Curious about studying Psychology with Sport and Exercise (Including Placement Year) - BSc (Hons)at University of Essex? We've gathered all the key details—entry requirements, modules, fees, and more. Hear from real students by checking out reviews, or take the next step by booking an open day to explore it for yourself.
Bachelor of Science (with Honours) - BSc (Hons)
University of Essex
Full Time
Oct 2026
4 Year
You’ll gain the applied knowledge and skills to understand people’s thoughts and behaviours towards sport and exercise, and implement interventions to improve them.
WHY THIS COURSEThe BSc (Hons) Psychology with Sport and Exercise provides you with an immersive and exciting experience of study the human mind and its application to sport and exercise science. You’ll gain a balanced understanding of both psychology and sport and exercise science, being taught by both experienced sport practitioners and researchers in our School of Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Science and Chartered Psychologists from our Department of Psychology. Add a placement year or study abroad to put your learning further into practice, expand your perspective and build confidence in professional or international settings. You’ll graduate on the path to a sport psychologist career, becoming a qualified psychologist and furthering research into the psychology of sport and exercise.
This module will explore questions such as: Is intelligence fixed? Is our memory reliable? How do we learn? By introducing a range of approaches from across psychology, you will address such questions from different perspectives and provide the foundations needed to become a successful Essex student. This module will also begin your training on designing and carrying out psychology experiments, and dealing with the information that those experiments provide.
New-borns are totally dependent on others. They are unable to move or sit up; they cannot reach out and pick up an object; their vision is poor; they cannot even express simple emotions. By the end of the developmental process, some 20 years later, humans have become the most psychologically complex things we know. How does this happen? This module will introduce you to how humans grow and develop in the world. The principal approaches to the study of human development will be discussed, with a particular focus on how infants take their first "psychological steps" in the social world. You will also develop the research and analysis skills that are needed to answer different questions about how humans grow in the world.
In this module you will discover answers to fundamental questions in the science of emotion: What are emotions and why do we have them? Is it possible to elicit specific emotions in people and measure them? How good are we at sensing how someone else is feeling? Why are some people more emotional than others? You'll untangle the complexities involved in studying human emotion by: exploring a variety of research methods and measurements, applying critical thinking to psychological concepts, and mastering the data analysis techniques that allow psychologists to draw conclusions about our experience of emotion.
In this module, you'll study the internal mental processes that go on inside our brain that form the basis of our thoughts. We'll answer questions such as: what do visual illusions tell us about how we perceive the world? Are we really able to multi-task? How do we understand and produce speech, and is this different if you speak more than one language? You will learn the skills that psychologists use to conduct research to answer these questions, as well as core theories and knowledge about key topics in this area.
Do you behave differently when you are alone than with others? How do people interact with individuals? How do they behave in groups? How do people explain the social world and how do they explain the behaviour of others? What makes people attribute human characteristics to animals and inanimate objects? This module will examine how humans live in and interact with the social world. These questions will be explored, using social psychology theories, survey methods and research skills.
How does your brain decide between good and bad? What is the neural basis of moral reasoning? What is the biological basis of anger and aggression? Can we explain psychopathy in terms of differences in brain structure and function? What can neuroscience tell us about whether people should be held accountable for their actions? These are the kinds of the questions that we will investigate in this module, which aims to understand the neural basis of (anti) social behaviour. These questions will be addressed by building knowledge and understanding whilst also developing the skills that psychologists use to research these aspects of human behaviour.
Is it all in the mind? The margin between victory and defeat is thin, but can an athlete’s psychology really give them an edge? Why do some people find exercise difficult and other find exercise essential? Understanding how involvement in sport, exercise and physical activity affects a person's health and wellbeing is important in creating better interventions. The aim of this module is to introduce you to the fundamental principles underpinning the psychology of sport and exercise.
It’s important to plan your career. This is the one of three modules that will make sure you are career ready when you leave university. You will decide on your career aspirations and goals, plan how you will achieve them and identify the resources available to help you.
Explore classical and contemporary themes of child development such as prenatal and perceptual development, early language acquisition, and cognitive and social development, whilst examining the research methods and designs employed in Developmental Psychology.
Through exploring and addressing a range of theories and research on how people think and behave, you will gain a clear understanding of the topics social psychologists are interested in and their approaches to studying them.
