PSY4111 – Applied Social Psychology

Course content

The course focuses on individual, social, and societal challenges that social psychology can help to address through interventions. Examples of such challenges are promoting behavior change, improving well-being, managing diversity, and increasing justice and cooperation. The concrete topics in a specific semester will vary.

Social psychological research has discovered basic human tendencies, like the tendency to conform to social norms. It has also produced a vast array of applied studies that help address urgent topics from a social-psychological perspective. The present course helps students apply basic principles from social psychology to their field of interest, and to find, understand, interpret and use more specialized, applied research findings.

The course will consist of 2 modules amounting to 5 ECTS each. Each semester two modules consisting of lectures and seminars are offered from a variety of topics, as described below. One of these lectures/seminar modules can be exchanged for doing a Research Assistant Module instead, where the student participates in an ongoing research project.?Availability of the research assistant module is not guaranteed in each semester. The research assistant module is not available in the autumn 2025 semester.?

Examples of modules are:

  • Sustainable Consumption and Climate Change (taught in Fall 2025)
  • The Power of Norms: From Intragroup to Cultural Processes (taught in Fall 2025)
  • Intergroup relations
  • Assessing and changing social norms and collective behavior
  • Diversity in i