Daniel Gilbert | Fall 2019 | Harvard University
Advanced survey of classic and current research and theory in social psychology, including self, social cognition, attitudes, social influence, altruism and aggression, prejudice and discrimination, close relationships, and group dynamics.
General
Readings
Sep 6 – Prof. Daniel Gilbert (Psychology) — The Field of Social Psychology
History
Wegner, D. M., & Gilbert, D. T. (2000). Social Psychology—The Science of Human Experience. In H. Bless & J. P. Forgas (Eds.), The Message Within: The Role of Subjective Experience In Social Cognition And Behavior. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.
Ross, L., Lepper, M. R., & Ward, A. F. (2010). History of Social Psychology: Insights, Challenges, and Contributions to Theory and Application. In Gilbert, D. T., Fiske, S. T., & Lindzey, G. (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology (5th ed.). New York: Wiley.
Crisis
Gilbert, D. T., King, G., Pettigrew, S., & Wilson, T. D. (2016). Comment on "Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science." Science, 351, 1037-a–1038-a.
Wilson, B. M., & Wixted, J. T. (2018). The Prior Odds of Testing a True Effect in Cognitive and Social Psychology. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Sciences, 1(2), 186–197.
Sep 13 – Prof. Joshua Greene (Psychology) — Morality
Overview
Greene, J. (2013). Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them. New York: Penguin. [Read chapters 1–4. Material on pp. 12–16 and 108–113 is optional].
Graham, J., Nosek, B. A., Haidt, J., Iyer, R., Koleva, S., & Ditto, P. H. (2011). Mapping the Moral Domain Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 366–385.
Intuition and Reason
Haidt, J. (2001). The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment. Psychological Review, 108, 814–834.
Cushman, F. (2013). Action, Outcome, and Value: A Dual-System Framework for Morality. Personality and Social Psychology Review 17, 273–292.
Moral Development
Hamlin, J. K., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2007). Social Evaluation by Preverbal Infants. Nature, 450, 557–559.
Sep 20 – Prof. James Sidanius (Psychology) — Intergroup Relations
Dovidio, J.F., Gaertner, S.L. (2010). Intergroup Bias. In Gilbert, D. T., Fiske, S. T., & Lindzey, G.,
(Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology (5th ed.) New York: Wiley.
Pratto, F., Sidanius, J., Stallworth, L. M., & Malle, B. F. (1994). Social Dominance Orientation: A Personality Variable Predicting Social and Political Attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 67(4), 741-763.
Mintz, A., Terris, L., Sidanius, J., Hudson, S., Davis, G., & Bergh, R. (2019). The Theory of Gendered Prejudice: A Social Dominance and Intersectionalist Perspective. In A. Mintz & L. Terris (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Behavioral Political Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kurzban, R., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2001). Can Race Be Erased? Coalitional Computation and Social Categorization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98, 15387-15392.
Oct 4 – Prof. Ellen Langer (Psychology) — Health Psychology
Overview
Taylor, S. E. (2010). Health. In Gilbert, D. T., Fiske, S. T., & Lindzey, G. (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology (5th ed.) New York: Wiley.
Langer, E. J. (2009).Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility. New York: Ballantine Books.
Gawande, A. (2014). Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books. [Skim]
Health Biases
Dodd, S., Dean, O. M., Vian, J., & Berk, M. (2017). A Review of the Theoretical and Biological Understanding of the Nocebo and Placebo Phenomena. Clinical Therapeutics, 39, 469–476.
Schwartz, J., Mochon, D., Wyper, L., Maroba, J., Patel, D., & Ariely, D. (2014). Healthier by Precommitment. Psychological Science, 25, 538–546.
Park, C., Pagnini, F., Reece, A., Phillips, D., & Langer, E. (2016). Blood sugar level follows perceived time rather than actual time in people with type 2 diabetes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113, 8168–8170.
Social Support & Stress
Kok, B. E., Coffey, K. A., Cohn, M. A., Catalino, L. I., Vacharkulksemsuk, T., Algoe, S. B., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2013). How Positive Emotions Build Physical Health: Perceived Positive Social Connections Account for the Upward Spiral Between Positive Emotions and Vagal Tone. Psychological Science, 24, 1123–1132.
