Synopses & Reviews
You are a member of a social world on a planet that is home to about 7 billion people. This social world is filled with paradox, mystery, suspense, and outright absurdity. Explore how social psychology can help you make sense of your own social world with this engaging and accessible book. Roy F. Baumeister and Brad J. Bushman's SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE, 3rd Edition can help you understand one of the most interesting topics of all--the sometimes bizarre and baffling but always fascinating diversity of human behavior, and how and why people act the way they do.
About the Author
Roy F. Baumeister holds the Eppes Eminent Professorship in Psychology at Florida State University, where he is the head of the social psychology graduate program and teaches social psychology to students at all levels. He has taught introductory social psychology to thousands of undergraduate students. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1978, and his teaching and research activities have included appointments at the University of California at Berkeley, Case Western Reserve University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Virginia, the Max Planck Institute in Munich (Germany), the VU Free University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. Baumeister is an active researcher whose work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and by the Templeton Foundation. He has done research on the self (including self-esteem and self-control), the need to belong, sexuality, aggression, and how people find meaning in life. In 2005, the Institute for Scientific Information concluded from a survey of published bibliographies that he was among the most influential psychologists in the world. According to Google Scholar, his works have been cited over 70,000 times in the scientific literature. In his (very rare) spare time, he likes to ski and play jazz. In 2013 he received the William James Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Association for Psychological Science in all of psychology, as recognition of his lifetime achievements and contributions to basic scientific research in psychology. Brad J. Bushman is Professor of Communication and Psychology at Ohio State University. He is also a professor at the VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where he teaches and does research in the summer. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri in 1989. He has taught introductory social psychology courses for over 20 years. Dubbed the "Myth Buster" by one colleague, Bushman's research has challenged several societal myths (e.g., violent media have a trivial effect on aggression, venting anger reduces aggression, violent people suffer from low self-esteem, violence and sex on TV sell products, warning labels repel consumers). His research has been published in the top scientific journals (e.g., Science, Nature) and has been featured on television (e.g., ABC News 20/20, Discovery Channel), on radio (e.g., NPR, BBC, CBC), in magazines (e.g., Newsweek, Sports Illustrated), and in newspapers (e.g., New York Times, Wall Street Journal). He lives in Lewis Center, Ohio with his wife Tam Stafford, and their three children Becca, Nathan, and Branden. In his spare time he likes to ride his bicycle (especially in Amsterdam), practice Korean martial arts (Tang Soo Do Moo Duk Kwan; he earned his black belt in 2011), and listen to jazz music (e.g., Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Michiel Borstlap).
Table of Contents
1. The Mission and the Method. 2. Culture and Nature. 3. The Self. 4. Behavior Control: The Self in Action. 5. Social Cognition. 6. Emotion and Affect. 7. Attitudes, Beliefs, and Consistency. 8. Social Influence and Persuasion. 9. Prosocial Behavior: Doing What's Best for Others. 10. Aggression and Antisocial Behavior. 11. Attraction and Exclusion. 12. Close Relationships: Passion, Intimacy, and Sexuality. 13. Prejudice and Intergroup Relations. 14. Groups.