Social Identity and Categorization

3 credits

This directed readings course will feature a selection of articles from classic psychological experiments pertaining to social identity and psychological essentialism. By the end of the course, the student should be able to identify likely mechanisms of social categorization, explain the limitations of current research paradigms in understanding group-related phenomena, describe the role of social identity in categorizing others, and critically evaluate the consequences of these phenomena in the real world. Topics will include: social complexity theory, intersectionality, the VUCA Challenge, and racial essentialism.