This course provides students with a broad overview of social psychological research. Central to the course is the idea that human beings are not isolated entities who process information like computers, but social animals engaged in a complicated network of social relations, both real and imagined. Constrained by our cognitive capacities and guided by many different motives and fundamental needs, we attempt to make sense of the social world in which we live and of ourselves in relation to it. We see how this influences perceptions of the self, perceptions of other individuals and groups, beliefs and attitudes, group processes, and intergroup relations. Readings emphasize how various theories of human behavior are translated into focused research questions and rigorously tested via laboratory experiments and field studies.