Social Psychology

Welcome to the website of the Social Psychology Group
of the University of Hamburg!

Social psychology is fundamentally concerned with the influence other people have on all psychological processes: our thinking, feeling and behavior and how we as individuals make sense of other people.

At the Social Psychology Group at the University of Hamburg, we primarily research fundamental mechanisms of personal perception and impression formation, social identity formation and intergroup attitudes. For example, we investigate the following questions: What conclusions do we draw about people from minimal behavioral information? What role do stereotypes about social groups or ideological attributions play? Are there individual differences in spontaneous impression formation? How is social identity structured? What particularities underlie social identity formation when people identify with several social groups or groups that are stigmatized in society? How do intergroup attitudes form and develop during childhood and adolescence? What are the roles  school, parents and peers in these processes?

You can find out more about the individual research projects in our department under the heading Research.