Social Psychology – (Ph.D.)

Contents

Research is focused within four core collaborative, thematic groupings, Social Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Forensic Psychology and Developmental Psychology. It also includes four formally constituted research centres, representing areas of concentration and excellence in research.

The research environment is designed to sustain a strong, vibrant research culture, encourage collaboration, and unite staff and students with shared research interests. Our themes ensure critical mass and create a highly energetic and stimulating intellectual climate.

Research activity is supported by:

* centrally co-ordinated provision and use of laboratories and technical support
* selection of speakers for our weekly departmental research colloquia
* weekly research meetings within each theme to develop, report and analyse research, and host our many visiting scholars
* several monthly small meeting series on specific areas of cross-cutting research (such as forensic, social development, emotion, social cognition and health).

Social Psychology

The Social Psychology research team contains 18 academic researchers, two internal and five international affiliates. Much of our social psychology research is co-ordinated through the Centre for the Study of Group Processes (CSGP), the largest research group in this area in Europe. The Centre attracts a stream of major international social psychology researchers, who visit the Centre regularly to work with our staff and are officially affiliated to the Centre. The Social Psychology group also includes chief editors of the journals Anxiety, Stress, and Coping (Stoeber), and Group Processes and Intergroup Relations (Abrams) and senior editors of other major academic journals in Social Psychology (Crisp: Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Douglas: European Journal of Social Psychology). Social psychology research at Kent is funded by a variety of British and international sources, currently and recently including ESRC, British Academy, Leverhulme, Age Concern, European Commission, European Science Foundation, Home Office, Equality and Human Rights Commission, Nuffield, and Joseph Rowntree Foundation, as well as government departments such as the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Work and Pensions.

The Social Psychology group includes the following themes:

Prejudice, intergroup contact and social categorisation

This research is carried out in our social psychology laboratories, at schools and in business organisations. For example, research within this topic focuses on questions such as: how contact between members of different social groups is represented psychologically, how intergroup contact affects prejudice, when out-groups are seen as less human, when and why children show prejudice, and why organisational mergers sometimes fail.

Social inequality and cohesion

Research on this topic combines theory-driven research and engagement with policy. It is conducted in real-life settings such as the
workplace, and involves national and international surveys. For example, the research focuses on the well-being of the elderly in Britain, work participation and motherhood, and discrimination against different groups in society.

Group dynamics and social influence

Laboratory studies and community-based research are conducted on this topic. For example, research focuses on co-operation in small groups, group decision making, perception and influence of leaders, social communication and language, subjective group dynamics in adults and children, the dynamics of prison gang activity, and the impact of alcohol on group processes.

Personality and social motivation

Much of this research is carried out in laboratories, through surveys and in clinical or other applied settings. For example, research has examined aggression, the adaptive functions of perfectionism, and consequences of mortality salience.

Social Psychology staff

Professor Dominic Abrams, Dr Lindsey Cameron, Professor Richard Crisp, Dr Karen Douglas, Dr Mike Forrester, Dr Roger Giner-Sorolla, Dr Tim Hopthrow, Professor Diane Houston, Dr Afroditi Pina, Dr Georgina Randsley de Moura, Professor Adam Rutland, Dr Joachim Stoeber, Dr Robbie Sutton, Dr Eduardo Vasquez, Dr Tendayi Viki, Dr Mario Weick, Dr Arnaud Wisman, Dr Jane Wood.