Social Psychology - Course Review

Part I: Concepts & Theories

This part of the course focused on how exactly this linkage between social institutions and individual psyches gets made and perpetuated. Think of examples from [Parts II & III of the]course that show some of the following major themes at work:

- How our social interactions create and support consciousness

- How our unconscious influences our social actions

- How our self-understanding, or identity, is shaped by the social world

- What happens when our interactions don't support our particular understanding of the world

Part II: The Social Psychological Reality of Groups

This part of the course focused on the ways in which our real or perceived membership in particular groups influences our consciousness, our perception of ourselves and others. Choose one of the groups that we discussed in Part II of the course and do the following for that group:

- According to the course material, what meanings were ascribed to them and their actions based on their membership in that group? In what cases were these meanings imposed by others, and what cases did the group members look at themselves this way?

- How did they respond to being understood primarily through this group membership (e.g., with anger, humor, resistance, self-pride, self-hatred)?

- How did themeanings ascribed to their own group and to significant, related others (e.g., men vs. women, black vs. white, straight vs. gay), become embedded in how they perceivedboth society and themselves?

Part III: Social Psychology & Societal Trends

This part of the course focused on large-scale historical shifts and social features. It looks at how these have impacted our individual consciousness as well as how our ingrained ways of seeing have supported and shaped them. Think of examples from this last part of the course that show:

- How new patterns of interaction resulting from urbanization, mass media, and internet connectivity, change our perceptions of both ourselves and our social worlds;

- How new societally-shared modes of perception alter our desires, needs, and feelings (e.g., make us feel okay doing new things we wouldn't have done before, make us want to do things we wouldn't have done before, or help us do things we couldn't do otherwise).

Exam question: Do you think that the changes characteristic of the modern world have led to a situation where we are more likely to embrace a fascistic leader (cf. Adorno)? Have they made us less likely? Are we just as likely as before?

Exam question: Choose one of the three big changes and tell me what new interactions it has enabled, modes of perception, how they changed perceptions of ourselves and our social world, and how these modes of perception altered our desires, needs, and feelings.