Registration ends 07.4.2026 at 23:59 h

If your registration for this course is successful you will registered automatically for the course Psychology of Motivation, Emotion, Communication and Self-Regulation - V (Timur Sevincer).

Why is it sometimes so hard to act in the way we would like to act? To eat less meat or sugar, quit smoking, go jogging, or take the bike rather than the car? Why do some people give up their goals easily? Can we downregulate our impulses? It is well established that a lot of people struggle with more sustainable behavior, reasonable diet, healthy routine, emotions, cigarettes, and alcohol every day, and that people can differ enormously in their ability to succeed in self-regulation.

Self-regulation refers to people’s capacity to alter their thoughts, emotions, impulses, and behavior in the service of their goals. No matter what the goal is, effective self-regulation is necessary: people have to continuously regulate their thoughts, emotions, and behavior in order to maintain their goals and stay on the right track. Therefore, an understanding of the process of self-regulation is key to this course. In this seminar, we will discuss cutting-edge research on how people can use self-regulatory skills to bolster their self-control enabling them to successfully pursue goals in various domains, such as sustainability, health, academic, and professional goals. Topics covered in this seminar include basic regulatory processes, the cognitive dimension of self-regulation, nonconscious and conscious self-regulation, interventions and applications of self-regulation, and the role of personality in self-regulation. This course will help students to understand how to best regulate motivation and emotion from both intrapersonal and interpersonal perspectives.


The primary teaching format used in this seminar includes a mixture of student presentations and discussions. In each session, scientific articles on a specific topic relevant to self-regulation will be assigned for reading and discussion. Each student will present at least one article during the seminar. The student presentations have been included to benefit both the collective and the individual. From a collective perspective, student presentations expose all students to more articles, enriching their knowledge while reducing the burden of having to read too many papers. From an individual perspective, student presentations help them hone their presentation and communication skills. As such, the students should prepare their presentations as if they were giving the talk at an academic conference. Thus, they will need to first set up the theoretical context and then select the most important studies to present. After each presentation, the discussion of the presentation, the respective article, and related research will be held between students and the instructor.

Upon the completion of this course, students should be able to:
• evaluate major self-regulation processes and the factors that influence the functioning of these processes
• interpret and utilize research findings in the areas of self-regulation
• critically analyze research that has been conducted in the field of self-regulation and discuss the impact on different types of phenomena
• describe ways in which self-regulation research can be applied to understand real-world human experiences and promote successful attainment of goals in day-to-day activities
• develop and reinforce critical thinking, presenting, and writing skills

Further information on teaching evaluation: https://www.leuphana.de/en/teaching/quality-management/evaluation/course-evaluation.html