Product Description

For Social Psychology courses at the sophomore through senior level. This broad-based overview of the field of social psychology by best selling psychology author Bob Feldman, introduces and integrates the theories, research, and applications of the discipline, capturing the excitement of this diverse field as it is evolving today. The book is designed to show the relevance of social psychology to students' lives while acquainting them with the scientific basis of the discipline.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3525364 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 640 pages

From the Publisher
This balanced overview of the field of social psychology introduces and integrates the theories, research, and applications of the discipline -- capturing the excitement of this diverse field as it is evolving today. It examines both the traditional areas of the field as well as recent findings, showing how social psychologists apply their discipline to help solve significant social problems -- including those relevant to students' everyday lives.

From the Inside Flap
PREFACE

A glance at any daily newspaper illustrates the extremes of human social behavior. We see violence, heroics, war, political scandal, terrorism, bravery, and a multitude of other manifestations of the extraordinary range of social conduct. At the same time, our own personal lives—involving friends, family, neighbors, lovers, acquaintances, and even chance encounters with total strangers—reflect the stuff of social behavior.

Each of our experiences with our social environment raises a host of questions. What are the sources and consequences of kindness and cruelty? Why and how are people susceptible to the influence of others? How do we develop and maintain our relationships with other individuals? How do people come to grips with the meaning of their social environment? How does our culture influence our behavior?

The discipline of social psychology addresses such questions. Embracing a vast range of human behavior, the field seeks to answer the fundamental issues that underlie our social world. It is a discipline that holds the promise of providing real improvements in the human condition.

The central challenge in writing an introduction to social psychology is to capture the essence of a dynamic, ever-changing discipline. Social psychology must be presented in a way that fosters readers' intrinsic interest in social psychological phenomenon, doing so with scientific integrity and accuracy. THE GOALS OF THIS BOOK

To meet this challenge, the third edition of Social Psychology has been written keeping in mind three major goals. First and foremost, it provides a broad, balanced overview of social psychology. It introduces readers to the theories, research, and applications that constitute the discipline, examining both the traditional areas of the field as well as more recent innovations. The book pays particular attention to the applications developed by social psychologists. While not slighting theoretical material, the text emphasizes what social psychologists know and how this knowledge may be applied to real-world problems. In fact, the very structure of the book is designed to make the applied material as prominent as the theoretical material by integrating more applied chapters throughout the text, rather than relegating them to the end of the book.

The second major goal of the text is to explicitly tie social psychology to students' lives. The findings of social psychologists have a significant degree of relevance to students, and this text illustrates how these findings can be applied in a meaningful, practical sense. For instance, applications are presented within a contemporaneous framework. The book includes current news items, timely world events, and contemporary uses of social psychology that are designed to draw readers into the field. Numerous descriptive scenarios and vignettes reflect everyday situations in students' lives, explaining how they relate to social psychology. For example, each chapter begins with an opening prologue that provides a real-life situation relating to the chapter subject area. This scenario is reconsidered at the end of the chapter, where integrative, critical-thinking questions tie the prologue to the chapter content. Furthermore, all chapters also have The Informed Consumer of Social Psychology section, which explicitly suggests ways to apply social psychological findings to students' experiences. Each chapter also includes a feature called Applying Social Psychology that discusses ways social psychology research is being used to answer problems of an applied nature.

Finally, the third goal of the text is to make the field of social psychology engaging, accessible, and interesting to students. The book is user friendly and written in a direct, conversational voice, meant to replicate as much as possible a dialogue between author and student.

Social Psychology, third edition, is a text that students can understand and master on their own, without the intervention of an instructor. To that end, it includes a variety of pedagogical features. Each chapter contains a Looking Ahead overview that sets the stage for the chapter, a running glossary, a numbered summary, a list of key terms and concepts, and an epilogue. In addition, each chapter has three Review and Rethink sections that provide enumeration of the key concepts and questions that promote and test critical thinking.

In short, Social Psychology seeks to blend and integrate theory, research, and applications. Rather than concentrating on a few isolated areas and presenting them in great depth, the emphasis is on illustrating the breadth of social psychology. Concentrating on the scope of the field permits the examination of a variety of evolving and nontraditional areas of social psychology. Finally, the text seeks to illustrate social psychology as it now stands and is evolving, rather than providing a detailed historical record of the development of social psychology. While covering the classic studies, the decided emphasis is on the field in its current state.

Ultimately, this text seeks to provide a broad-based overview of social psychology, emphasizing its theories, research, and applications. It is meant to show the relevance of social psychology to students' lives while acquainting them with the scientific basis of the discipline. It is designed to be a user-friendly text, one that captures the excitement—and promise—of a growing, developing scientific field.

CHAPTER-OPENING PROLOGUES
Each chapter begins with a short vignette that describes an individual or situation that is representative of basic social psychological phenomena. For instance, chapter prologues tie descriptions of ethnic cleansing, James Byrd Jr.'s murder at the hands of white extremists, and a couple falling in love to social psychological principles presented in their respective chapters.

APPLYING SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
This feature, found in every chapter, describes current social psychological research or research issues applied to everyday problems. They include descriptions of ambivalent stereotyping, the slime effect (explaining why we dislike likeable behavior), and attitude change over the course of the life span.

SPEAKING OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
These boxes report interviews that were conducted with people who use the findings of social psychology, either explicitly or implicitly, in their work. For the most part, interviewees are not social psychologists but rather people whose professions employ social psychological findings. For example, interviewees include a newspaper reporter (social cognition), an advertising executive who uses celebrity endorsements (interpersonal attraction), and a trial consultant (law and politics).

