Faculty
Julie Ingemann

Course Coordinator
Signe Vikkelsø

English skills

Developing and adapting products and services, predicting customer behaviour and needs, analysing marked changes, and attracting and maintaining qualified labour. Those 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 would always seek to utilize 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?

In this introductory course we examine how psychology has developed from 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.

This lecture would set the framework for the use of a psychological approach in business and organisations. It will introduce the students to psychology´s content and on the diversity of psychology´s perspectives. We will look at the scientific methods and how to generalize from research.

2. Evolution and the biological roots of behaviour

Our physical capacities reflect our genetics and their interaction with the surrounding environment. Many business and organisations have an increased awareness of the importance of physical and mental wellbeing for the quality of performance. We have learned a great deal about physiology, and anatomy by studying other animals – but what about our behaviour? Can a biological perspective help us to understand who we are and why we act as we do? In this lecture we will pursue this broad issue looking into phenomena like stress, attention and mental performance and take a closer look at how the brain and the nervous system supports all of our capacities, achievements, and behaviours. We reflect upon: should all psychological questions have biological answers?

3. Perception

Communicating visions and statements as well as developing products and services that are assessable and easy to understand, 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 visual input? 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. Thinking and cognitive development

Targeting costumer needs efficiently 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 thinking and cognition improve the ability to target communication and optimize processes of learning.

5. Social development

Our social abilities are to a large extend reflections of our social relations. Attracting and maintaining qualified labour business and organisations needs to understand the character and impact of relationships in modern life. What can we expect of other people and what is expected of us? How do our relationships to the various people in our lives emerge and to what extent are we changed by each of these relationships?

6. Social cognition and emotion

On globalized markets business and organisations have to be attentive to variation in human thought and perspective. What works in one context could certainly not work in another. Perceiving and understanding others and ourselves is the main focus of this lecture. 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? How does culture shape the way we think about others? And do we perceive ourselves accurately?

7. Social influence and relationships

The individualized perception of our time is largely modified by theories of social influence. Targeting and creating costumer needs and understanding the character of modern labour can strongly benefit from knowledge of the impact of society. This lecture evolves around how we as humans are attuned to each other. How many of our everyday behaviours are shaped by the people around us – such as when and what we eat, how we dress, what music we listen to and so forth. 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.

8. Intelligence

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

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

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. Furthermore, 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: Individual oral exam with synopsis made in groups of 3-5 students, min 1,5 and max 2,5 pages pr. student.

Aids: All

Assessment: 12-grade 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