Social Psychology

Bachelors of Science in Life and Health Sciences

SOC 290

BREYER STATE UNIVERSITY

Instructor: Bill Makkawi, PhD

SYLLABUS

COURSE OVERVIEW: Welcome to Principles of Social Psychology, a Bachelor Level course in the curriculum for the Pre Med program. I am pleased to instruct you in this course, which will be a foundational course for the remainder of your studies in the bachelor program.

This is an exciting course, a course that explores the vast boundaries of various social psychology, how individuals behave in social settings and how individual differences affect our decision making process in different environmental settings. This course covers areas like schema formation, attitude formation, and theories of emotions, cognitive dissonance and non verbal communication, and group formation and inter and intra group conflict.

I know you will enjoy this course. Please learn as much as you can as you progress through it, as it does lay down a solid foundation for the rest of the curriculum. It is my pleasure to have you in the course.

TIME FRAME: This is a four-semester hour course. This course is allotted 10 weeks of time. You must complete all of the requirements for the course successfully by the end of the 10-week period. The first day of week one will begin the day that you register for the course, or the day which you notify me that your textbooks have arrived and you are ready to begin your studies. Please be cognizant of the time frame. It is rare that extensions of time are permitted, unless you have good justification. Upon successful completion of this course, you will be awarded four semester hours of credit.

This is a self-paced, independent study course, with one-on-one faculty mentoring, as well as occasional group chat sessions.

First, please expedite the process of ordering and obtaining your textbooks for this course. The text is

TEXTBOOKS: There is one textbook for this course.

Book 1: Social Psychology 5/E. Elliot Aronson, University of California, Santa Cruz. Timothy D. Wilson, University of Virginia. Robin M. Akert, Wellesley College: ISBN # 132382458.

You can purchase this textbook from the university bookstore.

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EXAMINATIONS: There are two examinations for this course, a mid-term exam and a final exam. The mid-term exam covers the material in the book in chapters 1-5. The final exam covers the materials in the book in chapters 6-13.

The mid-term examination must be taken by the end of the 5th week in the course.

The final examination must be taken by the end of the 10th week in the course.

Both exams are programmed and are located in the classroom for this course. The examinations are "open book" objective type. You will have one (1) day to complete your exam, once you access it from the classroom. To access the exam, you must send me an email and request to have access to the exam. Upon registration, you will receive your email address. I will then program your access in. You will receive an email back from me telling you that you are now authorized to go ahead and to access your exam. To access, you will come into the classroom, click on testing, and click on the exam you are taking. You will need your User ID and PASS WORD to access the exam. The exam will appear on your screen. Once you access the exam, you have 24 hours to submit your answers. The program provides me the exact date and time that you accessed the exam. The program also notifies me of the exact date and time that you submitted your answers. Thus, the program is timing you. When you are ready, go back into the classroom and click in your responses and then click submit. Shortly, you will receive the exam in your email box with your computed score. You will also know what questions, if any, that you missed, and what the correct answer is. I also receive a copy of your exam and your score.

GRADING: The grading scale for this course is as follows:

90-100%    = A
80-89%      = B
70-79%      = C
Below 70% = Fail

COMMUNICATION: You are encouraged to communicate with me. I am available as a teacher, coach, and mentor to assist you in meeting your goals for this course. Primarily, communication is through email. Our classroom for this course has a "chat" room. I am also very willing to meet with you one-on-one in the chat room at your request. From time to time, depending on how many students are enrolled in this course at a particular time, we will have some scheduled group chats. You will receive more detailed information at the time such chat sessions are scheduled. Please keep my email address handy so that you can contact me whenever necessary. If at any time during this course you change your email address, please be sure to notify me right away.

WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS: There are no written assignments for this course. There is a considerable amount of reading involved in this course, and I would prefer you spend your time with the books learning the material.

ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR: I, Bill Makkawi, PhD MBA, MACC CPA is an associate professor currently teach undergraduate and graduate courses at Breyer State University. I hold a doctoral degree in accounting with a minor in psychology, I also hold a Masters in Business Administration with a minor in finance, and a Masters in accounting with a minor in statistics and a bachelor in psychology. I have been teaching for the past 24 years. Most of my research interest is in behavioral accounting which is concerned how individuals namely accountants behave in social setting and how they make their decisions under various environmental situations. In my spare time I play soccer and chess. I also enjoy table tennis and table soccer. I am the author of several research papers published in various academic journals.

COURSE CONTENT:

1). Introducing Social Psychology.
2). Methodology: How Social Psychologists Do Research.
3). Social Cognition: How We Think about the Social World.
4). Social Perception: How We Come to Understand Other People.
5). Self-Knowledge: How We Come to Understand Ourselves.
6). The Need to Justify Our Actions.
7). Attitudes and Attitude Change: Influencing Thoughts and Feelings.
8). Conformity: Influencing Behavior.
9). Group Processes: Influence in Social Groups.
10). Interpersonal Attraction: From First Impressions to Close Relationships.
11). Prosocial Behavior: Why Do People Help?
12). Aggression: Why Do We Hurt Other People? Can We Prevent It?
13). Prejudice: Causes and Cures.

COURSE OBJECTIVES: Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:

1). Describe the importance of an individual's construal of a social event in the social psychologist's attempts at understanding social behavior.
2). Describe how social psychologists and sociologists differ in their levels of analysis.
3). Describe how Gestalt principles influenced social psychological thought.
4). Distinguish between the different underlying motives emphasized by the self-esteem approach and the social cognition approach.
5). Tell what are Schemas and what is the role of culture in the development of schemas.
6). Describe several types of heuristics, and how it is used in social judgment.
7). Describe the four primary uses of nonverbal communication.
8). Describe the 6 major facial expressions of emotion, and what it means that these are species specific rather than culture specific.
9). Describe the 3 factors that can decrease decoding accuracy.
10). Describe cultural differences in nonverbal communication.
11). Describe gender differences in nonverbal communication.
12). Define implicit personality theories.
13). Gain an understanding of attribution theory.
14). Describe the 3 important functions of the self.
15). Define self-perception theory.
16). Distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and describe the over - justification effect.
17). Describe the two-factor theory of emotion.
18). Define cognitive dissonance and the three methods of dissonance reduction.
19). Describe self-evaluation maintenance theory and understand its implications.
20). Define an attitude, and be able to distinguish between cognitively, affectively, and behaviorally based attitudes.
21). Describe the concept of subliminal advertising and understand social psychological research on subliminal processing of information.
22). Describe normative social influence and contrast it with informational social influence.
23). Describe Milgram's research paradigm for studying obedience, and the results and implications of this research.
24). Define a group and explain how social norms, social roles, gender roles, and group cohesiveness influence group composition and functioning.

INFORMATION: If you have any questions regarding this program, you may address them to adm@breyerstate.com. An administrative faculty member will respond to all questions.