Course Description

This module is concerned with contemporary concepts, theories and findings in this broad area of social psychology and how they may be applied with benefits for individuals, groups and society. We will address the question how individuals form and maintain an understanding of themselves, other people, and the world they are living in. Drawing on cognitive principles, we will study the processes that underlie human judgments, behaviour, and decision making in real-life contexts. Students will have the opportunity to develop new research to address an unanswered research question.

 The module gives students grounding in methods, techniques and issues of cognitive neuroscience. Focusing on vision, attention, memory, problem solving and language, the module examines how cognitive processes are instantiated in the human brain

Learning Outcome

• Knowledge and understanding of contemporary concepts, theories and findings in attitudes and social cognition
  
• Critically evaluating concepts, theories and findings in attitudes and social cognition
  
• Conceiving research to address limitations and gaps in concepts, theories and findings in attitudes and social cognition
  
• Identifying gaps and limitations in the ways concepts, theories and findings in attitudes and social cognition are presented to the wider public
  
• Demonstrating an awareness of how concepts, theories and findings in attitudes and social cognition may be applied with benefits for individuals, groups, and society
  
• Develop an appreciation of the historical and conceptual issues in the study of Attitudes and Social Cognition
  

Course Content

• Introduction and History of Social History
  
• Social Knowledge
  
• Biases
  
• Automaticity
  
• Schema and Categories
  
• Social identity perspective
  
• Memory
  
• Stereotypes and expectancies
  
• Culture
  

Compulsory Reading Materials

• Kunda, Z. (1999). Social cognition: Making sense of people. London: MIT Press.
  
• Bless, H., Fiedler, K., &Strack, F. (2004). Social cognition: How individuals construct social reality. Hove: Psychology Press.
  
• Maio, G. R. & Haddock, G. G. (2010). The Psychology of Attitudes and Attitude Change. London, UK: Sage.
  
• Bandura, A. (1999). A social cognitive theory of personality. In L. Pervin& O. John (Ed.), Handbook of personality (2nd ed., pp. 154-196). New York: Guilford Publications.
  

 Optional Reading Materials

• M S Gazzaniga, R B Ivry& G R Mangun (Eds.), Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind (3rd edition). Norton, 2008
  
• Levine, J. M., Resnick, L. B., Higgins, E. T. (1993). Social foundations of cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 44, 585-612.
  

Course description

This course centers on understanding the self-embedded in the social context. We will integrate knowledge from various areas of psychology (developmental, cognitive, social cognition) with a main focus in social psychology. This course will provide the opportunity to gain an understanding of research in the following areas: the development of self in a social context, the relationship between the self and the broader socio-cultural context. The course will provide surprising insights about basic psychological phenomena centering on the topic of self.This course provides a review of the central concept in the lives of even the most altruistic of us: the self. We begin the course by considering the definition of self and review a set of select topics on it’s on to genetic development.

Learning Outcome

At  the end of the course, students should be b able to:

• Examine the dynamics and cues of social dominance and perceived control
  
• Discuss the ways in which making free choices, and thus exercising one’s control, affects future preferences and well being
  
• Analyze the interpersonal socio-cognitive theory of the self
  
• Discuss the biases that self-involvement creates, for better or for worse
  
• Examine the effects of self-involvement on value, memory, and predictions about the future
  
• Explore the concept of personality as it is studied using modern approaches to individual differences

Course Content

• Constructing the Social Self
  
• Defining the self
  
• Perceiving one’s own and others’ actions
  
• Dialectic of self and other mind perception
  
• Social cues to personal agency – power and control
  
• he origin and perpetuation of personal preferences
  
• Making choices– health benefits of being in control
  
• Relational self within and across cultures
  
• The self and memory (self-reference and implicit self-esteem)
  
• Self and value (ownership and free choice)
  
• Optimism Bias
  
• Personality in context
  
•  Self-discrepancy theory
  
• The self resisting adversity

Compulsory Reading Materials

• Abrams, D., & Hogg, M. A. (1990). Social identity theory: Constructive and critical advances. London: Harvester-Wheatsheaf.
  
• Bandura, A. (1982). Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. American Psychologist, 37, 122-147
  
• Bandura, A. (1995). Exercise of personal and collective efficacy in changing societies. In A. Bandura (Ed.), Self-efficacy in changing societies (pp. 1-45). New York: Cambridge University Press.
  

Optional Reading Materials

• Klein, S. B. (2012). "What is the self?": Approaches to a very elusive question. Social Cognition, 30(4), 363-366.
  
• Swann, W., Stein-Seroussi, A., &Giesler, B. (1992). Why people self-verify. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62(3), 392-401.
  
• Wilson, T. D. (2002). Strangers to ourselves : discovering the adaptive unconscious. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.[Selection: Chapter 9: , pp. 183-202]
  
• Wheeler, S. C., DeMarree, K. G., & Petty, R. E. (2007). Understanding the role of the self in prime-to-behavior effects: The Active-Self account. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(3), 234-261
  

Course Description

We typically think of perception as among the most fundamental forms of lower-level cognition and social cognition as among the most advanced forms of higher-level cognition. In this course, we will explore how these two aspects of the mind connect. The course will explore how social influences do and do not influence what we see, and how perception itself is specialized for social information. Readings will be drawn from several different areas of psychology including cognitive psychology, vision science, social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and infant cognition. Specific topics include the perception of animacy, agency, and intentionality, biological motion, face perception, gaze processing, attention, race perception, social color vision social olfaction, and social and cultural influences on perception

Learning Outcome

At the end of the course, student should be able to:

Course Content

• Perceptual Stereotyping
  
• Organizational meeting
  
• Social factors
  
• Culture change
  
•  Social Color Vision
  
• Animacy and Intentionality
  
• Perceiving Social Information
  
• Social Olfaction
  
• Social Vision
  

 Compulsory Reading Materials

• Anzures, G., Quinn, P. C., Pascalis, O., Slater, A. M., Tanaka, J. W., & Lee, K. (2013). Developmental origins of the other-race effect. Current directions in psychological science, 22(3), 173-178.
  
• Levin, D., & Banaji, M. (2006). Distortions in the perceived lightness of faces: The role of race categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 135, 501–512.
• Schnall, S., Harber, K., Stefanucci, J., & Proffitt, D. (2008). Social support and the perception of geographical slant. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1246-1255.

 Optional Reading Materials

• Barrett, H. C., Todd, P., Miller, G., & Blythe, P. (2005). Accurate judgments of intention from motion cues alone: A cross-cultural study. Evolution and Human Behavior, 26, 313-331.
  
• Gao, T., McCarthy, G., & Scholl, B. (2010). The Wolfpack effect: Perception of animacy irresistibly influences interactive behavior. Psychological Science, 21, 1845-1853