Welcome to Social Psychology

Social psychology studies how people interact with each other, in groups, and in their environments. In addition to exploring the theories behind social psychological concepts, we'll concentrate on the practical uses of psychology for teachers, health practitioners, psychologists, and helping agents of all sorts.

This course involves a lot of active learning. The links below tell you more about the kinds of activities we'll do, and this website has all sorts of other information to help you learn more about social psychology, and do well in our course. Please explore it and have fun!

Important Course Information

Below is information about the specific assignments you'll need to fulfill in this course.

Wiki Development

Each member of the class will research a particular concept or issue and construct a page about it on the class wiki. Everyone will present their research in a session at the end of the term. You can see the existing pages on the wiki here. And you can see how you'll be graded by looking at the Wiki Grading Rubric. I've also provided a set of guidelines here, for building better wiki pages.

Primary Source Presentation

Primary source material, including both research reports and popular press items, is essential to understanding social psychology and how it is used. I will assign each of you an article to read and present to the class. Write up a critique using the form found here, and summarize the most important points in your articles and lead a discussion about each of them in class, at the appropriate time.

In Class Writing Exercises (ICWE)

These are short reaction papers for the beginning and end of each class. At the beginning of class, they help us generate discussion and center your thoughts on the topics of the day. At the end, the ICWE helps solidify your learning of the day’s topics.