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Southern New Hampshire University

PSY108: Introduction to Psychology

A complete guide to SNHU's PSY-108 Introduction to Psychology, covering core concepts like nature versus nurture, gender, personality, research ethics, and foundational theories, using five themes — emotional intelligence, social justice, self-care, ethics, and career connections — to connect theory to real-world application.

UndergraduateSNHUPsychology FoundationsAPA 7th Edition

This online introductory psychology course covers core concepts like nature versus nurture, gender, personality, research ethics, and foundational theories. Using five themes — emotional intelligence, social justice, self-care, ethics, and career connections — students connect theory to real-world applications. PSY-108 functions as the universal gateway course, serving as a prerequisite for nearly every other psychology course in SNHU's curriculum.

Five themes connecting theory to real life

The course's explicit five-theme structure — emotional intelligence, social justice, self-care, ethics, career connections — ensures foundational psychological theory is consistently tied to genuine real-world application, not left as abstract concepts alone.

The universal gateway to the psychology curriculum

PSY-108's role as a confirmed prerequisite for courses spanning lifespan development, abnormal psychology, research methods, and beyond reflects its genuine function as the foundational course the entire psychology major depends on.

Key topics in PSY108

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Worked example: five themes making theory concrete

  • Theory-only approach: Learning about personality theory as abstract academic content
  • PSY-108's approach: Connecting that same personality theory to real-world themes like self-care and career connections
  • Lesson: PSY-108 teaches that this five-theme structure is what makes foundational psychology genuinely applicable to students' real lives, not abstract theory alone

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Frequently asked questions

Why does PSY-108 function as a required prerequisite for nearly every other psychology course in SNHU's curriculum?

Foundational concepts like nature versus nurture, basic personality theory, and research ethics genuinely underpin virtually every specialized psychology topic — abnormal psychology, social psychology, biopsychology — and later courses assume students already possess this shared conceptual vocabulary. PSY-108's near-universal prerequisite status reflects that this foundational knowledge is genuinely necessary groundwork across the entire psychology curriculum, not specific to just one subsequent course.

Why does PSY-108 organize its content around five specific themes (emotional intelligence, social justice, self-care, ethics, career connections) rather than presenting psychological theory topic-by-topic?

Presenting foundational psychology purely as a sequence of theories and concepts risks leaving students without a clear sense of why this knowledge matters practically, while these five themes consistently connect theoretical content back to real, applicable dimensions of students' lives and careers. PSY-108 uses this thematic structure because it demonstrates psychology's genuine practical relevance from the very first course, not abstract theory disconnected from real application.