What topics are covered in MIT's Introduction to Psychology course?

The course examines brain function, perception, attention, learning, memory, language, intelligence, emotion, personality, development, stress, and mental disorders.

What is blindsight in psychology?

Blindsight is the ability of some people with visual-cortex damage to respond to visual information without consciously experiencing sight.

What is the difference between bottom-up and top-down memory?

Bottom-up memory begins with sensory details, while top-down memory is shaped by prior knowledge, expectations, and interpretations.

Free Course Image Introduction to Psychology

Free online course Introduction to Psychology

Duration of the online course: 23 hours and 1 minutes

4.9

(13)

Boost your understanding of behavior and the brain with a free online psychology course—learn core concepts, test yourself with exercises, and progress fast.

In this free course, learn about

Core questions and methods of psychology for explaining human behavior
Using case studies/single stories to infer broader psychological principles
Temporal lobe function: why seizures can produce auditory/music hallucinations
Three major methods to study the human brain (lesions, stimulation, imaging)
Vision’s key purposes (e.g., object recognition vs guiding action) and visual pathways
Agnosia: definition and major types (e.g., visual object, prosopagnosia)
Attention (William James) and limits of awareness; blindsight phenomena
Classical conditioning: what it reveals about learning and behavior change
Memory systems: bottom-up vs top-down processes and reconstructive recall
Amnesia and Korsakoff’s syndrome: causes and effects on memory
Language development: early phonetic discrimination and sensitive periods in infants
Intelligence/testing: what SAT/GRE predict vs real-world performance/productivity
Emotion theories and personality measurement (Big Five model)
Stress and mental health: acute vs chronic stress and lifetime prevalence of disorders

About the free online course

Understanding why people think, feel, and act the way they do can improve everyday decisions, strengthen communication, and open doors to study or work in health-related fields. This free online Introduction to Psychology course offers a clear, evidence-based path into the science of the mind, connecting real human experiences with the research methods used to explain them. You will build a practical foundation in psychology while learning how psychologists turn observations into testable ideas and meaningful conclusions.

Across the course, you will explore how the brain supports perception, attention, memory, language, emotion, and personality, and how these processes shape behavior in daily life. You will also see how learning occurs through experience and how mental functions can change under different conditions, from stress to neurological disruption. The emphasis is on understanding mechanisms rather than memorizing definitions, so you can confidently interpret common claims about behavior, evaluate evidence, and spot the difference between intuition and scientific explanation.

To keep your learning active, the course pairs lectures with short exercises that prompt you to recall key concepts, reason through classic examples, and apply ideas to new situations. These check-ins help you identify what you understand, what you need to review, and how the pieces fit together as a coherent framework. Whether you are curious about psychology, planning further study, or simply want a stronger scientific lens on human behavior, you will finish with a well-rounded grasp of foundational principles and the habits of mind used in modern psychological science.

Course content

Video class: Lec 1 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 49m
Exercise: What is the primary focus of the Introductory to Psychology course mentioned in the transcript?
Video class: Lec 2 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 1h11m
Exercise: What is the method of studying human behavior that involves single stories that are illustrative of broader principles, as discussed in the reading for today?

Video class: Lec 3 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 54m
Exercise: What is generating the songs that Mrs. OC hears due to her temporal lobe seizures?
Video class: Lec 4 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 1h11m
Exercise: What are the three methods used to study the human brain?
Video class: Lec 5 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 40m
Exercise: What are the two major purposes of vision that researchers have identified?
Video class: Lec 6 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 56m
Exercise: What is agnosia and how many types of agnosia are there?
Video class: Lec 7 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 42m
Exercise: What is attention according to William James?
Video class: Lec 8 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 49m
Exercise: What is blindsight?

Video class: Lec 9 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 46m
Exercise: What can classical conditioning teach us?
Video class: Lec 10 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 55m
Exercise: What is the difference between bottom-up memory and top-down memory?
Video class: Lec 11 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 58m
Exercise: What is Korsakoff's Syndrome?

Video class: Lec 12 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 53m
Exercise: What is the term for the aspect of language that enables infants to distinguish sounds not present in their native language during early months of life?
Video class: Lec 13 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 1h07m
Exercise: How many miles will the bird fly before the trains meet?
Video class: Lec 14 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 1h12m
Exercise: What is the correlation between SATs or GREs and how faculty rates students or how productive people are in terms of research or as a graduate student?

Video class: Lec 15 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 1h00m
Exercise: What is the focus of the lecture on emotions in psychology?
Video class: Lec 16 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 1h00m
Exercise: What is the most famous and widely used model for measuring personality?
Video class: Lec 17 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 33m
Exercise: What is neotony and how is it related to babies' cuteness?
Video class: Lec 18 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 1h11m
Exercise: What is the answer to the riddle "What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, three legs in the evening?"

Video class: Lec 19 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 1h11m
Exercise: What was a key finding about the types of stress faced by zebras?
Video class: Lec 20 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 51m
Exercise: What is the estimated percentage of individuals who, at some point in their life, will qualify for meeting some psychiatric disorder?
Video class: Lec 21 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 59m

Video class: Lec 22 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 1h06m
Exercise: What is social psychology?
Video class: Lec 23 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 1h07m
Exercise: What is the fundamental attribution error?
Video class: Lec 24 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011 49m
Exercise: What is the goal of MIT OpenCourseWare?