Overview

One of the distinguishing features of the Psychology major at Penn is the emphasis placed on empirical research. Competence in psychological science includes not only a set of ideas about how we think and behave, but also an understanding of how psychologists have arrived at this knowledge. To foster a full understanding of the science of psychology, all majors should be comfortable applying the scientific method to psychological topics, both as consumers and as creators of empirical research.

One goal of the Psychology major is for students to become familiar with the application of the scientific method to topics in psychology, both through critical reading of the primary empirical literature and through first-hand experience with the collection and analysis of psychological data. Another goal of the Psychology major is for students to understand the fundamentals of statistical inference as it applies to psychological data, and to achieve fluency in a software application for the organization, visualization, and analysis of quantitative information.

Requirements

All Psychology majors must complete one semester of empirical research. Before beginning the empirical research requirement, students must complete the Psychology major statistics requirement. 

Students fulfill the empirical research requirement in one of two ways:

1. Complete PSYC 4998/4999 Mentored Research

PSYC 4998 or 4999 is an individualized, faculty-supervised research course. Students arrange the project directly with a faculty mentor, usually after identifying a research area, lab, or project that fits their interests. To learn more, please see our Mentored Research Canvas site here. 

1. Note: PSYC 4998 is Individual Mentored Research for Psychology majors, while PSYC 4999 is Honors Thesis Mentored Research for seniors accepted into the Psychology Honors Program.

• Guidelines and tips on how to arrange and register for your PSYC 4998
• Descriptions of PSYC 4998 options/faculty mentored research
• Overview of the PSYC 4998 structure and deadlines

or

2. Take an approved 4000-level Research Experience Course

The 4000-level research experience courses give students the opportunity to satisfy the research requirement in a setting that emphasizes group work.  They are not offered every semester and may have limited seats, prerequisites, permission requirements, or application procedures. A 4000-level Research Experience course may be a good fit if you want a structured class setting, a more defined research project, and regular meetings with a group of students. Some example research courses are listed here:

Please see descriptions below for details about some of the Research Experience Courses that may be offered. 

Note: Dr. Hunt's class requires an application and is a 2-semester commitment.  Enrollment in Dr. Royzman's Spring course (PSYC 4440) is through a lottery only.  Dr. Rust's research experience course in Computational Neuroscience (PSYC 4281) is offered in the Fall (except Fall 2025), and students can register in Path@Penn.  We usually offer a research course in Perception in the Spring semester, and Everyday Psychology in the Fall semester.  These courses can fulfill the research requirement but can also serve as electives to better prepare students for work on future mentored research projects.

Research Experience Courses

PSYC 4462 Research Experience in Clinical Psychology

Instructor: Melissa Hunt

Description: This year-long course will provide an intensive, rewarding, and fun research experience in one of several areas of clinical psychology such as anxiety, depression, ADHD, psychological assessment, pet-assisted therapy, and cognitive behavioral interventions for irritable bowel syndrome. Offering more support and structure than the typical independent study, this course will still allow you to make a serious and original contribution to the field. Every project is based on original research, not just carried out with existing data sets. My students feel ownership of their projects and are invested in every stage, from initial design and IRB approval, through data collection, to analysis and write up. Statistical methods that are covered depend somewhat on the nature of the project, but typically include using SPSS to examine correlations, dependent and/or independent t-tests, ANOVA and ANCOVA, factor analysis, inter-rater reliability, multiple regression and tests of clinical significance. Over the years, students in this course have presented their work at professional conferences and even merited coauthorship of articles in professional journals. By the time the course is done, you will know whether a career in clinical psychology is for you, and you will be very well prepared to pursue graduate study in a number of related fields. Class size is limited to 8 students. Application submission is Feb/March; applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. Please email Dr. Hunt(mhunt@psych.upenn.edu)

Prerequisite(s): PSYC 1462 (old number PSYC 162)

Other Requirements: Permission of the instructor required. Please email Dr. Hunt (mhunt@psych.upenn.edu) if you are interested in PSYC 4462. Application submission is Feb/March; applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. This year-long class always begins in the Fall semester.

Semester: Fall and Spring. This is a year-long course, so a two-semester commitment is required, always starting in the Fall.

