Social Psychology 2500-OB-23
TThis introductory course in social psychology reviews most important issues in the discipline by presenting the new discoveries compared to the classic approaches. It is also tailored to the interest of the lecturer – thus it discusses broadly how human attitudes, identities and group membership affect people’s judgements about themselves and others.
Thematic structure:
1. What is psychology. Big questions of psychology. The neighboring disciplines. Experimental method and correlational studies.
2. How psychologsts explain reality? Third variable problem. Mediation and moderation. European sources of social psychology – classic thinkers.
3. Social cognition. Person perception. Priming: cognitive, goal priming, behavioral priming. Subliminal priming and emerging controversies. Impression formation and face perception.
4. Cognitive miser model. Cognitive motivation, cognitive closure, heuristics, schema, scripts. Biases and illusions (hindsight bias, just world beliefs etc.).
5. Self fulfilling prophesies. Thomas theorem and Pygmalion effect. Stereotype threat and its reduction.
6. Decision making and judgments. Prospect theory, trust and mistrust, prisoners dilemma.
7. Explanations and attributions. Early experiments by Heider and key attribution theories, fundamental attribution error, ultimate attribution error.
8. Attitudes. Definitions (ABC), measurement. Theory of reasoned action and planned behavior. Implicit and explicit attitudes.
9. Attitude change. Mere exposure, self-perception. Cognitive dissonance and its explanation. Persuasion, sleeper effect. Conformity and minority influence. Dynamic models of social influence.
10. Human aggression. Obedience studies and explanations of violence. Frustration-aggression theory. Modelling aggression, virtual violence, gaming. Scapegoat theory.
11. Helping and altruism. Passive bystander, diffusion of responsibility, social identities and helping, empathic concern. Helping relations.
12. Social identities and identification. Narcissism. Theories explaining ingroup favoritism SIT, ODT, SURT, TMT, RWA, SDO.
13. Stereotyping and prejudice. Stereotype content model. BIAS map. Dehumanization and infrahumanization. Contact hypothesis and prejudice reduction.
Type of course
Prerequisites (description)
Learning outcomes
Student uderstands mechanism that guide people’s social behawior, understands sources of attitudes and differences between conscious and non-councious processes, can provide expertise in situations that require social-psychological expert knowledge, understands situational causes of human behaviour and attitudes.
Assessment criteria
Exam:
60% of grade is test (multiple choice format)
40% is essay written during exam (longer response to open-ended format question)
Task during lectures:
Twice during the semester there will be a practical task (short essay). Those who pass both practical tasks will have maximum points bonus on essay part of the exam. The task will check if students can use social psychology concepts to understand everyday behavior.
Practical placement
non applicable
Bibliography
Crisp, R. and Turner, R. (2009). Psychologia Społeczna. Warszawa: PWN. (all)
Wojciszke, B. (2010). Sprawczość i wspólnotowość. Gdańsk: GWP. (chapter: 1. Interpretacja ludzkich działań, 4. Męskość-kobiecość. Stereotypy a fakty)
Kossowska M. and Kofta, M. (2009). Psychologia poznania społecznego. Warszawa: PWN. (chapter: 1. Motywowane poznanie społeczne, 7. Psychologia poznania społecznego w erze neuronauk, 15. Ku zmienności i zróżnicowaniu: współczesna psychologia poznania międzygrupowego)
Kofta, M. and Bilewicz, M. (2012). Wobec obcych. Zagrożenia psychologiczne a stosunki międzygrupowe. Warszawa: PWN. (chapter: 1. Zagrażająca przeszłość i jej wpływ na relacje międzygrupowe, 2. Emocje międzygrupowe a stereotypy i zagrożenia społeczne, 11. Autorytaryzm jako ideologiczna wizja świata społecznego, 12. Kolektywny narcyzm a sprawa polska)
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: