Prof Alex Gillespie CON.4.16

This course is available on the MSc in Behavioural Science, MSc in Organisational and Social Psychology, MSc in Psychology of Economic Life, MSc in Social and Cultural Psychology and MSc in Social and Public Communication. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

Dialogue is central to interpersonal conflicts, corporate negotiations, and societal debates. While dialogue is popularly construed in terms of reaching consensus, the reality entails rhetoric, manipulation and deception. This course takes the view that conflict is necessary, and it examines how dialogue can make a clash of difference productive and creative.



Topics covered will include: theory and science of dialogue; misunderstandings (when you see it, it is gone); reading verbal and non-verbal cues (listening beyond the words); negotiation and bargaining (creating wins, and win-wins); conflict mediation (when negotiation didn’t work); the dark arts and their detection (persuasion, framing, deception); crisis dialogue & speaking up (power and dissent); the defences and their detection (denial, dismissing, rationalizing); creativity & dialogue (the emergence of something new); artificial and authentic dialogue (the role of AI in dialogue); and digital dialogues (silos and improving the ‘quality’ of dialogue).



The course will provide practical hands-on experience. In workshops students will gain experience intervening in dialogue, analyzing dialogue (transcripts, videos), and trying out cutting edge methods for the automated analysis of dialogue.

15 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the WT.

A 500-word plan outlining the approach to the summative assessment.

Bail, C. A., et al. (2018). Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(37), 9216-9221.

Burris, E. R. (2012). The risks and rewards of speaking up: managerial responses to employee voice. Academy of Management Journal, 55(4), 851–875.

Deutsch, M., Coleman, P. T., & Marcus, E. C. (2011). The handbook of conflict resolution: theory and practice. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.

Gillespie, A. (2020). Disruption, self-presentation, and defensive tactics at the threshold of learning. Review of General Psychology, 24(4), 382-396.

Harmon, D. J. (2019). When the fed speaks: arguments, emotions, and the microfoundations of institutions. Administrative Science Quarterly, in press.

Hawlina, H., Gillespie, A., & Zittoun, T. (2019). Difficult differences: a socio-cultural analysis of how diversity can enable and inhibit creativity. The Journal of Creative Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.182

Ireland, M. E., et al. (2011). Language style matching predicts relationship initiation and stability. Psychological Science, 22(1), 39–44.

Marková, I. (2016). The dialogical mind: common sense and ethics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Pentina, I., Hancock, T., & Xie, T. (2023). Exploring relationship development with social chatbots: A mixed-method study of replika. Computers in Human Behavior, 140, 107600.

Taylor, M., & Kent, M. L. (2014). Dialogic engagement: Clarifying foundational concepts. Journal of Public Relations Research, 26(5), 384–398.

Templeton, E. M. et al. (2022). Fast response times signal social connection in conversation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(4), e2116915119.

Rubin, J. Z., & Brown, B. R. (2013). The social psychology of bargaining and negotiation. London, UK: Academic Press.

Vrij, A., Hartwig, M., & Granhag, P. A. (2019). Reading lies: nonverbal communication and deception. Annual Review of Psychology, 70(1), 295–317.

Essay (100%, 3000 words) in the ST.