Credits units: 2 CUs

PSYC 4440 Research Experience in Social Psychology (Sexuality and Attraction)

Instructor: Edward Royzman

Description: Spring semester only. Students will design, conduct, and report on an empirical question in social psychology. Class discussions will help students formulate their projects and provide an opportunity for reports. The class max is 12 students. Admission to the course is by lottery.

Prerequisite(s): PSYC 170 (new number PSYC 1440), AND one semester of statistics (no exceptions will be made)

Other Requirements: Psychology majors only; permission of the department required. Preference given to seniors, but enrollment is by lottery, and there is no guarantee that all seniors who need a research credit can be accommodated. 

Admission to the course is by lottery; please submit your request form to Claire Ingulli during Advance Registration in the Fall semester.

Semester: Spring semester only. Not offered in the Fall semester.

Credits units: 1 CU 

PSYC 4281 Research Experience in Computational Neuroscience (Models of Mood)

Instructor: Nicole Rust

Description: What does happiness depend on? Could we build a model to predict how someone's happiness will fluctuate over time? Even if it just works in a simple scenario, having a mood model is an insightful first step towards understanding what causes mood to change. In this course, we will replicate a published experiment designed to predict how happiness changes as individuals play a simple gambling task.  No prior experience in computer programming is assumed or necessary; instead, students will be taught how to code in MATLAB from the first steps. Students will collect, analyze, and fit models to behavioral data through weekly assignments that gradually build in complexity across the semester. In addition, students will participate in a journal club in which we read and discuss 20 papers to learn more about mood. Finally, each student will design a unique mood experiment at the end of the course.

Prerequisite(s): PSYC 0001, AND one semester of statistics

Semester: Fall only (not offered in Fall 2025)

Credits units: 1 CU

PSYC 4340 Research Experience in Perception (Classic and Modern Research in Perception Science)

Instructor: Johannes Burge (jburge@psych.upenn.edu) or David Brainard (brainard@psych.upenn.edu)

Description: This course will provide an in-depth treatment of one classic and one present-day research paper on fundamental aspects of visual perception. The course will begin with the remarkable research of Hecht, Shlaer, & Pirenne (1942) "Energy, quanta, and vision". This paper demonstrated that evolution has endowed the human eye with the most sensitive light detectors allowed by the laws of physics. The course will continue with a deep-dive on Burge, Rodriguez-Lopez, & Dorronsoro (2019) "Monovision and the misperception of motion", a paper authored by the professor teaching this course.  This project showed that monovision corrections, common prescription lens corrections (that some of your parents might be wearing), can induce dramatic motion illusions that may compromise public safety. For both papers, we will discuss in detail how the experiments were set up, we will learn about the tools used to analyze the date (including signal detection sand probablility theory), and use these tools to analyze data in the same way that the original authors did.  In the case of the second experiment, we will see the actual display equipment used to collect the data, unpack the stereo-geometry necessary for understanding the illusion (and also why 3D movies work), and gain hands-on experience on how to model perceptual illusions. Our treatment of these two experiments will be enriched by discussion of closely related original research papers. Some programming experience is desirable. Periodic MATLAB coding assignments will solidify key concepts.

Prerequisite(s): PSYC 1340, AND one semester of Statistics. Some programming experience is desirable.

Semester: Spring only. 

Credits units: 1 CU

PSYC 4460 Everyday Psychology

Instructor: Lori Flanagan-Cato

Description: This is an activity-based course with three major goals. First, it is an opportunity for psychology majors to develop their professional and science communication skills and share their enthusiasm for these topics with high school students at a public high school in West Philadelphia. Penn students will prepare and present demonstrations and hands-on activities to engage high school students and increase their knowledge of the functions of the mind and brain. There will be 10 sessions across the semester for these lessons. Second, students will explore the literature that discusses the need for better bridges between scientific research and the broader community. This academic portion of the course will include guest lectures from members of the Penn community who are actively engaged in community partnerships. Third, students will be challenged to consider solutions for any problems they encounter using a Theory of Change framework. This aspect of the course will result in a final project in which students create logical, realistic, evidence-based links between interventions, indicators of change, and ultimate impacts to mitigate the problems.

Prerequisite(s): Psychology majors only. One semester of Statistics. 

Semester: Fall only

Credits units: 1 CU