Current Issues in Attitude Research (PSYC0163)

Aims: To introduce students to recent developments and discussions in attitude research.
Objectives: Through the course, students are expected to develop knowledge and understanding of: - the processes that underlie attitude formation - experimental designs in attitude research - techniques to measure explicit and implicit attitudes - theoretical controversies in attitude research - techniques that can lead to attitude change (e.g., persuasion).
Module outline: This course focuses on central construction of social cognition, of relevance for a variety of domains (e.g. marketing, consumer psychology, political psychology, racism and social discrimination). The course examines how attitudes are formed, their structure and implications for behaviour, their malleability, and how they can be changed. Various techniques to measure implicit and explicit attitudes are examined as well as the psychological, physiological, and neural correlates of attitudes. Debates and theoretical models about attitude processing and measurement are discussed. The course focuses also on applications, such as marketing (e.g. persuasion), consumer behaviour, voting behaviour, prejudice and discrimination, and health.

This module is a research seminar in the philosophy of mind. The module teacher (Lucy O’Brien) will present work on her current project (supported by a...

Research Seminar: Philosophy of Mind (PHIL0103)

This module is a research seminar in the philosophy of mind. The module teacher (Lucy O’Brien) will present work on her current project (supported by a BA/Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship) on the ‘Pains and Pleasures of Interpersonal Self-Consciousness’.

Alongside the presentation of work from the project, we will explore core related readings. The pains and pleasures of a human life are closely tied to our consciousness of ourselves as the focus of consciousness of others. We will look at the challenge we face in giving an account of interpersonal self-consciousness – such self-consciousness demands that we make sense of both a doubling of standpoints, me and my observer, and an integrated single intersubjective structure. We will consider a way of making sense of the phenomenon, consider what kinds of stimulus occasion interpersonal self-consciousness, ask what role such consciousness plays in our knowledge of other minds, and how we vary in our self-conscious lives. We will also consider how human beings relate to, and aim practically to control, their own social self-consciousness, and others’

Philosophy Area A