Psychology for engineers

• Describe the core abilities and limitations of human information processing and perception
• Apply knowledge about human information processing to identify and analyze problematic human-machine interfaces
• Discuss how human factors contribute to errors and accidents
• Identify key cognitive, social and environmental factors that influence human behaviour
• Reflect upon the effect of attitudes and norms on behaviour based on different theories
• Describe selected psychological decision theories and theories of behaviour change
• Apply a psychological theory to a guide a behaviour change intervention
• Identify and describe applied psychological methods for the empirical study of human behaviour

The course is divided into two blocks:
The first block is based on cognitive psychology and human factors research. Here, students learn about core abilities and limitations of human information processing and perception and will apply this knowledge to identify how easy or difficult a product or interface is to use in a usability test.
The second block is based on selected theories and concepts of social and environmental psychology. Here, students learn about attitudes and norms and their effect on behaviour and more general theories of behaviour and behaviour change. Based on this knowledge, they will sketch a behaviour change intervention and learn how to evaluate its effect based on a theory-based survey.

Lectures, group work, written and oral presentaion of group work

Please read the description carefully and only sign up if you intend to take the course. As the group work starts with the first session, late sign up is not possible for this course (and there will not be a waiting list).