Course description
This course explores how status and power dynamics shape social life, using theories and research from sociological social psychology. We will learn how status beliefs emerge from social differences in resources and power, and how they perpetuate inequalities over time by shaping our interpretations of social events and our behavior and emotions when we interact with others. We will explore why broad social inequalities are often durable, and how the dynamics of social interaction serve to sustain them. We will also consider the means by which these inequalities can be overcome.
The course will introduce you to symbolic integrationist thought, and to a host of contemporary social psychological theories that help us understand the reciprocal relationship between individual action and broader social patterns and institutions. Our central focus will be on the relationship between self and society through interactions, so there will be little overlap with material you may have encountered in psychology courses.
Learning Outcome
- Students will learn to question
their everyday perceptions and apply SSP perspective to their everyday
- Interactions. A lot of social
phenomena become so familiar that people fail to notice them.
- This course will provide students
with analytical toolbox to make them see what is hidden in plain sight –in the
realm of our everyday lives.
- Students will also learn to
distinguish and present theoretical ideas and begin to question their own
standing.
- They will learn to analyze with a critical eye issues raised in class using conceptual and theoretical knowledge gained through application of the class material.
Course Content
- The
Social Construction of Reality
- Impression
and Emotion Management
- Affect
Control Theory
- Identity
Theory
- Expectation States Theory
- Status
Construction Theory
- Social Exchange Theories
- Social and Personal Change
Compulsory Reading Materials
- Burke, Peter J. (Ed.). 2006. Contemporary Social Psychological
Theories. Stanford University Press. ISBN: 978-0804753470
Optional Reading Materials
- Crawford, L. A., & Novak, K.B.
(2014). Individual and Society: Sociological SocialPsychology. New York:
Routledge.
- Deutsch, Francine M. 2007. “Undoing
Gender.” Gender and Society21(1):106–27.
- West, C., and D. H. Zimmerman. 1987.
“Doing Gender.” Gender & Society1(2):125–51