Illustration by Jun Cen.

Social Cognition: How People Make (Sense of) Minds

Course Details

How do we make sense of other people’s minds (and our own)?

This course offers advanced students an in-depth account of research in social cognition—the study of how people perceive, interpret, and respond to social information to navigate their social world. We will draw on classic and cutting-edge research to examine how social and cognitive processes shape the way that individuals perceive, categorize, and reason about others; navigate group dynamics; and contruct their own identities.

This course is structured around four main themes. First, we will trace the historical foundations of social cognition and examine influential theories (e.g., naïve realism, automaticity) and methodological advances that have shaped the field. Second, we will explore how individuals understand people by examining the formation of mental representations, social attributions, and spontaneous first impressions. Third, we will explore how these processes scale up to shape the relationship between individuals and societies, centering topics such as intergroup dynamics, prejudice, polarization, collective action, morality, and cultural evolution. Finally, we will circle back to the self, and consider how people continually make sense of their own subjective experiences, judgments, decisions, and self-views in an ever-changing social world.

Throughout, we will reflect on how social cognition operates as a dynamic, context-dependent process between individuals and their environment, and critically consider how cultural and societal forces shape both the phenomena we study and the methods we use. By the end of the course, students will be able to critically evaluate social–cognitive research, apply it to real-world problems, and better understand their own thought processes.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

1. Understand and explain core concepts in social cognition
2. Describe historical theories and methodological advances in the study of social cognition
3. Understand how cognitive mechanisms shape social thought and behavior
4. Apply social-cognitive theories and frameworks to interpret everyday social interactions, relationships, and real-world issues
5. Critically evaluate empirical research in social cognition, identifying strengths, limitations, and theoretical implications
6. Compare different methodological approaches used to study social cognition and discuss their respective advantages and challenges
7. Develop scientific communication and research skills by synthesizing and presenting findings from research articles in written and verbal formats
8. Propose research questions to investigate social-cognitive phenomena
9. Reflect on the broader impact of research for ethics and society

Grading

At a Glance

Students are required to attend classes in-person, actively participate in class discussions & activities, complete mini projects for each module of the course, provide peer evaluations, and write a paper outline or first draft (to be evaluated by peers) that build toward and culminate in a final paper on a research topic of their choice. They will defend their final paper in person with a short written exam.

Assessment Breakdown

In-Class Participation (18%)

This class requires in-person attendance. There are 11 lectures, and students will receive 2% of their grade for attending class and participating in class discussions and low-stakes quizzes (i.e., NIFTYs: Nearly Impossible to Fail Tests–Yay!), up to 18% total. This means students can miss 2 classes without it impacting their grade. Please use this buffer for emergency situations.

Peer Review (2%)

Another 2% will come from in-class peer evaluations of written work in the latter half of the course. The goal is to provide timely feedback on students’ outline and first draft of their final paper.

Mini Projects (4 × 10%)

There will be 4 mini projects, one project per module, each worth 10% of the final grade. These mini projects are the primary way for students to demonstrate their ability to think deeply about what they’ve learned in class and apply social cognition concepts through hands-on work: designing studies, evaluating evidence, analyzing real interactions, and reflecting on one’s own experiences. Each includes a short writing component that builds toward the final paper. It is best for students to think about these mini projects and to work on them over multiple days.

Final Project & Paper (20%)

Students will complete the summative research project by drawing ideas from class, their own lives, and their own systematic review of the relevant literature. For the final project, students may choose from four formats. Students can choose to write a theoretical review synthesizing the scientific literature on a topic, propose a novel empirical study in the format of a registered report, write a reflective essay connecting research to a specific case or event, or prepare a policy recommendation that applies research to a real-world issue in their community or society.

In-Person Exam (20%)

A written exam related to the student’s final project. Students will defend their paper by answering questions about their paper, describing their thought process, and demonstrating that they own the work. There are no surprises: students write the paper, so they know it.

