Overview

This page shares the materials for the Social Psychology part of the PSY4003 module and contains some further notes. I am keeping it here rather than on Moodle so that I can keep it open (see Open Teaching Materials). It is a living document and will grow over time - feel free to raise any issues and suggestions here and bring questions to the live sessions.

0.1 Live sessions

We will meet on Zoom every Thursday morning from October 1 to December 10, with the exception of November 5. Check MyModules here for the exact times and Zoom links.

0.2 Collaborative group summary

I highly encourage you to contribute to a collaborative group summary of the module. This will give you a good resource for revision, make note taking more effective and allow you to easily ask questions to me and to your peers. Click here to see the document and to contribute.

0.3 Further sources

This guide does not aim to be comprehensive, but just to provide sufficient orientation. To succeed, you will need to use a range of other resources as well.

0.3.1 MyModules (Moodle)

Some copyrighted materials are only available on MyModules. You can also find all submissions links for the assignments there.

0.3.2 Textbooks

  • Given the current situation, I will mostly refer to a good recent textbook that is freely available online: Principles of Social Psychology. You can also download it as a PDF file if you prefer that. There will be one or two chapters that are required reading for each week.
  • Other textbooks for Social Psychology will cover most of the content as well, so you are welcome to use those for additional reading. An Introduction to Social Psychology, edited by Wolfgang Stroebe and Miles Hewstone, is good, and used copies of earlier editions can be found quite cheaply on Amazon at the moment
  • The book “Social Psychology: Revisiting the classic studies” offers a very helpful look at the most famous and influential studies that you might have encountered already. There are two copies in the library. At the moment, you can also find an online copy here

0.3.3 Reading list

Each weekly section in this guide will start with a set of recommended readings. You do not need to read every word of them, but make sure to read the key parts (e.g., abstracts, summaries, discussion sections), so that you can choose where to go further and remember where to find information when it comes to the assignments.

0.3.4 Independent reading

When it comes to the assignment, you will have to show that you read independently - however, even earlier, it can be fun to explore interesting things further. To find readings, you can use

  • the St Mary’s library catalogue should be your first point of call and links to many online resources
  • Google Scholar is a great search engine to find academic articles. If you want to use it regularly, link it to your St Mary’s account as that will make it much easier to get access to articles behind paywalls. Go to Google Scholar Library Links and search for St Mary’s - the correct result is called “St Mary’s University - Full-text @ St Mary’s”

0.4 A note on open teaching materials

Why keep materials here rather than on Moodle? Basically, because I like transparency and dislike any kinds of paywalls in science. Open Access to journal articles without having to pay for an expensive subscription has been one of the key demands of the Open Science movement, and we are slowly getting there. Open access to teaching materials is a next step, and this is one of my small contributions to that movement.