PSYC-455 Cyberpsychology: Perception, Reality and Illusion in the Internet Age (3)

The term cyberpsychology describes research of the internet’s impact on social, behavioral, and psychological phenomena. This course examines how the internet and virtual technology influence perceptions of reality. The construction of reality is a longstanding issue in the history of psychology, addressed by William James in Principles, and Piaget in The Construction of Reality in the Child. This course addresses the central issue that most people accept their perception of the world as reality itself; however, human perceptions are, at best, a representation of reality that is limited in capacity and subject to all manner of distortions. The class examines many prior approaches to the study of perception/reality/illusion and then how such approaches hold up in the internet social media era. It examines topics of current relevance, including virtual and augmented reality, modern techniques of computational propaganda, conspiracy theories and the misperception of important social trends, influence of internet knowledge on mental health.