Pagnini, F., Phillips, D., Bosma, C., Reece, A., & Langer, E. (2015). Mindfulness, physical impairment, and psychological well-being in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Psychology & Health, 30, 503–517.
Oct 11 – Prof. Max Krasnow (Psychology) — Social Evolution
Social Exchange
Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1989). Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, Part II: Case Study—A Computational Theory of Social Exchange. Ethology & Sociobiology, 10, 51–97.
Cosmides, L., Barrett, H. C., & Tooby, J. (2010). Adaptive Specializations, Social Exchange, and the Evolution of Human Intelligence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 9007–9014.
The Altruism Debate
Fehr, E., Fischbacher, U., & Gächter, S. (2002). Strong Reciprocity, Human Cooperation and the Enforcement of Social Norms. Human Nature, 13, 1–25.
Delton, A. W., Krasnow, M. M., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2011). Evolution of direct reciprocity under uncertainty can explain human generosity in one-shot encounters. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108, 13335–13340.
Krasnow, M. M., Delton, A. W., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2016). Looking Under the Hood of Third-Party Punishment Reveals Design for Personal Benefit. Psychological Science, 27, 1–14.
West, S. A., Griffin, A. S., & Gardner, A. (2007). Social semantics: Altruism, cooperation, mutualism, strong reciprocity and group selection. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 20, 415–432.
Oct 18 – Prof. Julian Zlatev (HBS) — Decision Making
Overview
Kahneman, D. (2003). A Perspective on Judgment and Choice: Mapping Bounded Rationality. American Psychologist, 58(9), 697–720.
Heuristics and Biases
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124–1131.
Shah, A. K., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2008). Heuristics Made Easy: An Effort-Reduction Framework. Psychological Bulletin, 134(2), 207.
Debiasing and Choice Architecture
Milkman, K. L., Chugh, D., & Bazerman, M. H. (2009). How Can Decision Making Be Improved?Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(4), 379–383.
Krijnen, J. M., Tannenbaum, D., & Fox, C. R. (2017). Choice Architecture 2.0: Behavioral Policy as an Implicit Social Interaction. Behavioral Science & Policy, 3(2), 1–18.
Zlatev, J. J., Daniels, D. P., Kim, H., & Neale, M. A. (2017). Default Neglect in Attempts at Social Influence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(52), 13643–13648.
Oct 25 – Prof. Jason Mitchell (Psychology) — Mind Perception
Overview
Epley, N., & Waytz, A. (2010). Mind Perception. In Fiske, S. T., Gilbert, D. T., & Lindzey, G. (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology (5th ed., pp. 498–541). New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Gray, H. M., Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2007). Dimensions of Mind Perception. Science, 315, 619.
Autism
Baron-Cohen, S. (1997). Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Read chapters 1–5 (pp. 1–84)]
Development of Theory-of-Mind
Kovács, Á. M., Téglás, E., & Endress, A. D. (2010). The Social Sense: Susceptibility to Others' Beliefs in Human Infants and Adults. Science, 330, 1830–1834.
The Social Brain
Buckner, R. L., & Carroll, D. C. (2007). Self–projection and the brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 49–57.
Amodio, D. M., & Frith, C. D. (2006). Meeting of minds: The medial frontal cortex and social cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 7, 268–277.
Mitchell, J. P. (2013, September). The sovereignty of social cognition: Insights from neuroscience.
Nov 1 – Prof. Leah Somerville (Psychology) — Emotion
Overview
Barrett, L. F., Mesquita, B., Ochsner, K. N., & Gross, J. J. (2007). The Experience of Emotion. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 373–403.
The Structure of Emotion
Ekman, P. (1992). An Argument for Basic Emotions. Cognition & Emotion, 6, 169–200.
Feldman Barrett, L. (2011). Constructing Emotion. Psychological Topics, 20, 359–380.
Emotional Expression
Shariff, A. F., & Tracy, J. L. (2011). What Are Emotion Expressions For? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 395–399.
Susskind, J. M., Lee, D. H., Cusi, A., Feiman, R., Grabsi, W., & Anderson, A. K. (2008). Expressing Fear Enhances Sensory Acquisition. Nature Neuroscience, 11, 843–850. [Skim]
Emotion in Social Contexts
Feinberg, M., Willer, R., & Keltner, D. (2012). Flustered and Faithful: Embarrassment as a Signal of Prosociality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 81–97.
