Explore Psychology

Date Thursday 15th March
Where Streatham Campus
Time 10:00am to 2:30pm
Who Year 12

Why do animals (including humans) behave the way they do?

Animals show a vast array of intriguing behaviours: from complex courtship displays, to storing food and avoiding predators.  However, understanding why animals perform these behaviours is often a case of answering four simple questions: What factors cause the behaviour? How does the behaviour change over the animal’s lifetime? What is the purpose of the behaviour? And how did the behaviour evolve? In this session you’ll perform four interactive experiments that demonstrate how each of these questions helps us to understand why fish, insects and even humans behave the way they do.

How do we learn about the world in which we live?

Even outside of classrooms, learning is an important part of our everyday lives. We have to learn what situations pose threats to our wellbeing, what foods we like to eat, and how to recognize the people with whom we wish to interact. In this session you will perform 4 interactive experiments that aim to investigate what and how we learn about the world in which we live.