These are just a few of the questions that vex and excite the social psychologists who teach on the MSc in Social psychology at the University of Surrey. As psychologists, we study human action, emotion, cognition, and discourse. As social psychologists, we understand human behaviour to be inseparable from its social context. We use a range of methodologies; experiments, questionnaires, interviews and archival analyses (to name only the most obvious). Our work is organised around investigating novel, surprising creative explanations of the ways that people are, as the anthropologist Michelle Rosaldo put it, ‘social beings first, and individuals only second.’

The MSc in Social Psychology addresses these issues through specialist courses which draw on classic and contemporary research, engage students with a diverse range of methodological practices and draw on the course team’s various professional skills.