About

Mission Statement

The mission of the Department of Psychology at Tufts University is to advance the understanding of behavior and mental processes through rigorous research and innovative teaching. Our science and pedagogy are collaborative and interdisciplinary, addressing basic psychological questions that link the brain, mind, and behavior, and exploring applications towards real-world problems. We train students to develop robust and reproducible empirical methods so they can become critical consumers of research, thoughtful scholars, and skilled practitioners in a variety of career paths. We cultivate an inclusive and equitable academic community that fosters critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, mutual respect, and ethical conduct.

About Our Department

At Tufts, we are distinctive in supervising more undergraduate majors than any other department on campus, while simultaneously maintaining a vibrant PhD program and one of the university's highest research profiles. Our focus is strongly experimental, with researchers at the forefront of neuroscience, cognition and perception, affective science, experimental psychopathology, developmental psychology, and social psychology.

By bridging across these different areas of Psychology, we create a more complete picture of the how and why of behavior, from the microstructure of perception and cognition to the robustness of social behavior. In our undergraduate and graduate programs, we are committed to involving our students in collaborative scholarship at every level, both inside and outside the classroom. Our department prepares undergraduate and graduate students to ask science-based questions about the origins and mechanisms of human and animal behavior using discovery-oriented research and teaching. We are student-centered, striving to combine excellence in teaching, research, advising, and service.

Welcome to the Department of Psychology! We hope you will join us in exploring the mysteries and mechanisms of behavior.