Introduction of psychological methods and theories to understand organizational decision-makers. Introduction of core concepts and corresponding operationalization through presentation and joint paper discussion. Preparation and presentation of design ideas by individual students and respective peer-to-peer feedback.

Your ability to generate insights about organizations, industries, and societies is often linked with your understanding of the underlying cognitive processes. This course will introduce you to psychological methods and theories you can use to understand organizational decision-makers, inter-individual heterogeneity of personalities and cognitive abilities, and subsequently help to evaluate and predict organizational development. You will be introduced to key psychological concepts such as bounded rationality/ethicality, cognitive dissonance, inter-individual differences, multi-level perspectives, and a set of multidisciplinary methods (e.g., lab, field & survey experiments, process tracing), and apply them to your specific research question.

On successful completion of the course, you should be able to:

• critically evaluate empirical evidence in psychology,
• develop your own research design investigating the underlying mechanisms guiding behavior,
• provide constructive feedback on experimental research designs.

Full attendance is expected for all lectures and experiments. If you cannot attend a lecture due to exceptional/unforeseeable circumstances, please contact the lecturer.

(If you are affected by quarantine or show symptoms of COVID-19 please contact your lecturer and do not participate in in-person lectures. Adjustments concerning the situation with COVID-19 will be announced in class / via email.)

Within each class, we will learn about psychological constructs of cognition by discussing current papers and the development of various research design ideas.
 

Class evaluation consists of three parts:

• Peer feedback during classes (20 %)
• Oral presentation of a research idea (30%)
• Pre-registration of a (fake) planned study (50%)