Why this programme?

In the specialisation Health and Social Psychology, you will study behaviour and behavioural change, using health, clinical and social psychology theory and methods. The focus is on understanding how people’s personalities, cognitions, and social environments influence their unhealthy and healthy behaviours, such as eating disorders, alcohol abuse, and safety behaviours related to sexual and reproductive health. You will learn how to systematically (a) analyse the determinants and consequences of (un)healthy behaviour, and (b) develop interventions that promote health and safety behaviour in various life domains. You will delve into issues like automatic versus controlled influences on behaviour, self-regulation, habits, and theory- and evidence-based programme design. You will apply your theoretical knowledge to clinical, health and social issues in the general population or among specific target groups. You will also acquire practical skills that allow you to successfully conduct your own research project, either in the laboratory or in the field. After finishing this programme, you are a behaviour expert with knowledge of health, social and clinical psychology.

The specialisation in Health and Social Psychology offers the following core courses:

• Bad habits: will familiarise you with various recent views from both social and clinical psychology which explain how healthy and desirable behaviours and their negative counterparts develop and endure. Bad habits will be considered from a cognitive perspective, with a focus on automatic associative processes and perceptual processes. The role of the social environment in the occurrence of bad habits is also included in this course.
• Manipulation: deals with strategies of social influence, persuasion and attitude change. You’ll learn which techniques, tactics and procedures people use to manipulate or change the beliefs and behaviour of other people. You'll participate in discussions on how social influence techniques work and about the psychological principles underlying the effects of those techniques.
• Self-control regulation: focuses on the regulation of behaviour. You’ll look at issues such as why people find it so hard to resist their impulses and will study various self-control processes, including emotional self-regulation, automatic self-regulation and the role of thinking (beliefs) and acceptance. You’ll also focus on possible ways of improving the ability to practise self-control.
• Planning behaviour-change programmes: focuses on applying psychological theories to the development of behavioural-change interventions. You’ll look at topics such as risk communication, attitude change, social influences, self-regulation, and prejudice and discrimination.

You'll also take a number of professional skills trainings in addition to lectures and workshops on reserch methods and designs, research ethics and applying for ethical approval, writing a research proposal, and data analysis. This will help prepare you for completing a research internship and writing your thesis.