* Two lowest participation scores are dropped. Excused absences do not require documentation for dropped scores.

Required Reading

The following textbook will be made available online for free. If you are accessing the text off-campus, you will need to enable 2FA (and possibly VPN). It is also available in library reserve if you prefer a hard copy.

• Moskowitz, G. (2024). Introduction to Social Cognition: The Essential Questions and Ideas. Guilford Press. https://www.guilford.com/books/Introduction-to-Social-Cognition/Gordon-Moskowitz/9781462554546/summary

Additional required readings will feature a mix of empirical research articles (i.e., articles reporting the results of empirical studies or experiments), review articles (i.e., articles articulating a theory or offering a broad overview of a research area), and chapters from popular books written by scientists.

Readings are assigned ahead of time. To optimize your learning experience, it’s best to complete the assigned readings by the date of the lecture.

Sometimes, readings will provide a broad overview that will be complemented by deeper exploration in lecture; other times, readings will offer a close look at one experiment that will be complemented by broader theoretical context in lecture. Readings will also serve as a jumping-off point for class discussions. See Canvas or the Course Schedule below for a complete list of required readings.

Class Community and Culture

This class is our learning community. Students learn better when they feel they belong (Cheryan & Markus, 2020, Psychological Review). Together we create a learning environment where all members of the class feel affirmed, accepted, and safe to express their ideas and questions, regardless of one’s ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, cognitive style, ability, status, body type, religion, avocation, socioeconomic status, language ability, and so on. Any form of harassment, bullying, dehumanizing or discriminatory behavior will not be tolerated.

In this class, every member is encouraged to question their own assumptions and challenge those offered by others—including those offered by myself—in a way that is constructive and cooperative. When asking critical questions or providing feedback, I encourage you to explain why the questions being asked are important to the other person or to the topic in general, and to think from the other person’s perspective. The intention to think for the other person makes the discussions much more constructive and cooperative.

Course Policies

• Classes start on time. Important administrative announcements will sometimes be made at the start of class. Please make sure to come with enough time in advance so that you don’t miss anything.

• Sick protocol. This class is our learning community. Please stay home and rest if you are feeling ill and/or experiencing cold or flu symptoms (e.g., coughing, sneezing, fever). You can miss 2 classes without it affecting your grade or having to worry about notifying the instructor or TAs. Please use these free “missed class passes” instead of coming to class sick. You do not have to email us to let us know.

• Collaboration and plagiarism. Learning is an individual process. Developing your own capacity to reason and argue is one of the learning goals of this course. You must reach your own understanding of the problem and discover a path to its solution. Discussions with other people are permitted and encouraged. However, when the time comes to complete coursework, the reasoning, argumentation, creative thinking, and writing must be your own work. For each assignment, you must specifically describe whatever help (if any) you received from others and include the names of individuals with whom you collaborated. This includes help from friends, family, classmates, and course staff members (e.g., teaching assistants).

• Use of AI assistants. The policy for use of AI assistants parallels that for human collaboration. Students are expected to do their own thinking. It’s fine to use AI assistants as an advanced search engine (e.g., to generate suggestions about papers to read–but be aware that they often hallucinate references), to revise writing for spelling/grammar/clarity after you have already developed a draft, or to define unfamiliar terms. However, you should acknowledge that you did so when you turn in your work and specify how you used the AI assistant in your work. It’s not okay to do anything that results in the generation of drafts, outlines, answers to questions in the assignment or arguments in your written work. It’s also not permitted to use AI to summarize readings without reading them. If you find yourself putting a question from class into an AI assistant, uploading a PDF of a reading into an AI assistant and asking for a summary, or prompting an AI assistant to provide an initial answer or draft for you, you are in violation of the course policies. Do not use AI assistants to generate any of the text you turn in for your final paper. Students who are found in violation of this policy will be reported to the Academic Integrity Office and will receive a failing grade in this course.