Social Psychology, 6/E
Elliot Aronson, University of California, Santa Cruz
Timothy D. Wilson
Robin Akert

ISBN-10: 0132382458
ISBN-13: 9780132382458

Publisher: Prentice Hall
Copyright: 2007
Format: Cloth; 694 pp
Published: 12/06/2006

Suggested retail price: $128.55
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For an undergraduate introductory level course in social psychology.

 

Research made relevant through a story-telling approach.

 

This renowned text maintains its acclaimed story-telling approach to convey the science of social psychology while making research relevant to students. The authors bring the material under study to life through real-world examples that capture students' attention and motivate further exploration. Paying particular attention to the classic research that has driven the field and introucing cutting-edge research that is the future of Social Psychology, Aronson/Wilson/Akert provide a firm foundation for students to build their understanding of this rigorous science in a way that engages and fascinates.

 

Research Made Relevant
The "Try It!" exercises invite students to take a specific theory or research finding and apply it to their own lives. Three "Try It!" exercises are in each chapter and they encourage students to become active participants in the learning process. Additional "Try It!" exercises can be found on the companion website: www.prenhall.com/aronson.

The authors emphasize the rigorous science that is Social Psychology through real research examples and by encouraging students to think twice about their preconceived notions of what Social Psychology is and isn't. See pg. 31 in Chapter 2 for a "What's Your Prediction?" quiz. In addition:

  • Methodology and science are integrated into the text's story.
  • A separate chapter (Chapter 2) devoted solely to methodology.
  • Organization includes presenting two pressing real-world problems related to violence and aggression, then the use of actual research studies on these questions to illustrate the three major scientific methods.

     

    Connections
    "Connections" are included in selected chapters where research findings can be directly applied to real-world problems. By connecting social psychology to real events the material is not only more interesting for students but also deepens their understanding. See pg. 115 in Chapter 4 for "Attributions about 9/11"

     

     

    Story-telling approach
    Through real-life vignettes, which open each chapter, and "mini-stories" throughout each chapter, Aronson 6e provokes student interest by focusing on real-life examples.

    Opening Vignettes--Real-life vignettes that illustrates the concepts to come and is refered back to throughout the chapter material. See pg. 373, Chapter 12 Aggression: "Why Do We Hurt Other People? Can We Prevent It?"

     

    Mini-Stories--several woven into each chapter that both illustrate specific concepts and bring the material to life. Each has an example of a real-life phenomenon that is designed to pique students' interest (taken from current events, literature, real life) and then demonstrated through an experiment that attempts to explain the phenomenon.

     

    Chapters 14-16 on Applied Topics:

        • The last three chapters of the book are dedicated to applied topics: Attaining a Sustainable Future, Health, and the Law. 
        • Chapter 14 incorporates some of a previous chapter on the environment. New material includes a detailed discussion of how social psychology is in a unique position to address practical problems. 
        • Chapters are constructed as much as possible to stand as independent units that could be relevant at many different points in a social psychology course.

    Classic and Modern research
    Aronson 6e presents a balance between the latest findings in the field with classic research in social psychology. Noting that some older studies deserve their status as classics and are important cornerstones to the discipline, Aronson 6e encourages students to experience the continuity and depth of the field versus regarding it as a collection of studies published in the past few years.  

    • Charts and graphs detailing the results of individual experiments.
    • NEW! Includes many new major studies, references, and cutting-edge research, all done within the past few years.
    • Classical studies examined as well.
      • Examples: Schachter and Singer (1962) study on misattribution of emotion (Chapter 5); Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) dissonance study (Chapter 6); Asch (1956) and Sherif (1936) conformity studies (Chapter 8).
    • Older theories brought up to date. Examples: Culture, gender, self, and emotion (e.g., Gabriel & Gardner, 2004, Hyde, 2005) (Chapter 5); Self-esteem maintenance (e.g., Steele’s self-affirmation theory (Chapter 6); the process of dissonance reduction in different cultures (e.g., Sakai, 1998; Stone, Wiegand, Cooper, & Aronson, 1997; Viswesvaran & Deshpande, 1996) (Chapter 6); the role of accountability and accuracy in informational and normative conformity (e.g., Quinn & Schlenker, 2002; Barron and colleagues, 1996) in Chapter 8.
    • The field of social psychology is expanding rapidly, and exciting new work is being done is all areas of the discipline. Aronson 6e has a great deal of added new material describing dozens of major studies dones within the past few years. Additionally, hundreds of contemporary references have been added. These updated research findings keep students apprised of the latest developments in social psychology.

