Social and Personality Psychology Lab

Teaching

Subject

Social psychology and personality psychology are among the classic basic subjects of psychology. In general, it is the task of psychology to describe, explain, predict and, if necessary, change human experience and behavior using natural scientific methods.

Social psychology and personality psychology complement each other in their perspectives on human experience and behavior. The purpose of social psychology is "to understand and explain how the thinking, feeling, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others" (Allport, 1968).Thus, social psychology focuses on the flexibility of human experience and behavior in a social context. Personality psychology, on the other hand, is more concerned with stability and coherence in behavior and experience. It focuses especially on the fact that people differ from each other in their behavior and experience systematically, i.e., not by chance. According to Allport (1959), "personality ... is the dynamic ordering of those psychophysical systems in the individual which determine his unique adaptations to his environment ... Personality is something and does something. It is not synonymous with behavior or activity ... It is what lies behind actions and within the individual."

Didactic concept in teaching

Our goal in teaching social psychology and personality psychology is to encourage students to engage more deeply with psychological theory and research. We want to enable our students to critically evaluate the robustness of research findings and to explore the application potential of theories.

Didactically, our teaching is characterized by strong student ownership (e.g., in seminars, through group work developed, prepared, and facilitated by students; in lectures, through activating individual and group assignments) and intensive engagement with primary literature (e.g., development of research articles presented at poster conferences).

For this purpose, we are increasingly using digital enrichment for teaching, starting with short opinion or comprehension queries via smartphone (e.g. mentimeter; kahoot) to video material that we are developing to gain flexibility in the "flipped classroom" in lectures, to discuss content in depth in face-to-face teaching, to discuss it together and to encourage students to actively engage with the material.

Overview

Learn more about 

... Teaching-related announcements

... Theses supervision in our lab

... Curricula (bachelor's degree programs in psychology and sociology, master's degree program in psychology)

... Overview of current courses

... Schedule lab colloquium

Last modified: 24.06.2022

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