Social Psychology in the Law & Business

Unit 7 explores how the various social psychology principles we’ve studied in this course influence 1). the criminal justice system including law enforcement, legal, and court processes and 2). business including personnel selection, performance evaluations, leadership, work motivation, and economic decision making. For previous discussions the focus has been to demonstrate things you know and understand. For this discussion your initial post should identify two things you don’t understand that you want help to clarify or areas where you want to deepen your understanding.

It’s easy to review the PowerPoint slides and read the chapters for general understanding without reflecting very deeply on exactly what you do and do not understand. I want you to not focus so much on knowledge and information this week but more on application. As you read the chapters identify things you don’t understand very well, or only partially understand, how they apply to everyday life, what things you’d like to understand better, etc.

For your initial post:

• Identify two things covered in the reading that are unclear to you or things which you want to develop a deeper understanding about
• Provide sufficient detail to clearly identify your point of confusion or interest
• Give enough information to indicate your current understanding and the kind of help you want
• Indicate what specific type of help would be helpful (e.g., are you looking for an example, the experience of others as it relates to the issue, additional documentation, interpretations, opinions)
• State what you see as the value and benefit of better understanding and exploring this issue, why does it matter, what’s the practical application in daily life

Your response posts should respond to the specific requests of your classmates and in some way provide what you see as useful clarification, insight, or elaboration of the issues they identified. It would be useful for the person with the questions to give some type of feedback if the response is helpful, raised other questions, left him or her confused, etc. Learning at its best is an interactive, iterative process that builds understanding as we interact with the material. All too often we cut the process short and don’t learn as much as we could.