Psychology for EFL

I've got a couple psychology courses at my university but I find myself struggling a bit with the underlying philosophy which is essentially about competition, ie. understand and handle your partner in order to make a profit. This clearly is in stark contrast with the kind of cooperation philosophy a teacher needs to embrace in order to be able to help and support their partner.

I vividly remember a role-play we did on a management course. Two people were supposed to get an amout of oranges to sort out a serious nationwide disaster in their respective countries. Most pairs were arguing for a good while to finally arrive at a kind of compromise (which lead to a loss of many lives anyway) while we were done in a matter of seconds because the very first question was: So what do you need? That way, we immediately realized that while I was after the skin my partner was after the juice! Sure, it was a little, easy-to-overlook detail but the win-win solution was one of cooperation, not competition.

However, there's a lot to psychology and all Krashen's followers keen on lowering the affective filter have to develop such skills. Personally, I could with a bit of training in this area.