PY3102 - Social Psychology

Social psychology is concerned with the broader social contexts of behaviour and how interactions with others influence constructions and understandings of self, others and social reality. While the level of analysis is often the individual, theories and research take into account ongoing transactions with social and environmental settings and contexts and individual and collective sense making and representations. The subject attempts to provide a historical and contemporary overview of social psychology and to examine more closely a number of recurrent theoretical, methodological and ethical issues which social psychologists have addressed. Time is spent on classic social psychological theory and research in the areas of attitudinal change, social influence, person perception and group dynamics, as well as on applications of social psychology with respect to the psychology of difference (prejudice, cultural difference, gender difference) and behaviour change in the domains of politics, health, marketing and the environment. Social psychology has a particular interest in the way other people influence thoughts, feelings and actions and the nature and importance of the social environment in information processing. Hence the subject considers and contextualises past and current ways of framing attitudes, beliefs and values and attribution and social inference, in the context of current models of social cognition and social representations. Finally, social psychology has made a substantial investment in the development of measures and methodologies for researching attitudes, group processes, social cognition and intervention effectiveness; an ongoing critical discussion of these methods is an integral part of the subject.

Learning Outcomes

• addressing some of the main issues and phenomena studied by social psychologists;
• critically evaluating substantive issues of theory a nd method in social psychology;
• discussing and exploring selected social issues and social problems;
• examining areas of applied social psychology;
• relating the study of social psychology to other areas of psychology and to other disciplines in the social sciences, sciences and humanities.

Note: Minor variations might occur due to the continuous Subject quality improvement process, and in case of minor variation(s) in assessment details, the Subject Outline represents the latest official information.