Social psychology: Social foundations, behavior and experience

Bachelor

The students
• are familiar with the definitions and basic concepts of social psychology, including central methods and approaches for investigating social interactions and human motives.
• understand the processes of social cognition and perception, such as knowledge structures, attention, encoding, interpretation, automatic thinking, cognitive dissonance, and cultural differences in these processes.
• can identify various heuristics such as the representativeness, availability, and anchoring heuristic, and explain how these influence judgment and decision-making.
• analyze the influence of emotions on thinking and the emergence of emotions, as well as the interactions between social perception and social influence, including the concepts of conformity, obedience, and prosocial behavior.
• develop an understanding of the self, including mechanisms of self-regulation, self-awareness, and self-esteem, and recognize the effects of self-threats.
• recognize the forms and causes of prejudice and discrimination and are able to discuss prevention and intervention strategies.
• understand and can explain attitudes and attitude change, including the mechanisms that cause attitude change and the factors that cause resistance to persuasive messages.

None

• Introduction (Definition & Subject Matter; Methods of Social Psychology; Situation, Motives of People)
• Social Cognition & Perception (Structure of Knowledge; Perception & Attention; Encoding & Interpretation; Formation of Social Behavior; Types of Automatic Thinking; Cultural Differences in Social Cognition; Controlled Social Cognition; Non-verbal Communication; Causal Attribution; Culture & Social Perception; Cognitive Dissonance)
• Heuristics (Representativeness Heuristic; Availability Heuristic; Anchoring Heuristic; Judgment Heuristic)
• Thinking & Feeling (Influence of Emotions on Thinking; Formation of Emotions)
• Social Perception, Social Influence & Behavior (Impressions & Impression Formation; Sympathy; Competence; Authority; Credibility; Influences of Others' Behavior on Social Perception & Prosocial Behavior; Influences of Attitudes; Informational & Normative Social Influence; Influence Strategies; Conformity; Obedience)
• The Self (Definition & Significance; Explicit & Implicit Self-esteem; Self-regulation; Ways of Self-awareness; Threats to the Self)
• Prejudice & Discrimination (Forms & Causes; Stereotyping; Prevention Measures)
• Attitudes & Attitude Change (Definition; Prediction of Spontaneous & Deliberate Behavior; Mechanisms of Attitude Change; Resistance to Attitude Change Attempts; Measurement of Attitudes & Predictive Power for Future Behavior; Effects of Advertising; Resistance to Persuasive Messages)

• Aaronson, E., Wilson, T. D., & Sommers, S. (2023). Sozialpsychologie. München: Pearson.
• Greitenmyer, T. (2022). Sozialpsychologie. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer.
• Hartung, J., & Kosfelder, J. (2019). Sozialpsychologie. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer.
• Werth, L., Denzler, M., & Mayer, J. (2020). Sozialpsychologie – Das Individuum im sozialen Kontext: Wahrnehmen – Denken – Fühlen. Berlin: Springer.

• Quiz
• Final Exam

German

6

20

4.0

20% of the course will be covered through eLearning. This will involve a combination of online phases (inductive method for independent acquisition of knowledge and practicing tasks) and face-to-face sessions (deductive method providing assistance in the learning process and imparting knowledge through lectures).

2

STGL

1

VWP1

integrated lecture

Compulsory

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