The Psychology Department studies the mind, mental processes, and resulting human behavior, from how thinking works inside the brain, to how our minds develop throughout childhood, to how identity and group dynamics shape patterns of belonging and exclusion.
Our work uncovers ways to advance social justice, produces useful innovations that improve our daily lives, and demonstrates the strengths that arise from diversity in human experience.
Academics
Undergraduate
General psychology major
A Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology through the general psychology major provides a foundational knowledge of human behavior to prepare students for careers like counseling, social work, teaching, community services, research, human resources, and advocacy. Students can also pursue experiential learning opportunities, like research, field study, or a senior thesis.
Undergraduate
Intensive psychology major
A Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology through the intensive psychology major prepares students for further graduate work in psychology. This major includes additional upper-division coursework in advanced research methods class and also requires independent study. Students gain real-world experience through our for-credit research and internship opportunities.
Undergraduate
Cognitive science major
A Bachelor of Science degree in Cognitive Science examines the brain processes behind thinking, perception, and more by incorporating perspectives from many different scholarly fields. Our alumni often go on to graduate school and to roles in technology focused on human-computer interaction, or to healthcare roles focused on the treatment of brain disorders.
Graduate
Doctoral degree
Our Ph.D. program accepts students into one of three subfields—cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, or social psychology. Our program is designed to produce skilled researchers who contribute crucial new insights to advance their chosen subfield. We do not offer courses, training, or supervision in counseling or clinical psychology.
Faculty
Our faculty take pride in our department’s innovative approaches to scientific research, commitment to excellence in teaching and mentoring, and dedication to social justice.
They are each influential intellectual leaders in their fields who are highly productive and impactful in their research publications.
Many of our faculty members are also past recipients of UC Santa Cruz’s highly competitive Academic Senate Excellence in Teaching Award or the Social Science Division’s Golden Apple Award Teaching Award.
Research
Our department conducts research in wide-ranging areas, from investigating how people produce speech, to how everyday interactions shape children’s learning, to how we can make our society a more just place. We maintain a collaborative research environment that engages both graduate and undergraduate students in vital ways.
Together, we regularly generate new insights on a broad array of phenomena, including cognition, perception, memory, language, human-computer interaction, informal learning, student success, personal and social identities, gender and sexuality, racism, sexism, and classism.