     

    Supplements

    NEW! Instructor’s Resource Binder. This binder includes an exhaustive collection of teaching resources for both new and experienced instructors alike. Organized by chapter, this binder includes the Instructor’s Resource Manual, the Test Item File, the Instructor’s Resource CD-ROM, the computerized testing software, TestGen, and the color transparencies. All of these supplements are described below. Please contact your Prentice Hall rep to receive this item.

    NEW! Instructor’s Resource Center on CD-ROM. This valuable, time-saving supplement provides an electronic version of a variety of teaching resources all on one disk so that it may be customized to lecture notes and media presentations. This CD-ROM includes PowerPoint slides, electronic versions of the artwork, electronic versions of the overhead transparencies, the electronic Instructor’s Resource Manual, and the Test Item File.

    PowerPoints. PowerPoints provide an active format for presenting concepts from each chapter. The PowerPoints files can be downloaded from the Social Psychology Website at www.prenhall.com/aronson or www.prenhall.com/psychology.

    Color Transparencies. Color transparencies of figures and tables from the text are available and can also be downloaded from the Social Psychology Website.

    Instructor’s Resource Manual. Written by Melinda Blackman of California State University, Fullerton, the Instructor’s Manual includes lecture ideas, teaching tips, suggested readings, chapter outlines, student projects and research assignments, Try It! exercises, critical thinking topics and discussion questions, and a media resource guide.

    Test Bank. Each of the two thousand questions in this test bank, compiled by Elissa Wurf of Lafayette College, is page-referenced to the text and categorized by topic and skill level. The test bank is also available to adopters in Windows and Macintosh computerized format.

    Prentice Hall Test Generator. One of the best-selling test-generating software programs on the market, Test Generator is available in Windows and Macintosh formats and contains a gradebook, on-line network testing, and many tools to help instructors edit and create tests.

    On-Line Course Management. For professors interested in using the Internet and on-line course management in their courses, Prentice Hall offers fully customizable on-line courses in WebCT, BlackBoard, and Course Compass to accompany this textbook. Contact your local Prentice Hall representative or visit www.prenhall.com/demo for more information.

    Research Navigator. Reliable, relevant, and resourceful. Prentice Hall’s Research NavigatorTM helps students make the most out of current research. Complete with extensive help on the research process and three exclusive databases full of relevant and reliable source material—including EBSCO’s ContentSelect Academic Journal Database, the New York Times Search by Subject Archive, and the Best of the Web link library. Research Navigator is the one-stop research solution for your students.

     

    • Chapter 1: Introducing Social Psychology

        • New Connection feature highlighting Lee Ross’s work on negotiation between Palestinians and Israelis.
        • New updates to research and references.

    Chapter 2: Methodology: How Social Psychologists Do Research

        • Updated examples of research on pornography, including recent studies. This chapter also includes an expanded description of IRBs and their function.

    Chapter 3: Social Cognition: How We Think about the Social World

        • Updated to reflect the growing emphasis on automatic (nonconscious, involuntary, unintentional, and effortless) thinking versus controlled (conscious, voluntary, intentional, and effortful) thinking. The authors again use the automatic versus controlled application of stereotypes as an illustration of these two modes of thinking, including the opening vignette that discusses the case of Amadou Diallo, who was shot forty-one times by four white police officers as he reached for his wallet in the vestibule of his apartment building. This possible case of automatic stereotyping is contrasted to cases in which people apply stereotypes more consciously and deliberately, as in the case of racial profiling.
        • A new section called "The Power of Unconscious Thinking," with a discussion of recent research by John Bargh and Ap Dijsterhuis. 
        • A new Connections box in which we discuss the "Barnum effect" in personality feedback, as an illustration of the representativeness heuristic.  

    Chapter 4: Social Perception: How We Come to Understand Other People

        • Updated and reorganized. 
        • Discussion of the correspondence bias and fundamental attribution error have been consolidated.
        • Research in social neuroscience exploring “mirror neurons” and the facial expression of disgust is discussed.
        • Two new Connection features have been added. One focuses on recent research on computer-mediated communication, indicating the pitfalls of email communication: emailers are strikingly overconfident about their ability to communicate emotion and meaning with words alone; they don’t realize how much information is lost when nonverbal cues are missing.
        • The second Connection feature discuses a study on the correspondence bias conducted immediately after 9/11: American research participants were found to be surprisingly sensitive to situational information when they formed attributions about an Arab Muslim target person. 
        • Opening vignette has been updated.

    Chapter 5: Self-Knowledge: How We Come to Understand Ourselves 

        • A new section called, "Knowing Ourselves by Adopting Others Views,"  which discusses recent research on shared reality theory. As in the last edition, there is a balance between detailed discussions of classic findings (e.g., Schachter and Singer’s work on emotion, Lepper’s work on intrinsic motivation) and modern, cutting edge approaches to these topics.
        • More than 40 new references have been added.

