该系分为四个领域：临床科学，发展，社会和认知，大脑和行为。这些小组由教师组成，他们的共同兴趣跨越心理学某些子领域的连贯的高级研究计划。鼓励个别教师和研究生参加不止一个小组。在哈佛大学发展研究实验室，教师和学生试图通过研究婴儿和儿童的起源和发展，以及非人类动物和人类在多种文化中的智力，来阐明人类的思想和人性。 。当前的研究兴趣包括对物体，人物，语言，音乐，空间，数量，道德和社会类别的知识的本质和发展的研究，这些社会类别将某些人类群体与其他人类群体区分开。
The Department is organized into four areas: clinical science, developmental, social, and cognition, brain, and behavior. These groups consist of faculty members whose combined interests span a coherent program of advanced study and research in some subfield of psychology. Individual faculty and graduate students are encouraged to participate in more than one group. At Harvard's Laboratory for Developmental Studies, faculty and students seek to shed light on the human mind and human nature by studying their origins and development in infants and children, in relation to the mental capacities of non-human animals and of human adults in diverse cultures. Current research interests include studies of the nature and development of knowledge of objects, persons, language, music, space, number, morality, and the social categories that distinguish some human groups from others.