UCSB的社会心理学研究生课程名列全国顶级课程之列，它为实验性社会心理学家提供培训，以使其在学术机构中担任研究和教学职务，并在私营部门从事研究职业。该计划在面向理论的基础研究与面向问题的应用研究之间取得平衡。社会心理学计划由教师组成，他们的研究涉及人类社会行为的各个方面。教师提供了一种针对社会心理现象的多方面方法，研究了个体，人际，群体内和群体间行为背后的认知，情感和动机过程。当前研究的特定主题包括，例如态度转变和社会影响力，刻板印象，自我知识，污名，应对压力大的生活事件，决策，判断，推理和归因推理，情感
The Social Psychology Program consists of faculty members whose research spans the spectrum of human social behavior.<br><br>Providing a multi-faceted approach to social-psychological phenomena, faculty investigate the cognitive, affective, and motivational processes underlying intraindividual, interpersonal, intragroup and intergroup behaviors. Specific topics currently studied include, for example, attitude change and social influence, stereotyping, self-knowledge, stigma, coping with stressful life events, decision making, judgment, inference and attributional reasoning, affective and cognitive processing, interpersonal perception and impression formation, close relationships, challenge and threat, and social influences within virtual environments. Many of these topics are the focus of research by more than one faculty member, allowing students to study them from a variety of perspectives.