Social psychology

Fülszöveg

Preface
"No wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise" claims Alice in Wonderland's Mock Turtle. "Why, if a fish came to ME, and told me he was going on a journey, I should say 'With what porpoise?'" Had the Mock Turtle asked us our purpose in undertaking this textbook writing journey, the answer would have been simple. We wanted to convey to an imdergraduate audience some of our excitement about and appreciation for the richness and variety of human social behavior, by presenting social psychology in a conceptually integrated way. Both of us have felt frustration at textbooks that portray social behavior as a list of interesting but unrelated phenomena explained by numerous never-to-be-heard-from-again theories. We have felt disappointment when laboratory studies are presented in isolation from "real world" settings—the courtroom, school, supermarket, or hospital— where real applications take place. And we have been concerned that the very special nature of social... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Preface
"No wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise" claims Alice in Wonderland's Mock Turtle. "Why, if a fish came to ME, and told me he was going on a journey, I should say 'With what porpoise?'" Had the Mock Turtle asked us our purpose in undertaking this textbook writing journey, the answer would have been simple. We wanted to convey to an imdergraduate audience some of our excitement about and appreciation for the richness and variety of human social behavior, by presenting social psychology in a conceptually integrated way. Both of us have felt frustration at textbooks that portray social behavior as a list of interesting but unrelated phenomena explained by numerous never-to-be-heard-from-again theories. We have felt disappointment when laboratory studies are presented in isolation from "real world" settings—the courtroom, school, supermarket, or hospital— where real applications take place. And we have been concerned that the very special nature of social psychology as the interface between the individual and the social world becomes lost in treatments that emphasize one of these aspects over the other.
Our purpose, then, has been integration. Our goal is to present both social behavior and the science that studies it in a conceptually and themat-ically integrated way. We want to show students not just the wonderfully diverse what of social behavior, but the impressively orderly and organized how and why of it. Our pursuit of these goals is reflected in three ways of weaving together the content of this book.
Three Types of Integration
INTEGRATiON OF DiVERSE TOPICS THROUGH UNiFYiNG PRiNCIPLES. Eight basic principles that apply to social behavior emerge and re-emerge in the text. The two most fundamental ones are that people construct their social reality and that social influence pervades social life. Simply put, people help define their social environments at the same time their social environments influence them. In addition, we structure our discussion of people's interaction with their social world by introducing three overarching motivational principles and three processing principles that direct and determine thoughts, feeUngs, Vissza