PSYC 215 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Fundamental Attribution Error, Seminary, Kurt Lewin

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 215
• Professor: Julie Caouette

Document Summary

Until 1974, the american psych association thought homosexuality was a mental illness. Until 1944, homosexuality was a sufficient cause for being discharged from the military. Going beyond folk wisdom and trying to establish a scientific basis for understanding human behavior. Definition: the scientific study of feelings, thought and behaviors of individuals in any social situation. Social psych now forms a significant part of the curriculum in many schools. Topics: judgment and decision making, social influence, how people function in groups. Research by social psychologists regularly influence government policy. Personality psychology: closely related to social psych, emphasises individual differences in behavior rather than the social situation, try to find a consistent pattern in the way a person behaves across situations (an individual"s position on a trait dimension) Cognitive psychology: how people perceive, think about and remember aspects of the world, study categorization processes or memory for words or objects (social psych: social behavior and perceptions of others)