Social Psychology
Social psychologists in the School of Psychology are all members of the Centre for Identity and Intergroup Relations (CIIR), which aims to advance the academic and public understanding of some of the key challenges facing individuals, groups and societies, from the perspective of social and political psychology. Our research focuses on the role of identity in explaining attitudes and behaviour, examines intergroup relations in a variety of contexts both within and beyond Northern Ireland, and considers interpersonal and intergroup social and communicative interactions and emotional reactions.
Key topics under investigation in the Centre include encouraging psychological resilience among children living in conflict and post-conflict societies, understanding and changing perceptions of gender/leadership, inter/intra group trust, developing and testing interventions (e.g. different forms of intergroup contact, educational programmes such as Shared Education) to generating intergroup tolerance, examining the consequences of multiculturalism for the individual and society, and understanding what happens during interpersonal and intergroup interactions, and the role that laughter, humour, cognition and emotion play.
Based in Belfast in the context of post-conflict Northern Ireland, the Centre is ideally situated to provide world-leading research on the myriad challenges facing complex and multifaceted societies throughout the world today. The Centre is multidisciplinary, working with academics in the Schools of Anthropology, Architecture, Education, and Politics amongst others, multi-methodological, conducting both basic and applied research using a variety of different methodologies (e.g., experimental, survey, interview and ethnographic research, affective computing and social signal processing), and multinational, with collaborators and research projects taking place across Europe, North and South America, and Australia. We have two bespoke laboratories, the identity and intergroup relations laboratory which contains cubicles with computer for experiments, and an area for interviews and interactive research, and social interactions laboratory which incorporates hardware and software to observe and collect data from a variety of modalities simultaneously during social interactions, and to take part in virtual reality experiments.