The common course objectives or goals include the following: The student will be able to demonstrate an understanding of representative theories, findings and/or principles concerning the following topics:

· Social Psychology, Social Learning and Social Cognition

· Social Affect and The Self

· Attitudes, Behavior, and Persuasion

· Perceiving Others

· Influencing and Conforming

· Liking, Loving, Helping and Altruism

· Aggression

· Group Performance and Decision Making

· Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination

The textbook for this course is: Principles of Social Pyschology, Version 2.0, by Charles Stangor; FlatWorld Knowledge Publishers. (ISBN (Digital): 978-1-4533-8496-1).  An All Access Pass to a digital version of the book is available for purchase in the ACC Bookstore and paperback versions can be ordered directly from the publisher by the student at the option of the student.  The All Access Pass contains the Online Web Book (Read it through your browser), eBook (Pub and mobile files compatible with your iPad, Kindle or other device), PDF Book (Print-it-Yourself or read offline), & Study Aids (Interactive tools help reinforce key terms and concepts.).  FlatWorld offers students a variety of low-cost digital and print choices, starting at just $32.95.  All of the formats can be purchased at students.flatworldknowledge.com, where you can also find more detailed explanations of each format.  Here is the URL for FlatWorld Publisher:

https://students.flatworldknowledge.com/course/2607127

This course is a survey of the theories, research, and methods of social psychology - including the topics of self, conflict, aggression, power, group dynamics, and decision making. 

Chapter One: Introducing Social Psychology

• Define social psychology
• Review the history of the field of social psychology and the topics that social psychologists study.
• Summarize the principles of evolutionary psychology.
• Describe, and provide examples of, the person-situation interaction.
• Review the concepts of (a) social norms and (b) cultures.
• Define and differentiate affect, behavior, and cognition as considered by social psychologists.
• Summarize the principles of social cognition.

Chapter Two: Social Learning and Social Cognition

• Review the principles of operant, associational and observational learning and explain the similarities and differences among them.
• Explain how and when schemas and attitudes do and do not change as a result of the operation of accomodation and assimilation.
• Outline the ways that schemas are likely to be maintained through processes that create assimilation
• Provide examples of how slaience and accessibility influence information processing
• Review, differentiate, and give examples of the cognitive heuristics that influence social judgment.

Chapter Three: Social Affect

• Describe the physiology of emotions, including the actions of the sympathetic nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system, and the amygdala..
• Differentiate the basic and secondary emotions and explain their functions..
• Review the known gender and cultural differences in the experience and expression of emotion.
• Summarize the function and outcomes of our mood states.
• Describe the phenomenon of misattributing arousal and its impact on our emotions.
• Review the determinants of stress in everyday life.
• Describe the general adaptation syndrome and how stress influences the HPA axis and the release of hormones.
• Review the negative outcomes of stress on health.
• Explain how the social situation may influence our experiences of depression and anxiety.

Chapter Four: The Self

• Define and describe the self-concept and its influence on information processing.
• Describe the concept of self-complexity, and explain how it influences social cognition and behavior.
• Review the measures that are used to assess the self-concept.
• Differentiate the diferent types of self-awareness and self-consciousness.
• Define self-esteem and explain how it is measured by psychologists.
• Provide examples of ways that people attempt to increase and maintain their self-esteem.
• Outline the benefits of having high self-esteem.
• Define self-monitoring and self-presentation, and explain how we may use the social situation to increase our status and self-esteem.
• Review the limits of self-esteem, with a focus on the negative aspects of narcissism.
• Define social comparison and summarize how people use it to define their self-concepts and self-esteem.
• Give examples of the use of upward and downward social comparison and their influences on social cognition and affect.
• Explain the concept of social identity and why it is important to human behavior.
• Summarize the research evidence regarding cultural differences in self-concept and self-esteem.

Chapter Five: Attitudes, Behavior, and Persuasion

• Define the concept of attitude and explain why it is of such interest to social psychologists.
• Review the variables that determine attitude strength.

• Outline the factors affect the strength of the attitude-behavior relationship.
• Outline how persuasion is determined by the choice of effective communicators and effective messages.
• Review the conditions under which attitudes are best changed using spontaneous versus thoughtful strategies.

• Summarize the variables that make us more or less resistant to persuasive appeals.
• Outline the principles of self-perception and explain how they can account for the influences of behavior on attitude.
• Outline the principles of cognitive dissonance and explain how they can account for the influences of behavior on attitude.

Chapter Six: Perceiving Others

• Describe how people use behaviors and traits to form initial perceptions of others.

