The Social Psychology of Social Change (Psy 400 - WWS 341) (undergraduate)
updated syllabus for Fall 2013
syllabus from Spring 2013
reading response guide from Spring 2013
This course explores how social psychological theory and research have been used in the interest of social change, and how social change has inspired theoretical or methodological developments in social psychology. To do so, it explores major ideas, theories, and findings of social psychology and their applied status. The course is organized around social psychological topics that have been applied to the study of social stasis and change, such as social norms, stigma, belief systems, identity, and situational cues. Research explored within each topic bears on issues including conflict, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, authority and legitimacy, the environment, health, and economic scarcity and inequality.
Psychology for Policy Analysis and Implementation (WWS 502) (graduate)
The course covers how basic concepts from behavioral research in social psychology and judgment and decision making can shape policy formulation and implementation. Central themes include a detailed analysis of boundedly rational judgment and decision making, how a variety of motives can affect people’s choices, and the forces that cause changes in attitudes and behavior. Combined, these topics have important implications for policy design that affects individuals as well as the functioning of the organizations that determine those policies. Lecture and reading material is primarily drawn from basic psychological research. Students work with faculty and each other to identify the relevance of this material for policy and management through weekly discussion and five written application assignments. Students will continue to explore these issues more in-depth in three larger assignments they will conduct either on their own or in small groups.
Core Seminar: Psychological Aspects of Inequality (WWS 590D) For Social Policy PhD Students
This PhD course focuses on psychological processes related to group-based inequality and relevant policy-making.
Class inequality and the burgeoning psychological literature on this phenomenon is the organizing focus of this class. However, we will explicitly examine the intersections of class with identities like race, nationality, and gender, using research that questions how these intersections introduce, reinforce, and concentrate inequality. The half-term class is organized around thematic questions. We begin with ideas about how class distinctions may be found in basic psychological phenomena such as memory, attention, emotion, nonverbal communication, and social cognition. We then examine the relationship between inequality and psychological phenomena such as: ideology, group-based identity, and moral, relational, and cultural processes. We review some research programs on the policy-relevant psychological and behavioral effects of inequality, and we finish with a “view from the top”–psychological research on the privileged and the powerful. Throughout, we will discuss broader traditions of psychological theory and method, particularly the experimental method and its utility for examining policy ideas about reducing inequality or alleviating some of its negative effects.