoretical models, and the application of these models to everyday self-regulation challenges, we will also do a real self-regulation intervention in the corresponding Practical (PSY4131: Increasing Self-Regulation Through Practice), and present this as a case study. Each week there are also (optional) group activities and assignments to help students to deepen their knowledge of the course theories and content. .
The corresponding practical for this course is: Increasing Self-regulation through Practice

The final assessment for this course is a numerical grade between 0,0 and 10,0.