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Accessibility statement
Qualification dates
StartEnd
03 Oct 2026Jun 2027
In this module, you’ll explore the key issues shaping life in today’s fast-moving, digitally mediated, crisis-ridden world. You’ll discover how people make sense of themselves and others in situations of uncertainty, from conflict and violence to the navigation of misrecognition by young migrants. You’ll learn why political activism arises and how happiness and disgust are socialised. Drawing on current research at the OU and beyond, you’ll learn how social psychologists develop theories and methods to make sense of sense-making today, and you’ll develop sense-making skills to better equip you in your own future life, work and learning.
The study programme is divided into an introduction, five main blocks and a conclusion, with additional weeks for review and revision.
Block 1: Social psychology as sense-making for a contemporary society

Block 1 begins by covering what social psychology is and its origins. Social psychology is the discipline of making sense of people in society as they make sense of self, others and the events affecting them. The block gives a historical overview of social psychology that does not shy away from challenging the standard story of psychology’s steady progress. The block continues with reviewing traditional experimental and more recent ‘critical’ developments before concluding by addressing whether these historically opposing ways of social psychological sense-making traditions can be brought together.
Block 2: Subjectivity
Block 2 explores the core issue of subjectivity, which is the viewpoint of a person trying to make sense of things. A person who makes sense of events is called a subject, and they use different ideas and experiences to understand what happens around them. Social psychologists need to consider that the people they study are also sense-making subjects with their own subjectivity. This requires social psychologists to recognise that, when analysing someone else’s interpretation, they are doing so with their own subjectivity.
Block 3: Relationality

As social psychology is all about relations, this block tackles different aspects of the core concept of relationality. First, you’ll explore the often troubled relationality experienced by minors who have migrated to the UK unaccompanied by guardians. Then, by tackling disgust, you’ll see the emotional basis of some of our core relations to the world. Something of our ‘disgusted’ relationship to rotten food and other noxious substances is carried over into our social relations with those people whose appearance or actions we viscerally reject. Finally, you’ll explore the gendered aspects of relationships mediated by social media.

Block 4: Politics
Block 4 approaches the ways in which micro-level subjectivities and relationalities are organised at the more macro levels through which political power operates and is organised. You’ll examine how everyday citizen relations and practices of citizenship are being transformed in a political world mediated by digital technologies. You’ll also reflect on how the nation serves as a taken-for-granted political setting through which sense-making is framed. Finally, you’ll investigate the motivational basis of political sense-making, such as why people engage in political action.
Block 5: Culture
Culture is central to any understanding of what makes us human. You’ll see how culture is fundamental to each individual's sense-making, and how culture binds people together and establishes differences. You’ll then reflect on how narratives shared within a culture serve as tools for sense-making. Those narratives are related to shared rituals through which people in a given place and time manage life transitions, including those associated with death and illness.
This is an OU level 3 module. OU level 3 modules build on study skills and subject knowledge acquired from previous studies at OU levels 1 and 2 with the OU. They are only intended for students with recent experience of higher education in a related subject.
If you have any doubt about the suitability of the module, please speak to an adviser.
You’ll get help and support from an assigned tutor throughout your module.
They’ll help by:
Online tutorials run throughout the module. While they’re not compulsory, we strongly encourage you to participate. Where possible, we’ll make recordings available.
Course work includes:
You'll be provided with two textbooks and have access to the module website, which includes:
The OU strives to make all aspects of study accessible to everyone, and this Accessibility Statement outlines what studying D360 involves. You should use this information to inform your study preparations and any discussions with us about how we can meet your needs.
To find out more about what kind of support and adjustments might be available, contact us or visit our Disability support website.
Social psychology for the 21st century starts once a year – in October.
This page describes the module that will start in October 2026.
We expect it to start for the last time in October 2035.
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