集中于社会心理学领域的博士的目的是训练个人适应各种学术和应用环境。注意力集中的研究重点包括态度，情感和动机，目标和自我调节，社会认知，社会神经科学，社会临床接口，社会情感发展，预防健康，情绪与认知互动以及项目评估。
The basic philosophy of the Department of Psychology is to promote independent scholarship and to ensure competence in the fundamental areas of psychology and the specific subareas offered. The department trains psychologists who are scientists and scientist-practitioners and, in so doing, provides broad research training, substantive academic areas of study, teaching opportunities, and applied experience.<br>The goal of the social psychology program is to train individuals for a variety of academic and applied settings. Research emphases within the concentration include attitudes, affect and motivation, goals and self-regulation, social cognition, social neuroscience, social-clinical interface, social-emotional development, preventive health, emotion-cognition interaction, and program evaluation.<br>During the program, students work closely with a specific faculty member who serves as the student's research mentor. The program offers coursework covering a broad background in psychology, in-depth study of research methodology and statistics, and advanced coursework in Social Psychology. Students attend a weekly brown-bag research seminar, are provided with a guided introduction to college-level teaching.