SOCIAL COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE

Social cognitive neuroscience seeks to integrate the theories and methods of its parent disciplines, social psychology and cognitive neuroscience.  As such, it seeks to explain social and emotional behavior at three levels of analysis: The social level, which includes descriptions of experience, behavior, and context; the cognitive level, which specifies information processing (i.e. psychological) mechanisms; and the neural level, which specifies neural systems that instantiate these processes.   The course begins with foundational concepts (multilevel analyses of behavior, converging evidence, the evolution of the human brain), which students use to analyze findings in number of core content domains (including emotional appraisal, emotion regulation, person perception, social affiliation and rejection, individual differences).

Prerequisites: Course equivalents of at least two of the following courses (W1001, W1010, W2630, W3410, W3480, W3485) and/or the instructor's permission