Lutsky, Psychology, Social Cognition Lab

Psychology 259: Social Cognition Laboratory

Neil Lutsky, Ph.D.

Department of Psychology, Carleton College
Olin 111, x4379, e-mail: nlutsky@carleton.edu

Lab Assistants: Mindy Jensen (x5051) and Heather Davenport (x5041)

Psychology 259 is intended to introduce you to general issues in research in social cognition and to selected examples of the phenomena social psychologists study, the research questions they pose, and the research methods they employ. Its means is to give you hands-on experience designing, executing, and reporting empirical studies in social cognition. The list of topics and readings below indicates what in social cognition we will be exploring. The requirements for this two-credit course include the following: attendance at laboratory sessions; completion in a timely matter of assigned readings; participation as researchers in the design and execution of course projects; preparation of one laboratory poster and one web page report; and presentation of a final research proposal. The laboratory poster and web page may be completed in collaboration with other members of the lab.

Laboratory Topic, Activity, and Reading Schedule:

W 4/3 Course Overview; Digital Image Capture and Manipulation; Ethical and Design Issues in Social Cognition Research. Research Participant Recruitment Procedures.
M 4/8 Social Comparison Laboratory; Reading Research Critically.

Van Lange, P. A. M., & Rusbult, C. E. (1995). My relationship is better than--and not as bad as--yours is: The perception of superiority in close relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 32-44.
W 4/10 Individual Differences in Social Cognition; Assessing Cognitive Constructs via Self Report; Data Analysis and Correlational Design.

Ostrom, T. M., Bond, C. F., Krosnick, J. A., & Sedikides, C. (1994). Attitude scales: How we measure the unmeasurable. In S. Shavitt & T. C. Brock (Eds.), Persuasion: Psychological insights and perspectives (pp. 15-42).
M 4/15 Social Comparison Laboratory (continued); Modeling Cognitive Processes.
W 4/17 Social Comparison Laboratory (continued); Writing a Research Paper, Creating a Research Poster, and Building a Web Page.
M 4/22 Person Perception Laboratory; Using Digital Video.

Borkenau, P., & Liebler, A. (1992). Trait inferences: Sources of validity at zero acquaintance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 645-657.
W 4/24 Person Perception Laboratory (continued).
M 4/29 Correspondent Inference Laboratory.
Van Boven, L., Kamada, A., & Gilovich, T. (1999). The perceiver as perceived: Everyday intuitions about the correspondence bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1188-1199.
W 5/1 Correspondent Inference Laboratory (continued).
M 5/6 Midterm Break.
W 5/8 Event Sampling and Naturalistic Methods in Social Cognition.
Reis, H. T., & Gable, S. L. (2000). Event-sampling and other methods for studying everyday experience. Handbook of research methods in social and personality psychology, 190-222.
M 5/13 Social Attitudes Laboratory.

Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2000). Pride and prejudice: Fear of death and social behavior. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9, 200-204.

Rudman, L. A., Greenwald, A. G., Mellott, D. S., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1999). Measuring the automatic components of prejudice: Flexibility and generality of the implicit association test. Social Cognition, 17, 437-465.
W 5/15 Social Attitudes Laboratory (continued).
M 5/20 Social Attitudes Laboratory (continued).
W 5/22 Laboratory Research Proposal Development.
M 5/27 Laboratory Poster and Web Pages.
W 5/29 Research Proposal Presentations.
M 6/3 Research Proposal Presentations.

Neil Lutsky, April 2, 2002