Social Psychology

Student experiences

Gergana Kuzmova
(Bulgaria) graduated in July 2006.
She was part of the first cohort of students in our programme.  Read about what she is doing now (April 2009): Gergana story

 Marieke Roskes
 (Holland, graduated July 2008)

Since I had (and have) a big passion for social psychology, and a curiosity  to how people influence each other, the Research Master Social Psychology at the VU seemed to be the perfect place for me.

The methodology and statistics courses during my bachelor at Utrecht University made me believe research was something difficult and boring, and would at best result in vague conclusions about how things work with some probability. However, during the research project for my bachelor thesis I discovered that, contrary to my beliefs, doing research actually can be a lot of fun. It provided me with the opportunity to gather information on topics I wondered about, and figure out why people behave in the way they do. So, I decided I was going for a research master. Since I had (and have) a big passion for social psychology, and a curiosity to how people influence each other, the Research Master Social Psychology at the VU seemed to be the perfect place for me.

I have to admit I was a bit shocked at first. I was used to having four hours of class a week, together with 500 other students. Now I was part of a small group consisting of only seven students. No free-riding, or sitting quietly in the back of the room. I was pleasantly surprised to find all my fellow students motivated and active people. I enjoyed the vivid discussions and the group projects, even though it was hard work.

I loved the diversity of the master. We worked with a wide variety of topics, including emotion, motivation and neuroscience. We practiced many research related skills, including building computational models (to simulate reality),  using physiological measures (such as heart rate and skin conduction), and programming experiments. Even more than the diversity I loved the freedom to follow my own interests in many of the assignments, particularly during the three research projects in which I designed and executed my own studies to investigate how people react to being outperformed.

I found the RM to be stimulating and I learned a lot about all aspects of research. For me it was clear I wanted to continue in this direction, and I was very excited to learn that I was accepted as a PhD student at the University of Amsterdam, just one hour before my graduation. This September I started to work on research into creativity. Under supervision of Carsten de Dreu and Bernard Nijstad I will investigate if people become more creative if this helps them reaching a goal. And if that goal is reached, do people just stop being creative, or are they still able to come up with creative ideas? For me, the Research Master Social Psychology was a great start of a career in (scientific) research.

Marco van Bommel
(Holland, graduated July 2009)

For me, it was not only important that the program was good, but the atmosphere was also imperative. I was very pleased to find out that the ambiance was quite informal, and everyone was very friendly.

When I started my study in psychology, I always pictured myself becoming a clinical psychologist. However, during my bachelor in Utrecht I soon realised that doing research in psychology is a lot of fun. Therefore, I decided to take a minor in methods and statistics. During that minor I learned a lot about social psychology and became more and more interested. At the end of my bachelor I knew for sure: I wanted to do a research master in social psychology. After a thorough search for research masters throughout Holland, it quickly became clear that the Research Master Social Psychology at the VU was the best fit for me.

The research master totally lived up to my expectations. The quality of the courses and teachers was very good. There was exactly the right combination of theory building, and skill development. For most courses it seemed that learning to become creative, while maintaining an analytical and critical view, was just as important as learning theories.

Although the emphasis was definitely on theories and skills from social psychology, there were plenty of courses and workshops about related fields in psychology, like neuropsychology and biological psychology. You really get encouraged to think outside the field of social psychology. There was even a course about bridging social psychology with different fields of behavioral sciences. This made the research master very diverse and never boring. The diversity of the program definitely influenced my master thesis, in which I use and combine theories and skills from cognitive-, neuro-, and biological- psychology.

For me, it was not only important that the program was good, but the atmosphere was also imperative. I was very pleased to find out that the ambiance was quite informal, and everyone was very friendly. The teaching staff and even the students really seemed to motivate each other to do well. A notable feature of the research master was that the classes were quite small. Because of this, everyone knew each other, and there was plenty of room for engaging discussions and to ask questions. The discussions during classes were very inspiring, and helped me to better understand certain theories and even come up with interesting research ideas. Right now, I have plenty of research ideas for the upcoming years, and more importantly, I feel confident that I have the skill set and knowledge to put them into practice.