Social, Decision, and Organizational Science

The Social, Decision, and Organizational Sciences Program is a newly formed area within the Department of Psychology, that brings together the subspecialties of Social Psychology, Decision Sciences, and Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Our goal is to form an innovative and synergistic research environment that provides students with a unique set of skills and knowledge, while providing students with the opportunity for broad interdisciplinary training.

The Domain of SDOS

The SDOS area collectively studies how individuals perceive and process information about their social environment, make decisions, and behave in dyadic, team, organizational, and societal contexts. We examine bottom-up processes through which individuals and groups interact with their environments, as well as top-down processes whereby societal and organizational contexts influence individuals and groups. We study a broad array of individual, group, and organizational phenomena. Individual phenomena of interest include motivational processes, social judgment, attitudes/attitude change, judgment and decision making processes, cognitive decision theory, risk assessment, and self-processes. Group phenomena of interest include interpersonal relationships, social conflict and aggression, negotiations, social influence and conformity, small group processes, leadership, group decision making, technology and groups, diversity, and prejudice/discrimination. Organizational phenomena of interest include organizational culture and climate, national culture, and culture change. In SDOS, we believe that researchers need to be competent at using a wide variety of methods and theories to capture the complexity of human behavior. Thus, our students are exposed to both laboratory and field research; quantitative as well as qualitative methods of analysis; computational and mathematical models, and longitudinal and archival methodology.

SDOS provides the opportunity to:

• Study phenomena about the dynamics of individual and social behavior from multiple perspectives
• Address new research problems by integrating different approaches
  
• Provide more comprehensive and multifaceted training in human social processes and organizational behavior
• Develop strong connections with other social science disciplines such as sociology, political science, anthropology, and economics, and management
  
• Be a strong force internationally in domains of psychology related to social, organizational and decision making processes of both basic and real world significance (e.g., in domains of risk perception, security, leadership, immigration, conflict, culture, etc.)
  

Faculty in SDOS

The SDOS faculty is trained in a variety of disciplines in psychology, including Social Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Decision Sciences, and Industrial/Organizational Psychology. By bringing these divergent yet complementary perspectives together, we can break new theoretical and empirical ground, provide students with training that is both broad and deep, while simultaneously maintaining strength in the traditional areas of Social, Organizational, and Decision Science psychology.
SDOS currently includes ten faculty members and we are searching for additional faculty (click here to see our advertisement). Click on the name of a faculty member to link to his or her web page.

Michael Dougherty

Michele Gelfand

Paul Hanges

Arie Kruglanski

Judson Mills

Kent Norman

Cheri Ostroff

Chuck Stangor

Hal Sigall

Tom Wallsten

 

Graduate Training in SDOS

When applying to the SDOS Program, students may indicate which concentration (or concentrations) they are interested in pursuing for their graduate training (Social Psychology, Decision-Making, Industrial/Organizational Psychology). All incoming students in SDOS will take a common set of core classes (Judgment and Decision Making, Social Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Research Methods, and Statistics), attend a common brownbag, and will have access to all faculty as mentors. After core classes are completed, students can design their own graduate training program to reflect a combination of these sub disciplines or can concentrate in Industrial/Organizational, Decision-Making, or Social. Comprehensive exams will be geared to individuals’ courses of study and training. Click here to learn more about courses and general background about Social Psychology, Decision Sciences, and I/O Psychology at Maryland. Students are also encouraged to link to other areas within as well as outside of the department in designing their training. Many of our faculty and students go to a number of conferences throughout the year, such as the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, the International Association for Conflict Management, Psychonomics, the European Association for Decision Making, and the Academy of Management.