The brain is an extremely complex organ, and there is much that we still have to learn about its processes and functions. This module will detail the psychological mechanisms that underlie human behaviour and highlight the possibility that even our deepest thoughts and feelings arise from electrical and chemical activity in our brains.
This module explores the basic cognitive processes involved in thinking about the world, interacting with the world, and experiencing the world. Often as users of these processes they just work and the complexity of the underlying operations are hidden; a kind of "user illusion". You will learn about the emerging scientific picture of how these basic processes operate, thereby gaining a better appreciation of the underlying complexity, and a renewed appreciation of the brilliance of these operations. The module will consider examples of human talents; such as bilingualism, as well as human limitations, such as our working memory capacities. The module will cover core areas of cognition as defined by the British Psychological Society such as perception, mental imagery, attention, memory, language, and consciousness. These will be discussed both with reference to laboratory-based experiments, and also how these processes may be disrupted and may breakdown in various conditions, such as dyslexia, amnesia, and other neuropsychological conditions. Finally, the lectures will address how basic cognitive processes apply to complex real-world behaviours.
Physical activity is very important to wellbeing and health. We will discuss why not everyone is meeting the minimum recommendations for physical activity and then critically examine why interventions or initiatives to increase physical activity are successful. Behaviour change theories and techniques will be explored which may increase physical activity in the individual and community. This module gives you the chance to write a critical essay on behaviour change and a novel infographic designed to communicate the benefits of physical activity on our health. Classes will include debates, open tutorials, labs and some standard lectures. This module has been designed to enable students to integrate their subject knowledge with an understanding of sustainable development, acquiring the skills and competencies essential for addressing the urgent sustainability challenges of the 21st century.
This module will advance students’ understanding of the psychology of sport and exercise. The content of the lectures builds upon the knowledge gained in the first year module by exploring in more depth the theoretical explanations of psychological phenomena in sport and performance contexts. It explores a diverse literature which includes issues about psychological skills, developing interventions, research methodology, and social and cognitive factors related to performance and well-being.
This module will build upon your knowledge and skills to understand, appraise and plan research in sport and exercise. You will develop your understanding of different methodologies, research designs, and data analytical techniques, including their strengths, limitations and applications. You will develop your skills in using library and online resources for scientific research, and your ability to critically appraise published work and how it can be used to inform applied practice in sport and exercise. You will also gain practical experience in participating in research, planning your own study, and analysing and interpreting data. Overall, the module will equip you with knowledge and skills required for your final year research project.
An in-depth look into cognitive, trait and biological theories and approaches to personality, individual differences and intelligence. This module will also give you the opportunity to cover and debate contemporary topics in individual intelligence (such as how individual differences explain behaviours, feelings and thinking).
It’s important to plan your career. This is the one of three modules that will make sure you are career ready when you leave university. You will decide on your career aspirations and goals, plan how you will achieve them and identify the resources available to help you.
In this module you will conduct an individual scientific investigation on a topic relating to your degree specialisation. You will either use the skills you have developed to identify a suitable research question and design an experimental approach to obtain data addressing this question, or use your research skills to better understand an existing project/ dataset. This module evaluates your analysis, presentation, understanding and interpretation of these data in a suitable scientific paper format report along with your critical writing skills. Your oral presentation skills and response to questions, the planning and management of your project work and your employability skills will also be part of the assessment.
Drawing from several disciplines this module will consider topical issues relating to the effectiveness of physical activity interventions across the life course on a range of health and wellbeing outcomes. It will explore how evidence-based physical activity initiatives and interventions in different environments and settings shape behaviour. There is a growing demand for practitioners to critically evaluate the current evidence-base and gain an understanding of how this knowledge can be translated to inform their applied professional practice. The module will afford opportunities to engage with cutting edge research and develop transferable communication skills in translating research findings into executive summaries that can be used and understood by a range of audiences.
This module will develop your skills to perform a thorough needs analysis of sports, individuals, and/or teams, investigate psychological strategies that are used to enhance performance, and examine how to develop interventions based on the current research literature. You will also explore the role of technology to enhance the delivery of sport psychology services. The module builds on Year 1 and 2 Sport and Performance Psychology modules and will focus on the application of scientific principles to enhance athletic performance.
Placement Year
4.3
