LFU:online

The aim of the lecture is, to familiarize students of law with problems of attributing personality traits in everyday life and to show them basic principles of an objective personality diagnostic.

The lecture is conceived as an introduction to psychology. The thematic frame is the social perception (interpersonal perception/social conditions of perception).

The personal characteristics of our neighbors mostly appear to us as obvious. Our judgments are, however, often wrong or inaccurate and say more about our own expectations and ideas than about the "real" features and qualities of the people whom we judge. Examples for this are implicit personality theories and the theory of the central/peripheral traits which is discussed in detail in this lecture.

However, we also reconstruct the invisible personality traits and qualities of persons by their actions and behaviors which we directly or indirectly observe. These inferences, subject of the Attribution Research, seek an answer to the question: "Why does a person behave in quite particular way so and not differently?" For jurists it is the question about the subjective/inner side of the action: What are the motives for a certain (delinquent) behavior? That the answer to this question and the explanation by personality traits can follow social psychological rules, is represented by the example of the multi-dimensional attribution model of Kelley.

Personality constructs to which psychological experts from case to case refer are represented in the context of biological and action-theory models from personality and differential psychology.

Videos, discussions, group works

Oral examinations

Will be discussed in the first lesson.