Social Psychology
Full course description
People do not exist on their own but are inherently social. Within these social structures people influence others and are in their turn influenced by others. There are highly visible forms of influencing other people’s behaviour, like talking a friend into going bungee-jumping (“Come on, we will all go, you don’t want to spoil this, do you?”). But social influence can also be more covert and can go beyond behavior, involving thoughts and feelings. In this course you study different social psychological concepts, theories and models and you apply them to current examples. Next to reading about classical themes from social psychology, such as conformity and cognitive dissonance, some more recent themes such as prejudices, stereotypes, and the influence of social media on how we (a) present our ‘self’ to others and (b) the types of social relationships that are formed.
Course objectives
- You can recall and explain basic social psychological theories and models (e.g. attribution theory; bystander effect) that explain how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviour are influenced by the implicit or explicit presence of other people.
- You can deduce the relevance of some early experiments or readings (e.g. Sherif et al. (1998); Schachter (1951)) for the development of specific social psychology research areas.
- You can describe a specific social psychological theory and/or model and apply your knowledge about it to examples given to you.
- You can identify and choose academic sources that will give you additional, deeper understanding of a specific social psychological theory/concept beyond the compulsory reading and apply it correctly to example(s) chosen by yourself.
- You can describe orally a social psychological theory and/or model and explain how it relates to current/ everyday life example(s).
- You can demonstrate that you have read and grasped part of the compulsory reading by formulating a new question for your fellow students which requires them to recall, describe and/or comprehend at least two of the compulsory sources.
Recommended reading
- Hewstone, M., Stroebe, W., & Jonas, K. (2015). An introduction to Social Psychology (6th Ed). Chichester: Wiley. ISBN: 978-1-118-82353-8.
- Also an e-reader containing different academic articles.