Professor Peterson’s Psychology Classroom

Mood vs. Moment: Why That Joke Hit Harder Today

This episode uses a tree metaphor to explain affect, distinguishing moods from emotions and showing how visible expression (affect) can differ from internal feelings. It

Inside Your Emotions: Drives, Motivations, and Feelings Explained

Professor Peterson explores how drives, motivations, emotions, feelings, and mood interact to shape human behavior. The lecture explains affect, contrasts the body’s phys

Two Lives, One Lifespan: Rethinking Adulthood and Development

This episode explains human development as the study of how people change over time, emphasizing that modern lifespans and scientific findings have reshaped our ideas abo

Emotional Intelligence: Read the Room, Rule Your Emotions

Dr. Curtis Peterson defines emotional intelligence (EQ) as the ability to perceive, understand, and regulate emotions in yourself and others, and contrasts it with emotio

5 Simple Strategies to Prevent Group Disruptions

Dr. Curtis Peterson presents five clear strategies to prevent disruptions in group settings: establish rules early, listen and show respect, limit monopolizing, learn par

Start on Time? How Culture Shapes Group Meetings

Dr. Curtis Peterson outlines a practical meeting process for group facilitators, emphasizing cultural differences in how time and relationships shape start and end times.

Set the Room, Set the Mood: Mastering Group Facilitation

In this episode Dr. Curtis Peterson explains how to plan a successful group facilitation by focusing on four key areas: climate (motivation and emotional regulation), phy

Mastering Group Facilitation: Goals, Balance, and Engagement

This episode explains how to be an effective group facilitator by clarifying and keeping to goals, involving all members, and balancing the group's agenda with emergent t

Facilitation Mastery: Planning, Consistency & Leadership

Dr. Curtis Peterson explains why facilitation skills matter, covering pre-session planning, consistency, member involvement, and creating leadership opportunities in grou

Encouraging Every Voice: Mastering Group Facilitation

Dr. Curtis Peterson explains core group facilitation skills to encourage participation: check for comfort (nonverbal and verbal cues, cultural sensitivity, shyness vs. so

Mastering Facilitation: 3 Principles for Effective Group Work

Dr. Curtis Peterson defines facilitation and explains how these skills apply beyond therapy to coworkers, family, and friends. He emphasizes the facilitator's role as a h

Inside the Circle: The Hidden Science of Group Therapy

Dr. Curtis Peterson breaks down how clinical group therapy works: the structured 75‑minute session, the surprising power of therapeutic silence, and facilitation tools li

Don't Trust the Dashboard: How Numbers Mislead in Substance-Use Prevention

Dr. Curtis Peterson explores how evaluative thinking and applied research reveal what dashboards hide in substance-use prevention. Using the Ecological Identity Model (EI

Trust to Wisdom: Erikson’s 8 Stages of Life Explained

Dr. Curtis Peterson breaks down Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stage theory, describing the eight life stages from infancy to old age and the key crises (e.g., trust vs. mis

Inside Piaget's Mind: Stages, Schemas, and Childhood Thinking

This episode explores Jean Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory, outlining his four stages from sensorimotor to formal operations. It explains key concepts such as sch

How Your Brain Sees, Smells, and Decides: Sensation vs Perception

This episode explains how sensation converts physical stimuli (like light, sound, taste, and smell) into neural signals through transduction and how perception organizes

From Problem to Proof: Building Effective Prevention Programs

Dr. Curtis Peterson explains how to build prevention programs that make measurable human impact. The episode introduces the Evaluative Thinker’s Playbook — four interacti

Behind the Numbers: Hypotheses, Errors, and What Statistics Really Tell Us

This episode introduces core quantitative methods in psychology: descriptive vs. experimental approaches, independent and dependent variables, null and alternative hypoth

Unlocking Stats: From Questions to Conclusions

Dr. Curtis Peterson introduces the role of statistics in scientific and applied settings, explains the scientific method and hypothesis types, and contrasts descriptive (

From Means to Methods: A Beginner's Guide to Statistical Analysis

Professor Peterson reviews measures of central tendency and variation, then walks through the scientific method and how hypotheses guide data analysis. He explains quanti