UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY
The Social, Decision, and Organizational Sciences Program brings together the subspecialties of Social Psychology, Decision Sciences, and Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
The goal of our graduate training is twofold: (a) to enable students to acquire multilingual skills in the scientific approaches and methods of these three sub-disciplines of psychology, (b) to acquire an in-depth expertise in one (or more) of these areas. Our program is based on the belief that exposure and familiarity with these three, naturally intersecting, domains will augment our graduates’ ability to carry out problem-focused research that crosses area boundaries and that is of increasing relevance in the social and behavioral sciences. The following is a brief description of the three component areas of SDOS, and their main research foci:
Social psychologists examine behavior, thoughts, and feelings as they relate to social situations. Topics includes social cognition, attitudes, goal systems, attributions, stereotypes, person memory, dyadic and group interactions, social influence, group decision making, relationships, prosocial behavior, terrorism, and shared knowledge.
Industrial-Organizational psychologists examine people as they interact in organizations and structured groups. Topics include leadership in organizations, teams, social networks, negotiation and conflict, diversity, work motivation, judgments of fairness in organizations, organizational climate and culture, employee selection and training, and measurement of behavior in organizations.
Decision scientists examine the basic processes involved in judgment and choice utilizing a combination of experimental and quantitative modeling techniques. Topics include economic decision making, advice taking, assessments of risk, group decision making, heuristic processes, overconfidence, probability judgment, hypothesis generation, and hypothesis testing, and the cognitive and personality variables affecting these phenomena.
SEPTEMBER 2021
Welcome back everyone! We have a new Brownbag schedule in our News/Events tab!
SEPTEMBER 2019
Welcome back everyone! We have a new Brownbag schedule in our News/Events tab!
APRIL 2019
We hope to see you in SIOP. Please see the news tab for more information about our reception
SEPTEMBER 2018
Welcome back everyone! We have a new Brownbag schedule in our News/Events tab!
APRIL 2018
We hope to see you in SIOP. Please see the news tab for more information about our reception
SEPTEMBER 2017
Welcome back everyone! We have a new Brownbag schedule in our News/Events tab!
University of Maryland
Department of Psychology
3141 Biology Psychology Building
College Park, MD 20742
Updated: October 2021