Information about the Social Psychology Graduate Major
The graduate program in Social Psychology features a distinguished faculty and numerous research opportunities in laboratory and field settings within a culturally diverse and multifaceted metropolitan area. Our faculty areas of expertise are broad and center on basic research on close relationships and intergroup relations. In addition, faculty interests include political psychology, evolutionary psychology, family psychology, stress and coping, and issues pertaining to culture, ethnicity, and gender. A distinctive feature of our program is our long tradition of interest in social problems and the applicability of rigorous, theory-driven research to addressing them.
Doctoral students in our program gain familiarity with social psychology through a two-quarter course sequence during the first year of graduate work. In subsequent years, students are required to take three additional seminars on topics of their choosing. Students concentrate on a single research project in the first and second years (Psych 251) culminating with the receipt of the Master’s degree. As training progresses thereafter, social psychology students typically work with their primary advisor or co-advisor to develop an increasing focus on their own particular topics in research and expertise in the associated methods.
Methodological and statistical training covers experimental design and procedures, survey and field research methods, and univariate and multivariate techniques, including use of structural equation modeling and hierarchical linear modeling. Although not required, but social psychology students can also minor in quantitative methods, health psychology, or diversity science.
Above and beyond individual research supervision and coursework, most social psychology faculty members run weekly lab meetings with graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting scholars. Seminars and colloquia presentations by distinguished visiting speakers, students, and faculty are also offered and round out the course of studies.
Along with the regular Social faculty in the Psychology Department, the Social faculty include a number of social psychology affiliates who are faculty members in other departments and schools, including the Anderson School of Management, Communications, Political science, the Geffen School of Medicine, and the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.
The program encourages connections and interaction with faculty and students in other disciplines (e.g. Anthropology, Communications, Political Science, Psychiatry, and Sociology) which enables students to incorporate interdisciplinary study in a wide range of social and health sciences into their graduate education in social psychology.
More Social Psychology info
- Faculty
- For a list of Required Courses please see the Psychology Handbook