Horizon Academic is proud to introduce a new Horizon Seminar course offering in Psychology! This summer, we’re pleased to offer “Clinical Psychology and Emotion Regulation”, taught by Dr. Matthias Siemer, a Research Scientist and Lecturer at Yale University. The class builds on Dr. Siemer’s courses that he’s taught at Yale, the University of Miami, and Greifswald University in Germany on Emotion Regulation and Research Methods. 

Our Psychology and Neuroscience offerings in Horizon Labs are among our most popular. In particular, our student body takes special interest in subtopic inquiries in the domain of psychopathology and clinical psychology. The regulation of emotions is often a fundamental question and biological process underlying many psychological disorders and conditions, and it’s with this in mind that we’re proud to introduce this Horizon Seminar Class on Psychology and Emotion Regulation. Students in the class are free to choose between qualitative research methods or to use statistical and quantitative methods to examine a question in clinical psychology. 

Horizon’s Psychology offerings in Horizon Labs remain unchanged. Students are free to apply for Horizon Labs in Psychology, or they may apply for this Seminar research course taught by Dr. Siemer.  

We also feel that hosting additional offerings in clinical psychology is especially topical and pertinent today. The pandemic has been a grave source of social isolation and anxiety, and this has accelerated greater global awareness of mental health issues in society and the need to study them. In hosting the class, we aim to create a space where our students could potentially be on the frontlines of ongoing research — research that is highly pertinent to the current situation of ordinary people worldwide. For a more comprehensive understanding of what this course entails, read the course description and subtopics below.

Detailed Course Description

The course will explain and illustrate research methods in psychology using current research on human emotions, emotion regulation, and emotional disorders. Students will become familiar with research methods and experimental designs in these areas. Students will also design a study on a current topic of their choice in one of these areas:

1. Are some emotions more basic than others?
2. Do emotions require cognitions?
3. How do moods and emotions influence information processing and decision making?
4. How are emotions experienced and are they always experienced?
5. How can moods and emotions be measured and manipulated?
6. Why do people want to regulate their emotions and how do cognitive emotion regulation strategies work?
7. How are emotions and cognitions linked to goals and self-regulation?
8. How do people differ in their cognitions and emotions and are there “emotion experts”?
9. What are the implications of cognitive approaches towards emotions for our understanding and treatment of emotional disorders.
10. What are the implications for theories about psychological resilience and well-being?
11. What is depression, exactly? Is it one syndrome, or is it a collection of different syndromes that we grouped under the same name?

About the Instructor:

Dr. Matthias Siemer is a Lecturer and Research Scientist at Yale University, where his research interests focus on human emotions and statistical methods. He received his PhD at Free University Berlin, Germany in 1999. He has served as an Associate Professor at Greifswald University in Germany from 1999 to 2005. After that, he was a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University before he became a Professor of Psychology at the University of Miami. He has served as a Research Scientist and Lecturer at Yale since 2014. Dr. Siemer has taught a wide variety of courses in Germany and in the US. Most recently, he taught classes in Human Emotion and Research Methods at Yale.