Social Psychology

3A survey of experimental social psychology covering social phenomena related to the self, interpersonal relationships, and small groups.


Learning Outcomes:

At the conclusion of this course, you will be able to answer the following questions:

  • What are the basic principles that underlie how we store and process information?  Do they influence our understanding and experience of the social world?
  • What determines how we feel towards something, or our motivation to engage in a certain behavior?  Can that ever be measured in an objective way?
  • How do we come to understand ourselves and who we are as social beings?
  • How do we come to understand other people and their behaviors? What can we do to ensure that people are helpful when we need them the most?
  • What are the determinants of social influence? When and why are our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors most influenced by those around us?
  • What are the factors that influence attraction, and are likely to produce healthy interpersonal relationships?
  • How does the group context influence our performance and attitudes? How can we develop more effective teams?
  • Why have humans across the globe produced a history filled with prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination?  Will it ever end?

Course Project:

Original Research Project. Students conduct authentic, high impact research. I create the hypothesis, and as a cohort, we investigate it. For students, this includes reviewing literature, creating the experiment in Qualtrics (social research software), undergoing human-subjects research training, collecting authentic data, data cleaning, transformation, analysis, & interpretation, making conclusions based on the observed evidence, and then proposing a follow-up research study.