Faculty
Julie Ingemann

Course Coordinator
Signe Vikkelsø, Associate professor

English skills

Developing and market products and services, understanding consumer behaviour, motivation and needs, manage organisational change and development and attracting and maintaining qualified labour, are just some of the areas where business and organisations can benefit from a psychological perspective. Economy often operates with man as ”Homo Economicus”: a rational being that always seek to utilirize and maximise benefits. But often reality draws a quite different picture. Our wishes needs and behaviours are far from always individual rational calculations of cost benefit. But what are they then?

This introductory course we examine how psychology has developed from international roots in biology and philosophy to become a science that aims to describe and explain how we think, feel and act. The course provides an overview of the theoretical foundations of psychology and reviews the results of classic studies and current research in the major areas of the field. Among many topics, we will look into the great controversies of nature and nurture, free will, consciousness, human differences, self and society.

The course will adopt an inductive approach and will combine lectures, case studies and student presentations. The aims to give the students a broad introduction to the foundational theories of psychology and to develop their ability to describe, analyze, understand and reflect upon psychological issues in the context of business and organisations.

3. Sensation and Perception – 3 lessons Optimal marketing and advertisement, developing products and services that are assessable and easy to understand, design of workspaces are just some of the areas where knowledge of perception is beneficial. How do we organize, integrate and interpret sensory elements in order to know the world around us? How do we manage to grasp the meaning of sensorial input? And what affect our attention? To answer this, this lecture looks into different types of perception; distance, motion and form perception and different approach models such as the process model approach and the neuroscience approach.

4. Learning and memory – 3 lessons Our time is characterised by continuous change. As knowledge, technology and consumer needs changes business and organisations have to be able to adapt and require new skills and knowledge. To optimize quality and efficiency it is vital that business and organisations have a basic understanding of principles of learning and memory. How do we encode, memorize and retrieve information? In this lecture we look at the character of learning and examine its varieties.

5. Thinking and cognitive development – 3 lessons Targeting costumer and selling products and services demands focus on mechanisms of thought. The theme of this lecture is thinking and focus on the mental activities we use whenever we e.g. try to solve a problem, judge the truth of an assertion, or weigh the pros and cons of an important decision. Cognitive development is about growth in knowledge and intellectual skills and what role experience and genetic heritage play for this development. Understanding character and varieties in thought and cognition improve the ability to target communication, solving problems and avoid the pitfalls in decision making.

6. Social development and cognition – 3 lessons Our social abilities are to a large extend reflections of our social relations. Choosing the right employee or working partner, knowing how to persuade and change attitudes and understanding how we perceive others and our self is the main focus of this lecture. In general, how do we think about, feel about, and behave toward other people, and in turn, how do the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of other people influence us? And is our perception accurately?

7. Social influence and relationships – 3 lessons The individualized perception of our time is largely modified by theories of social influence. The lecture considers the way in which our behaviour, our moral actions, our willingness to take risks or to be good to others, are all shaped by the social situations and social groups in which we find ourselves. Leadership and group work are key in most modern business and organisations today. But how are we as humans attuned to each other and how can our everyday behaviours be shaped by the people around us? What is good leadership and what are the pros and cons of cooperation?

8. Intelligence – 3 lessons Modern society is often characterized as a knowledge society, demanding continues development in skills, qualifications and competences. The main emphasis in this lecture will be to explore the differences among people, the differences in intelligence, which raises the questions: what is intelligence? Is it possible to measure intelligence? Are there different types of intelligence? And what competences and qualifications are required to successfully meet the demands on modern markets?

9. Personality – 3 lessons Finding the right person for a position or planning career path, business and organisations as well as individuals will benefit from theories of personality. People differ from one another not just in their intelligence, as discussed in the previous lecture, but also in their desires, feelings, behaviour and in their view of themselves and others. How does the different parts of each person come together to make a person who he or she is? In this lecture we look at the several different approaches to personality, and see how each focuses on a different part of the puzzle of who we are.

10. Summary and exam – 3 lessons The last lessons will draw on the knowledge and experience of the course and seek to draw a unified and coherent framework of a psychological perspective in the context of business and organisations. Further more, requirements and expectations for the exam will be explained, discussed and practiced.

Inter- and intrapersonal competences and communicative competences

At the end of the course, the student must be able to apply a psychological perspective in assessing potentials and create solutions in modern business and organisations, based on:

Type: Written group synopsis (4-5 pages) followed by individual oral exam (20 minutes per student), graded by teacher and internal censor on the 7-point scale. The group consists of 3-5 students. The grade is based entirely on the oral exam.

Aids: All

Assessment: 7-point scale based on oral presentation

Henry Gleitman, Daniel Reisberg and James Gross: “Psychology”. W W Norton & Co Inc, 2007 - supplemented by net based material; documentaries, clips of relevant studies and experiments, a range of test that helps the student evaluate own progress and online ”Labs” where the student can try out psychological experiments.