Proseminar in Social Psychology

The department offers a proseminar in social psychology every year. I teach this class every other year on a rotating basis with another faculty member in the social program. This graduate class offers a general introduction to the foundations of social psychology.  It covers, among other topics: attitudes and behavior, person perception, cognitive dissonance theory, attribution theory, social-comparison, social-influence, affiliation, conformity, social-learning theory, theories of emotion, and theories of aggression. The class emphasizes methodology including issues in measurement, causal inference, and external validity. We also attempt to discuss some areas of applied psychology, e.g., psychology and law. The reading emphasizes “basic” studies that form the basis of much of the current thinking in the field. Students are assigned original readings and are expected to come to class ready to discuss them. Short papers, brief exams, a final, and a term paper is the primary evidence used to determine grades.

 

Psychology and the Law

When there is demand, I teach a graduate seminar in psychology and the law. This class covers such topics as: eyewitness identification, decision-making (of judges, prosecutors, juries, probation officers, and criminals), and theories of crime. Additional topics are covered based on the joint interest of students and the instructor. This is a seminar in which students are expected to discuss the readings and apply critical analysis to the extensive research in the covered areas. Emphasis is on understanding the psychological assumptions that the legal system makes (e.g., the ability of jurors to be fair and impartial and what it means to coerce a confession), psychological theory that might apply to the legal system, and analysis of methodological issues that arise when one attempts to generalize findings from psychology experiments to the real world of the legal system.

Graduate Classes

This page is currently being designed.

Phone: 858-534-3003
Fax: 858-534-7190
Email: eebbesen@ucsd.edu

UCSD Psychology Department

 

You can contact Dr. Ebbesen at any of the following:

Graduate classes are the most demanding. Students work hard, read extensively, and think deeply while the faculty just sit back and listen. Having to listen is the difficult part.