LFU:online

Grasp of constitutive features and raising of awareness for pivotal problems of the subject area of Social Psychology; exemplary prospect on the broad range of possible research interests; methodological stimulation in view of encouraging independent query and research.

After addressing the complicated “determination of locus” of the subject area in the poorly charted and tension-prone frontier between Psychology and the social sciences, several topics will be presented that are constitutive and seminal for Social Psychology: Prejudice and hostile imagery (their root causes, essential features and phenomena, and implications, as well as chances of overcoming them); approaches and examples of interpreting the unconscious on the level of public life (above all against the backdrop of the far-reaching consequences of the understanding of resistance and psychological trauma that has been made possible by Sigmund Freud); foundations of democratic maturity and civic responsibility—as well as of its opposite dispositions of authoritarianism, the “intrinsic power motive,” and fascination with violence; the antagonism between the fundamental tendencies of cooperation (solidarity) and competition (social Darwinism); psychological foundations of cultural and civilizing developments (under the pivotal aspects of the capacity of dealing with conflict in constructive ways and of the decline of violence); developments of globalizing society and its environmental, economic, and civilizational crises.

Lectures, presentations, discussions, film segments

Grading will be based on participation, presentation, and term paper

Aronson E., Wilson T. & Akert R., Sozialpsychologie; Bauriedl T., Die Wiederkehr des Verdrängten; Berghold J., Feindbilder und Verständigung; Elias N., Der Prozess der Zivilisation; Erdheim M., Die gesellschaftliche Produktion von Unbewusstheit; Kohn A., Mit vereinten Kräften; Ottomeyer K., Die Behandlung der Opfer; Pinker S., Gewalt; Preuss S., Umweltkatastrophe Mensch; Richter H.E., Der Gotteskomplex; Schmidbauer W., Das kalte Herz; Weintrobe S. (Hg.), Engaging with Climate Change; Wirth H.J., Narzissmus und Macht.