As a part of my curriculum I had the opportunity to make a transdisciplinary excursus to the Integrated Social and Cognitive Psychology program at International University Bremen and attend a seminar on attitudes change and formation, taught by Prof. Dr. Jens Förster.

I wrote my class assignment on the impact of previous attitudes on current perception and behavior and reviewed several empirical findings in this light.

Working on this topic was valuable both from a substantive as well as a methodological point of view. Shedding light on some of the complications involved in attitude change suggested some insightful links to, for example, value research in political sociology, a subfield I have been interested in for a while. Moreover, as a student new to social psychology I was again thrilled by the analytical rigor supporting every step of the argument with accurate empirical findings. Transdisciplinarity at its best.

Yet, working on the assignment also quickly reminded me of what I find less appealing about social psychology: some of the questions discussed, however deeply rooted in empirical findings they may be, are so miniscule in their scope and explanatory power that I find it sometimes hard to acknowledge their significance, at least from a problem-oriented perspective of the social sciences.

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