Social Psychology and Its Application in Education

This 14-credit program will provide students with a background in the big questions and main conversations of social psychology, as well as an understanding of the techniques used by social psychologists to study human social behavior and how educators use that information to structure schools and classrooms. Social psychology is the scientific study of the way individuals think, feel, and behave in social situations. In this program, we will explore the way social psychologists seek to answer big questions that make up our everyday lives. We will examine the way our brains, environment, and the people around us interact to produce a wide range of behaviors in individuals and groups, including:

• What is the self, and how do we come to know ourselves?
• How do we form impressions of people, groups, and ideas?
• How do we explain others’ behavior?
• What are attitudes, how are they formed, and how do they affect us?
• What influences our decision-making processes?
• What is the nature of conformity and obedience?
• What leads to prejudice and discrimination and what can be done about this problem?
• Why do intimate relationships begin, succeed, or fail?
• Why are people sometimes helpful, but at other times aggressive or even cruel?

Lectures, workshops, seminars, and films help to further contextualize program texts. Students can expect to engage written assignments throughout each academic week that include short papers and multimedia responses in preparation for seminars and workshops. In addition, students will produce and present a final synthesis poster at the end of the quarter.

Beyond learning the content of the course material, the objective of this program is to help you think critically about the nature, origins, and outcomes of human social behavior, and how to apply the information you learn to your daily lives and to the schooling system.

This program is coordinated with Greener Foundations for first-year students. Greener Foundations is Evergreen’s in-person introductory student success course, which provides first-year students with the skills and knowledge they need to thrive at Evergreen. First-year students who register for 14 credits in this program will be placed into Greener Foundations for an additional 2 credits, totaling 16 credits.