OLES1662: Psychology of Sexuality and Criminal Behaviour

2026 unit information

Sexual desire can motivate success, strengthen relationships, and encourage prosocial behaviours. It can also unleash humanity’s most violent and destructive impulses, leading to profound trauma and societal instability. This 6-credit OLE provides a foundational understanding of human sexuality, and the crimes associated with it, through intensive study of evolutionary, neuroscientific, and psychological research. The content is interdisciplinary by nature, covering everything from the biological bases of attraction and aggression to discussions of how the legal system deals with an ever-expanding repertoire of sex-related crimes. Through a series of lectures, recorded interviews, readings, and lively discussions, this course takes you on a journey from sterile laboratories, where rodents develop sexual fetishes and love is packaged in a brain-infecting virus, to S&M dungeons, where consenting adults play out their wildest fantasies in a place free from judgment and stigma. Along the way, we examine the dark side of human sexuality, as we consider what happens in the minds of criminal offenders when the mechanisms of desire and attachment go horribly wrong. Join us in a world of mice and men and monsters, where biological, social, and forensic psychologists work tirelessly to study the great rewards (and the terrible costs) of desire.

Unit details and rules

Managing faculty or University school:

Science

Details

Study level	Undergraduate
Academic unit	Psychology Academic Operations
Credit points	6

Enrolment rules

Prerequisites: ?	None
Corequisites: ?	None
Prohibitions: ?	None
Assumed knowledge: ?	None

Learning outcomes

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Unit availability

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Session	MoA ?	Location	Outline ?
Semester 1 2026	Online	Camperdown/Darlington, Sydney	Outline unavailable
Semester 2 2026	Online	Camperdown/Darlington, Sydney	Outline unavailable

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