Perhaps no research area is more identified with the field of social psychology than that which is concerned with attitudes and persuasion. This course will focus on the fundamental nature of attitudes, beliefs, and opinions. In addition, we will examine how our academic knowledge of this topic can be applied to specific social contexts.
- Students will have a thorough understanding of (a) the content, structure, and function of attitudes, (b) the difference between explicit and implicit attitudes, and (c) internal and external influences on attitudes.
- Students will be able to think critically about and be able to evaluate the experimental methodology used for studying explicit and implicit attitudes
- Students will be able to understand and distinguish between the cognitive, affective, and behavioral influences on attitude formation and attitude change.
- Students will be able to understand how and when attitudes predict behavior.
- Students will be able to evaluate persuasion techniques.
- Students will be able to evaluate dominant psychological theories in the attitude literature (e.g., dual processing theory, theory of planned behavior).
- Students will be able to design and conduct a scientific study on measuring an attitude and attitude change.
There will be one final exam and you will write a paper (in English) on topics covered in this course.
We will consider a variety of basic questions, including: What is an attitude? What functions do attitudes serve? Where do our attitudes come from? Is there such a thing as an unconscious attitude? How consistent are people's attitudes, and under what conditions are they (in)consistent? What is the role of emotion versus reason in social attitudes? How and when are attitudes related to actual behaviour? The course will also review the effects of specific variables in the social contexts of persuasion. For example, we will consider the roles of the communicator characteristics (e.g., trustworthiness), recipient's characteristics (e.g., high need for cognition), and type of medium (TV) on the success of a persuasive message.
Type of instructionsLectures and work groups
Type of exams1 paper, 1 exam
- Bob M. Fennis en Wolfgang Stroebe, The Psychology of Advertising, ISBN 9781848723061.
- A list of other required readings can be found in the Syllabus on BlackBoard.