SOCIAL.WEB
Four essays describing the impact of technology and the World Wide Web are interspersed throughout the book. These include discussions of the impact of violent video games, finding love in cyberspace, use of email, and social stigmas.

EXPLORING DIVERSITY
These sections, integrated within every chapter, highlight issues relevant to the multicultural society in which we live. They illustrate social psychological issues relevant to race, ethnicity, and culture. For example, various Exploring Diversity sections examine cultural influences in attribution, cultural determinations of health, ethnic differences regarding the stigma of obesity, relationships among gay and lesbian couples, and gender and cultural patterns of leadership.

THE INFORMED CONSUMER OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Every chapter includes information on specific uses that can be derived from research conducted by social psychologists. For example, various chapters discuss how to draw appropriate conclusions from others' behavior, overcome stereotypes, deal with anger, and resist persuasion.

REVIEW AND RETHINK
Interspersed throughout each chapter are three short recaps of the chapters' main points, followed by questions designed to provoke critical thinking.

SOCIAL LINKS COMPANION WEBSITE (CW)
These marginal icons indicate that relevant material can be found on the World Wide Web by going to the Feldman Social Psychology Website (prenhall/feldman). By referring to the specific book page where the Social Link is found, readers will find a link to a relevant Web page.

END-OF-CHAPTER MATERIAL
Each chapter ends with a numbered summary (Looking Back), list of key terms and concepts, and an epilogue containing critical-thinking questions about the chapter-opening vignette. WHAT'S NEW IN THIS EDITION?

A considerable number of new topics and areas have been added to the third edition. For instance, advances in such areas as culture, emotions, close relationships, psychophysiology.; and evolutionary approaches to social phenomenon receive expanded and new coverage.

In addition, a wealth of contemporary research is cited in this edition. Hundreds of new research citations have been added, most from the last few years. A sampling of topics either newly included in this edition or expanded also illustrate

From the Back Cover
This broad-based overview of the field of social psychology by best selling psychology author Bob Feldman, introduces and integrates the theories, research, and applications of the discipline—capturing the excitement of this diverse field as it is evolving today. The book is designed to show the relevance of social psychology to readers' lives while reacquainting them with the scientific basis of the discipline. Unique chapter structure and organization. Organizes book so that chapters containing more applied topics are integrated throughout the book to demonstrate to readers how social psychologists use theory, research, and applications to help solve significant social problems. Speaking of Social Psychology features provide readers with interviews conducted with people who use the findings of social psychology in their work, offering suggestions for particular career paths and examples of how social psychology is used outside the field. Informed Consumer of Social Psychology feature describes specific uses that can be derived from research conducted by social psychologists. Social.Links marginal icons link students to the book's Companion Website. Social Webs features discuss social psychological issues related to technology and the use of the Internet and the Web.

For readers interested in a social psychology text that is easily applied to everyday life.

Customer Reviews

A comprehensive and balanced view of a complex field.
As a university psychology instructor who favors a text demonstrating good science, I appreciate the careful documentation of research contained in this book. I also appreciate the personal touch of the anecdotes at the beginning of each chapter as a way of making the subject matter relevant to students. The authors do a masterful job of presenting a complex field, such as social psychology, to the college student. Teaching psychology as a science is a real challenge today and this text offers instructors a powerful tool for that purpose.

Social Beings in a Social World
I highly recommend "Social Psychology" to practically any adult who can read. We are social beings and understanding each other helps us to create better relations. A better world. This book is excellent to examine and understand not only others' behavior but also ours.

Here is an excerpt that caught my attention: "how we interpret, analyze, remember, and use information about the social world-suggests that we are far from perfect in our ability to think clearly about other persons and reach accurate decisions or judgments about them."

"Social Psychology" covers many branches of psychology but the chapters give you enough information to learn just the basics. I think that this is great for lay people or new students in Psychology. I found that the personal stories that both authors used, helped me to better understand the topic of the chapters; however the, I met this psychologist and have been friends with since, led me to believe that this reaction was due to a schema. Perhaps our society has created a schema in which others' names define who we are. I particularly don't sympathize much with this.

The colorful pictures and cartoons in the book, I enjoyed greatly. I tend to be very visual in many occasions. In fact, I feel that many of the pictures were more thought provoking than the text. I found them very helpful to understand the subject. I also sensed that the targeted audience was mainly young students since many of the studies were conducted or focused on young students. I just wished that the authors had not forgotten that there are older people (like this book reviewer) who go back to school or who want to learn about social psychology. Once again, I highly recommend this book to anyone. You'll learn to view the world under a new perspective.

Review of Baron & Byrne, "Social Psychology. 9/e"
I make specific what book this is a review of, because if you look at the user reviews for Shelly Taylor & D. Sears' social psychology textbook, you will find the exact same 5 reviews as are below mine. Either Amazon or some user are up to something sneaky.

Despite the comments below, which may or may not reflect someone who has actually read or used the book, my comments are based on using this book when I took the course and ordering it for a course I am teaching this summer.

Regarding the infractions cited below, I have not found this text any worse than others. It covers a wide range of an exciting subfield of psychology, and it does so in a way accessible to an initiate to the field. Allyn and Bacon provide excellent support for the text, as well.

Finally, I wish to note that while I am currently working in the same Psychology department as Donn Byrne, the second author, we are not affiliated in any way.