• Summarize the role of nonverbal behaviors in person perception.
• Review the fundamental principles of causal attribution.
• Compare and contrast the tendency to make person attributions for unusual events, the covariation principle, and Weiner’s model of success and failure.

• Describe some of the factors that lead to inaccuracy in causal attribution.
• Outline the characteristics of perceivers and of cultures that influence their causal attributions.
• Explain the ways that our attributions can influence our mental health and the ways that our mental health affects our attributions.

Chapter Seven: Influencing and Conforming

• Describe some of the active and passive ways that conformity occurs in our everyday lives.
• Compare and contrast informational conformity and normative conformity.
• Summarize the variables that create majority and minority social influence.

• Outline the situational variables that influence the extent to which we conform.
• Describe and interpret the results of Stanley Milgram’s research on obedience.
• Compare the different types of power proposed by John French and Bertram Raven and explain how they produce conformity.
• Define leadership and explain how effective leaders are determined by the person, the situation, and the person-situation interaction.
• Summarize the social psychological literature concerning differences in conformity between men and women.
• Review research concerning the relationship between culture and conformity.
• Explain the concept of psychological reactance and describe how and when it might occur.

Chapter Eight: Liking and Loving

• Summarize the variables that lead to initial attraction between people.
• Outline the variables that lead us to perceive someone as physically attractive, and explain why physical attractiveness is so important in liking.
• Describe the ways that similarity and complementarity influence our liking for others.
• Define the concept of mere exposure and explain how proximity influences liking.
• Outline the factors that define close relationships.
• Explain how people can best maintain their close relationships.

Chapter Nine: Helping and Altruism

• Understand the differences between altruism and helping and explain how social psychologists try to determine which is which.
• Review the roles of reciprocity and social exchange in helping.
• Describe the evolutionary factors that influence helping.
• Summarize how the perceptions of rewards and costs influence helping.

• Outline the social norms that influence helping.
• Summarize the effects of positive and negative moods on helping.
• Explain how the affective states of guilt, empathy, and personal distress influence helping.
• Review Bibb Latané and John Darley’s model of helping behavior and indicate the social psychological variables that influence each stage.
• Review the person, gender, and cultural variables that relate to altruism.
• Explain how the reactions of the person being helped may influence the benefits of helping.
• Outline the ways that we might be able to increase helping.

Chapter Ten: Aggression

• Define aggression and violence as social psychologists do.

• Differentiate emotional from instrumental aggression.
• Explain how aggression might be evolutionarily adaptive.
• Describe how different parts of the brain influence aggression.

• Summarize the effects of testosterone and serotonin on aggression.
• Review the situational variables that increase and decrease aggression.
• Explain the different effects of reward, punishment, and modeling on aggression.
• Review the influences of viewing violent behavior on aggression and explain why these effects might occur.  
• Summarize the individual difference variables related to aggression.
• Explain how men and women differ, on average, in terms of aggression.
• Give examples of some cultural differences in aggression.

Chapter Eleven: Working Groups: Performance and Decision Making

• Define the factors that create social groups.
• Define the concept of social identity, and explain how it applies to social groups.

• Review the stages of group development and dissolution.
• Describe the situations under which social facilitation and social inhibition might occur, and review the theories that have been used to explain these processes.
• Outline the effects of member characteristics, process gains, and process losses on group performance.
• Summarize how social psychologists classify the different types of tasks that groups are asked to perform.

• Explain the influence of each of these concepts on group performance: groupthink, information sharing, brainstorming, and group polarization.
• Review the ways that people can work to make group performance more effective.

Chapter Twelve: Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination

• Describe the fundamental process of social categorization and its influence on thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
• Define stereotypes and describe the ways that they are measured.

• Review the ways that stereotypes influence our behavior.
• Review the causes and outcomes of ingroup favoritism.
• Summarize the results of Henri Tajfel’s research on minimal groups.

• Outline the personality and cultural variables that influence ingroup favoritism.
• Review the causes of discrimination and the ways that we can reduce it.
• Summarize the conditions under which intergroup contact does or does not reduce prejudice and discrimination.

Chapter Thirteen: Competition and Cooperation in our Social Worlds

• Review the situational variables that increase or decrease competition and conflict.
• Differentiate harm-based from social conventional morality, and explain how morality works to help people cooperate.

• Define distributive justice and procedural justice, and explain the influence of fairness norms on cooperation and competition.
• Explain the concepts of public goods and social dilemmas, and how these conflicts influence human interactions.
• Describe the principles of the prisoner’s dilemma game that make it an effective model for studying social dilemmas.
• Review the different laboratory games that have been used to study social dilemmas.
• Summarize the individual difference and cultural variables that relate to cooperation and competition.