Dr Frederic Basso, QU.3.14

This course is available on the MSc in Media and Communications (Media and Communications Governance), MSc in Organisational and Social Psychology, MSc in Psychology of Economic Life, MSc in Social Research Methods, MSc in Social and Cultural Psychology and MSc in Social and Public Communication. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

Students on degrees without a psychology or media component may only attend subject to numbers, their own degree regulations and at the discretion of the teacher responsible.

The course takes the position that social psychology is the key to understanding real-world economic life by taking in account cognitive, affective and social processes. Main concepts: analytic/experiential systems in decision-making, metaphors, images, stories/storytelling, self/extended self in consumption, dramaturgy/staging, social roles, face-to-face interactions, emotional labour/dissonance, gift economy, sharing economy, social group (inclusion/exclusion), stigma, social norms, nudging, disenchantment of the economic world, post-modern hyper-realities, experience economy, resistance to persuasion (inertia, scepticism, reactance), resistance to consumption (avoidance, minimisation, boycott/active rebellion).

15 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the LT.

Students will be expected to produce 1 piece of coursework in the LT.

Reading lists will be provided for each topic, the following are of general use; S E G Lea, R M Tarpy & P Webley, The Individual in the Economy, Cambridge University Press, 1987; A Lewis, P Webley & A Furnham, The New Economic Mind: The social psychology of economic behaviour, Harvester, 1995.

Essay (100%, 3000 words) in the LT.