and small group activities, and downloadable graphics.
So there you have it. I hope you find this textbook to be relevant, concise, accurate, and readable. I also hope that it will stimulate your interest and spur you to further explore the nature, causes, and consequences of social behavior. If you have questions, comments, and/or suggestions for improvement, I hope that you will contact me.
Acknowledgments
First, I’d like to thank the people at Sage: Executive Editor Reid Hester for helping to finalize the text and see it through to publication; Michael Carmichael and Luke Block at Sage U.K. for their guidance and patience and for keeping the book on track; Michele Sordi, vice president, for bringing me to Sage, embracing my vision for the book, and believing in me as an author; Nathan Davidson and Lucy Berbeo, for helping to strengthen the text and online materials; and Morgan McCardell, Keri Dickens, Monira Begum, and Allana Clogan, who provided valuable editorial assistance at various stages along the way. Second, I’d like to acknowledge Wendy Nelson who, as a publisher’s textbook representative, listened to my frustration with existing textbooks and encouraged me to write my own. Third, I want to express my gratitude to the former students who assisted me with literature searches, locating online resources, and other tasks: Jessica Richards, Catherine Di Leo, Adrienne Ostrove, Shannon Engel, Michele Liscio, Mike Dellagoia, Harrison Duncan, Matt Korduner, and Hannah Grassie. Fourth, I want to state my appreciation for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) and the Association for Psychological Science (APS) for allowing us to provide students with free access to key published articles. Fifth, I’d like thank the individuals who reviewed my book at various stages along the way, including Amy E. Sickel (Walden University), Anila Bhagavatula (California State University, Long Beach), Laura N. May (South University), Pamela Lemons (Salt Lake Community College), John Skowronski (Northern Illinois University), Warren Reich (Hunter College, City University of New York), Courtney Mozo (Old Dominion University), Jamie Loran Franco-Zamudio (Spring Hill College), and Melissa Streeter (University of North Carolina, Wilmington). Finally, and most importantly, I’d like to thank my family: my wonderful wife Pam—for her unwavering emotional support and her invaluable help with editing and preparing the text and ancillary materials—and my daughter Maddie—for putting up with my (occasional) grumpiness and intense focus on the book.
SAGE edge offers a robust online environment you can access anytime, anywhere, and features an impressive array of free tools and resources to keep you on the cutting edge of your learning experience. Go to edge.sagepub.com/barrett to access the SAGE edge companion website.
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A complete online action plan includes tips and feedback on your progress and allows you to individualize your learning experience.
Chapter summaries with learning objectives reinforce the most important material.
Interactive exercises and meaningful web links make it easy to mine internet resources, further explore topics, and answer critical thinking questions.
EXCLUSIVE! Access to full-text SAGE journal articles that have been carefully chosen to support and expand on the concepts presented in each chapter.
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An author-created test bank with 125 questions per chapter, including multiple choice, short answer and essay, provides a diverse range of pre-written options as well as the opportunity to edit any question and/or insert personalized questions to effectively assess students’ progress and understanding.
Editable, chapter-specific and author-created PowerPoint® slides offer complete flexibility for creating a multimedia presentation for the course.
Sample course syllabi for semester and quarter courses provide suggested models for structuring one’s course.
An Instructor’s Manual provides chapter-by-chapter lecture notes, discussion questions, class activities, and more to ease preparation for lectures and class discussions.
A robust set of Web Exercises hones in on three key areas (Applications, Social Media and Technology, and In the News), connecting chapter coverage with current web resources and related, carefully crafted follow-up exercises to help students master key concepts.
Multimedia content includes videos that appeal to students with different learning styles.
About the Author
Daniel W. Barrettis a professor in the Department of Psychology at Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, Connecticut. He received his PhD in Social Psychology from Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, and his BA from the College of Social Studies, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. Prior to joining WCSU, Dr. Barrett served as a postdoctoral research fellow in Health Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. At WCSU, he has served as the director of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching and the director of Faculty Advising. He is currently the president of the University Senate. His research interests include persuasion, social influence, and cross-cultural psychology.
Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
A married couple in West Hollywood, CA, celebrate the June 2015 Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.
David McNew/Stringer/Getty Images News/Getty Images.
Learning Objectives
1.1 Define social psychology and contrast it with the other social sciences and psychology subdisciplines.
1.2 Identify the six fundamental questions of human existence and explain their relevance to social psychology.
1.3 Outline how social psychology has evolved since the early 20th century; explain how the first textbooks contributed to the development of social psychology; describe Kurt Lewin’s contribution to understanding social behavior; discuss the three levels of explanation and illustrate how they can help us understand social behavior.
1.4 Identify the four principles of social psychology and provide an example to illustrate each.
1.5 Discuss the hindsight bias and its relevance to the study of social psychology; describe the four essential characteristics of science as a process; identify the three goals of science.
1.6 Explain what hypotheses and theories are and show their role in scientific
