Transcript

INSTRUCTOR

I've always been really interested in what goes on between people, what makes some people get on really well, and what makes some people immediately seem to get off on the wrong footing with each other. And as a psychologist, at first I thought maybe people had quite fixed personalities. And maybe some people just don't match each other, and they're not going to get on.

But the more I learned as a psychologist, I started to realise that actually a lot of these behaviours emerge between people. So it's not that I have a particular fixed personality and you have a particular fixed personality and if those two come together, we won't get on. It's more that the dynamics of the situation emerge between us.

And I've always found that a really interesting idea. And in this course, what we're going to do is we're going to have a look at an interpersonal model that will introduce you to how some of these behaviours actually work, because one of the things psychologists have noticed is that quite often, things go wrong in conversations. And I'm sure you'll have probably experienced this in your own life.

But they've noticed that these things that go wrong tend to happen in quite predictable ways. And what you'll learn about on this course is those psychological principles that underpin that model of when interactions work to create rapport and when they don't. And hopefully this will be useful to you in lots of different spheres of life, from your own personal relationships, your relationships at work, and also your relationships in community settings.