Program

    The social/cultural psychology area at Penn provides rigorous research training within an interdisciplinary framework. We take a broad view of potential influences on social behavior and psychological processes, with a particular focus on evolutionary processes, culture, and political psychology.  Department faculty and students are actively engaged in empirical work both in traditional laboratory settings and in the field.  Current research areas include the study of emotion, human sexuality, food habits, morality, forgiveness, narratives and persuasion, the impact of media and the Internet on human relationships, and social/ethnic identity.

    The twin emphases of scholarship and research accomplishment pervade the graduate program. The first-year program is divided between courses that introduce various areas of psychology and a focused research experience. A deep involvement in research continues throughout the graduate program, and is supplemented by participation in seminars, teaching, and general intellectual give-and-take.

    One important interdisciplinary complement to the social/cultural psychology area at Penn is the Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict.  SACSEC is a Center devoted to the understanding of ethnopolitical conflict, both its causes and consequences, from a multidisciplinary perspective.  The Center faculty includes clinical and social psychologists, from Penn, Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore Colleges, as well as faculty from political science, anthropology, sociology, psychiatry, and history.  The Center runs a weekly lunch seminar, an intensive summer institute, and supports fellows and some research projects.  Areas of current interest that center on psychology include: responses to trauma, identification and ethnic identity, persuasion, social perception, forgiveness, and empathy.

Faculty

Francisco Gil-White, Assistant Professsor

Broad  interests and orientation: the evolution and structure of the psychological adaptations responsible for social learning and which make cultural transmission possible. Specific interests: (1) the cognition of ethnicity, and how it arises from norm-coordination; (2) the cognition and ethology of prestige processes, and how they are involved in the acquisition of high- quality information; (3) narrative memory, and how it affects the  cultural spread and stability of certain kinds of stories; (4) decision theory and experimental economics in terms of how local cultural beliefs affect preferences.

Evolutionary approaches to social life, with a focus on adaptations designed to serve functions associated with cooperation in groups. Related interests in race and ethnicity, social categorization, social exclusion, and political psychology. Parallel interest in experimental economics.

Cultural psychology and cultural evolution.  Interactions of innate and cultural processes, particularly in human food habits and the emotion of disgust. Morality and emotion. Acquisition of preferences and values. Magical thinking. Lay attitudes to food, health and risk, in a cross-cultural (France, India, Japan, USA) perspective.

Associated Faculty

Jon Baron, Professor of Psychology

Heuristics and biases in decision making and moral judgment, utilitarianism, medical decision making, public policy implications of decision research.

K. Etty Jehn, Professor of Management, Wharton

Intragroup and intergroup conflict; norms and values; cross-industry and cross-national comparisons of values, beliefs, goals, and conflict styles; lying and deceit in organizations.

Social cognition, especially stereotyping; quality of life after medical intervention; individual differences in sensitivity to disgust, attractions of horror films, psychology of extreme groups (terrorist, cult, combat).

Links

Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict
Positive Psychology
Social Psychology Network
Society for Personality and Social Psychology
International Society for Political Psychology
 

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updated December 5, 2005