Social Psychology l

Lesson Structure: Social Psychology I BPS205

There are 10 lessons:

Social cognition
The self
Attribution and perception of others
Attitudes and attitude change
Prejudice, discrimination and stereotypes
Interpersonal attraction
Helping behaviour
Aggression
Groups
Cultural influences
Aims: Social Psychology I BPS205

To determine how physical characteristics and non-verbal behaviour affect our formation of impressions of others, and how that information is processed;
To understand the sociological perspective of the self and how we relate to others;
To discuss attribution theory, the internal and external causes, and its role in self-perception and the perception of others;
To understand the emergence of attitudes, changes in attitude, and the effect of attitudes upon behaviour and use as predictors of behaviour;
To discuss the emergence of prejudice, stereotypes and discrimination from the perspective of social psychology and attitudes;
To understand the influence of physicality, similarity, familiarity and proximity on interpersonal relationships;
To understand helping behaviour through the influences of conformity, compliance, obedience and diffusion of responsibility;
To define social psychological theories of aggression and to apply those theories;
To understand the nature of group behaviour and to demonstrate awareness of group cognition;
To understand the effect of culture on behaviour of individuals and groups.
What you will be doing during this Course

Define €˜social cognition€™;
Determine the possible impression a jury might have of defendants and the social basis of those impressions;
List the three general biases that may affect the jury'€™s €œattributions and explanations€ and briefly describe each one;
Different types of schema;
Explain why people are motivated to justify their own actions belief and feelings;
Explain ‘cognitive dissonance;
Explain how can the desire for self-consistency influences our self-perception;
Determine the purposes served by dissonance -reducing behaviour;
Identify factors that form self-concept;
Describe attribution theory;
Describe how discounting principles relate to our perception of others;
Identify the fundamental attribution error;
Discuss how we use attribution to protect our self esteem;
Discuss how consistency, consensus and distinctiveness help to form our explanations of another person'€™s behaviour;
Explain how attitudes develop;
Discuss how attitudes affect behaviour;
Explain what makes people prejudiced;
Explain how physicality influences our behaviour;
Discuss the principle of similarity;
Explain how familiarity and proximity influence the development of friendship;
Explain why people conform;
Discuss Millgram'€™s experiment on obedience;
Explain why is a lone person more likely to help than a person in a group;
Discuss how conformity, compliance, obedience and diffusion of responsibility influence helping behaviour;
List the causes of aggression;
Explain the concept of group polarization;
Discuss how group decision-making influences conformity;
Examine the influence of culture and society on each other.

This course is accredited by ACCPH and allows you to join as a professional member after completion. Membership allows you to add the letters MACCPH after your name (post-nominals).