Tangney, J. P., Stuewig, J., & Mashek, D. J. (2007). Moral Emotions and Moral Behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 345–372.
Nov 8 – Prof. Michael Norton (HBS) — Inequality
Davidai, S., & Gilovich, T. (2016). The Headwinds/Tailwinds Asymmetry: An Availability Bias in Assessments of Barriers and Blessings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111, 835–851.
Norton, M. I., & Ariely, D. (2011). Building a Better America—One Wealth Quintile at a Time. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 9–12.
Kuziemko, I., Buell, R. W., Reich, T., & Norton, M. (2014). Last-place aversion: Evidence and redistributive implications. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129, 105–149.
Shah, A. K., Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2012). Some Consequences of Having Too Little. Science, 338, 682–685.
Kawachi, I., Kennedy, B. P., Lochner, K., & Prothrow-Stith, D. (1997). Social Capital, Income Inequality, and Mortality. American Journal of Public Health, 87, 1491–1498.
Nov 15 – Prof. Todd Rogers (HKS) — Applied Social Psychology
Overview
Rogers, T., Goldstein, N. J., & Fox, C. R. (2018). Social Mobilization. Annual Review of Psychology, 69, 357–381.
Sunstein, C. R., & Thaler, R. H. (2003). Libertarian Paternalism Is Not An Oxymoron. The University of Chicago Law Review, 1159–1202.
Insights and Applications from Other Fields
[SKIM THESE TO UNDERSTAND EFFECTS, READ MORE CLOSELY IF INTERESTED IN HOW THESE FINDINGS ARE FRAMED IN THESE FIELDS]
Gerber, A. S., Green, D. P., & Larimer, C. W. (2008). Social Pressure and Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment. American Political Science Review, 102, 33–48.
Bursztyn, L., & Jensen, R. (2015). How Does Peer Pressure Affect Educational Investments? The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130, 1329–1367.
Grant, A. M., Campbell, E. M., Chen, G., Cottone, K., Lapedis, D., & Lee, K. (2007). Impact and the Art of Motivation Maintenance: The Effects of Contact With Beneficiaries on Persistence Behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 103, 53–67.
Thaler, R. H., & Benartzi, S. (2004). Save More Tomorrow™: Using Behavioral Economics to Increase Employee Saving. Journal of Political Economy, 112, S164–S187.
Examples from Recent Education Research
Bergman, P., Lasky-Fink, J., & Rogers, T. (in press). Simplification and Defaults Affect Adoption and Impact of Technology, But Decision Makers Do Not Realize It. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
Rogers, T., & Feller, A. (2018). Reducing Student Absences at Scale by Targeting Parents’ Misbeliefs. Nature Human Behaviour, 2, 335.
Nov 22 – Prof. Ashley Whillans (HBS) — Subjective Well-being
Overview
Diener, E. (2013). The Remarkable Changes in the Science of Subjective Well-Being. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 663–666.
Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The Role of Positive Emotions in Positive Psychology: The Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions. American Psychologist, 56, 218.
What Does “Happiness” Mean and How Can It Be Measured?
Kahneman, D. (1999). Objective Happiness. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Well-being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology (pp. 3–25). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Money and Happiness
Jebb, A. T., Tay, L., Diener, E., & Oishi, S. (2018). Happiness, Income Satiation, and Turning Points Around the World. Nature Human Behaviour, 33–40.
Kahneman, D., Krueger, A. B., Schkade, D., Schwarz, N., & Stone, A. A. (2006). Would You Be Happier If You Were Richer? A Focusing Illusion. Science, 312, 1908–1910.
Can Happiness Be Increased?
Sheldon, K. M., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2006). Achieving Sustainable Gains in Happiness: Change Your Actions, not Your Circumstances. Journal of Happiness Studies, 7, 55–86.
Dunn, E. W., Whillans, A. V., Aknin, L. B., & Norton, M. I. (In Press). Prosocial spending and buying time: Money as a tool for increasing subjective well-being. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology.
Recommended Reading (Optional)
Sheldon, K. M. (2018). Understanding the Good Life: Eudaimonic Living Involves Well-Doing, Not Well-Being. In The Social Psychology of Living Well (pp. 116–136). Routledge.