This workshop consists of two modules. In each module leading international scientists will teach on a topic in their area of expertise. The topics of both modules are specializations in social psychology and their neighboring disciplines.
Module A: Human cooperation. Much of human thought, affect, and behavior is rooted in situations in which people can either be self-oriented or group-oriented. The goal is to advance our understanding of the factors that promote human cooperation. We will discuss interdependence, economic games, some neuroscience, all with the aim to increase our understanding of altruism, empathy,cooperation, revenge, and competition.
Module B: Trust and Relationships: This module provides an introduction to contemporary social-psychological research on trust and relationships. In so doing, we will discuss the contributions of an evolutionary approach to social psychology and a realist view on validity and measurement. With those conceptual tools under our belts, we will consider specific adaptive scenarios that might have given rise to the evolution of psychological mechanisms relevant to trust and relationships, and we will explore recent design evidence that opens the way for inferences about the existence of psychological adaptations for,for example, revenge and forgiveness. We will also review approaches to measuring relationship science, and revenge and forgiveness in the field and in the lab. In addition to faculty lectures and (hopefully) vigorous class discussion, students will (a) prepare and present short summaries and critiques of recent research on these topics, and (b) prepare and group-based proposals for new research of their own.