Manipulation

Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience

Manipulation

Full course description

This course focuses on techniques and strategies to influence or ‘manipulate’ other people’s opinions, judgments and behaviour. What factors are likely to instigate change and how can their influence be explained? A common distinction in manipulation techniques or strategies is the distinction between strategies requiring systematic processing and strategies requiring heuristic processing of information.

Both forms of influence are discussed during this course. Students also study why some people are more sensitive to persuasive messages than others are. Other topics in this course are motivational interviewing, social mimicry and nudging. Influence techniques are placed in a social and intercultural context. Influence techniques making use of AI are introduced, and students learn to produce content and critically evaluate AI generated materials

In addition to the lectures and PBL-groups, there will be several practical assignments, and students must write two papers that form part of the final grade.
The corresponding practical for this course is: Manipulation Strategies

The final assessment for this course is a numerical grade between 0,0 and 10,0.

Course objectives

Students are able to understand:

  • social influence, information processing, dual process models, heuristics, implicit and explicit attitudes, attitude change, nudging, designing a nudge, persuasion, persuasion techniques, manipulation tricks, building resistance to social influence, overcoming resistance to social influence, self-affirmation, role models, social comparison, regulatory focus, persuasion by association, evaluative conditioning, motivational interviewing, developing a interviewing guideline, social imitation, influence via AI technology;
  • the limitations that social context is placing on the change potential of individuals and how this impacts the effectiveness of behaviour change interventions;
  • the contextualization of behaviour change interventions due to cultural differences.
PSY4004
Period 2
28 Oct 2024
20 Dec 2024
Print course description
ECTS credits: 
5.0
Instruction language: 
English
Coordinators:
Teaching methods: 
Assignment(s), Lecture(s), Paper(s), PBL, Presentation(s), Work in subgroups
Assessment methods: 
Attendance, Written exam
Keywords: 
persuasion, attitude change, social influence, resistance, role models, mimicry, nudging, motivational interviewing, AI