Psychology 2B

This unit of study consists of two components: a focus on personality and social psychology and a focus on further training in research methods. The aim of the personality and social psychology lectures is to present these topics in such a way as to illustrate their relevance to situations encountered in everyday life. Students will become familiar with some of the central conceptual frameworks and models developed by social psychologists to account for individual behaviour in social settings. Personality lectures focus on contemporary personality theory and research and introduce the issue of personality assessment or measurement. The research methods lectures build on the concepts underpinning research methodologies, statistical tests and processes introduced in the pre-requisite unit Psychology 2A. Students develop an understanding of the logic and process of hypothesis testing and inferential statistics as related to non-parametric measurement and parametric measurement, e.g. analysis of variance. Students are also introduced to the principles of design and measurement in psychology and the concepts of reliability and validity as related to research design and data collection instruments.