Syllabus

• Week 1

  Priming

  • Welcome

    Welcome to Cognitive Psychology: Employee and Customer Behaviour. In this first week on priming, Paul will take you through the unconscious influences on our behaviour and whether they can be harnessed to create behaviour change.

  • The least conscious element of MINDSPACE

    Priming is a very contested area of psychology. This week, Paul will give you a thorough oversight of research and real-life examples, including why a successful study may not work a second time.

  • Evidence for priming

    In this activity, we will discuss a number of studies that have shown priming effects and you will start to think about how you could design your own prime.

  • Controversy over prime studies

    In this activity, we will look at the controversy over prime studies. You will be able to engage critically with priming studies and will develop a basic knowledge of the issue of replication.

  • The SALIENT checklist

    In this activity, you will learn about the SALIENT checklist, and you will start to think about how to apply primes to change behaviour.

  • Wrap up

    In this activity, we will briefly summarise what you have learned about priming this week and look forward to salience, the topic covered next week.

• Week 2

  Salience

  • Introduction to Salience

    In this activity, you will be able to discuss the role of salience and framing in our decisions.

  • Making things salient

    In this activity, you will be able to examine components of salient messages and how to use messages salient to the general public. This activity is focused on applying salience to change behaviour.

  • Salience and heuristics

    You will examine heuristics and biases that influence how they focus their attention. Additionally, you'll learn how events and elements of our experience influence our attention, making sense of probabilities.

  • Attention

    In this activity, you will be able to discuss the importance of attention. Our attention is a scarce resource and our brains use shortcuts to direct our attention. These work well most of the time, but not always...

  • Wrap up

    In this short activity, we will wrap up what you have learned about salience and attention. We will then briefly introduce Affect or emotions, the topic to be covered next week.

• Week 3

  Affect

  • Introduction to affect and emotion

    In this activity, we will introduce affect and emotion. You will identify the most used understandings of emotions and highlight the role emotions play in making decisions.

  • Are emotions rational?

    In this activity, we will debate the relationship between rational behaviour and emotions, including the meaning of the former.

  • The neuroscience of affect

    In this activity, you will engage with some of the basic contours of neuroscientific findings with regard to affect.

  • Affect in practice

    In this activity, you'll examine how to use affect to change behaviour, but also whether you always should.

  • Wrap up

    In this short activity, we will summarise what you have learned about Affect.

Who will you learn with?