    Chapter 6: The Need to Justify Our Actions

        • Brought completely up to date. 
        • New discussion of the neurological concomitants of cognitive dissonance. Highlighted in this section is the work of Drew Westen and his colleagues (2006) showing how consonance and dissonance can be tracked with the aid of the brain scans.

    Chapter 7: Attitudes and Attitude Change: Influencing Thoughts and Feelings 

        • Opening vignette has been revised to illustrate extreme cases of advertising, including a man who placed an ad on EBay, offering to wear someone’s logo or message on his forehead for 30 days.  (The winning bid was over $37,000).
        • The chapter has also been updated with the addition of nearly two dozen new references.

    Chapter 8: Conformity: Influencing Behavior

        • New opening vignette: a recent event that chronicles the chilling consequences of obedience run amok. A man, posing as a police detective, called managers of fast-food restaurants across the United States, and ordered them to conduct humiliating (and sometimes, sexually assaultive) interrogations of employees. A large number of managers obeyed these requests, and the vignette focuses on one such incident at a McDonald’s in Kentucky.
        • Substantially updated with discussion of new research. 
        • A new section on the role of personality responsibility and obedience has been added, which includes a study by Osofsky, Bandura & Zimbardo (2005) on the attitudes of execution-team prison guards.
        • The social neuroscience findings on conformity are presented, providing neurological evidence for just how unpleasant and uncomfortable it is to resist normative social influence.
        • A new Connections feature that presents research findings on how informational and normative conformity influence college students’ music preferences.

    Chapter 9: Group Processes: Influence in Social Groups 

        • New sections on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in relation to Zimbardo’ prison study, deindividuation in cyberspace, transformational versus transactional leadership, situational influences on cooperation in the PD game, and negotiation over electronic media versus face-to-face interactions.
        • A new Connections box on groupthink and the decision to invade Iraq.

    Chapter 10: Interpersonal Attraction: From First Impressions to Close Relationships

        • Updated with many new references and discussions of recent research. Example: on attachment theory, similarity and attraction, positivity bias toward the physically attractive, the effect of computer-mediated communication on relationships, and culture.
        • A new Connections feature focuses on neurological evidence (from fMRI research) of brain activity when people are passionately in love, indicating that the same pleasure, reward and motivation centers are activated as when people ingest cocaine or win at gambling. 

    Chapter 11: Prosocial Behavior: Why Do People Help?

        • In addition to updates, a new section on the effects of residential mobility on prosocial behavior has been added.

    Chapter 12: Aggression: Why We Hurt Other People

        • In addition to updates, new material on the evolutionary perspective has been added, as well as research on non-human primates comparing the behavior of chimpanzees with bonobos. 
        • Also added is material on cultural differences, including Schlegel’s work on the rain forest people, a culture in which aggression within the tribe is virtually unknown.

    Chapter 13: Prejudice: Causes and Cures

        • Updates include: modernized definitions of prejudice and stereotyping, a discussion of Crandall and Eshlemean’s justification-suppression model of prejudice, and expansion of the discussion of research on stereotype threat.
        • A new Connections story about a Mexican American man who took part in one of the original jigsaw classroom studies and is about to begin Harvard Law School.

    Chapter 14: Making a Difference with Social Psychology: Attaining a Sustainable Future

        • Completely revised chapter! Designed to excite students by showing them how social psychology can be used to address social and practical problems, with a focus on environmental issues. The opening vignette is about the pressing problem of global warming.  This is followed by a general discussion of the role of social psychology in solving applied problems, and a section on how to make people’s people's behavior more environment-friendly (some of this material was in the previous edition).
        • The last section is on research on happiness, which makes the point that people think that money and consumption make them happier than they do, and that the things that do make people happy can be achieved while maintaining a sustainable, environment-friendly lifestyle.

    Chapter 15: Social Psychology and Health

        • Holmes and Rahe Life Events Scale has been replaced with a modern version that is more appropriate for college students.
        • There is a new section on resilience, and a new discussion of Twenge's research on increasing locus of external control in college students.
        • The last section, “Prevention: Improving Health Habits,” has been reworked, including a discussion of interventions to prevent HIV infections.

    Chapter 16: Social Psychology and the Law

        • Substantially revised. 
        • Features a recent study on eyewitness identification by G. Loftus and Harley (2005), discuss research on people's failure to notice unexpected events, include a new section on the validity of confessions, discuss recent research on the effects of drawing composite faces on lineup identification (Wells, Charman, & Olson, 2005), as well as research on  the relationship between speed of responding and confidence on eyewitness accuracy (Weber, Brewer, & Wells, 2004).

    Chapter 1: Introducing Social Psychology

    Chapter 2: Methodology: How Social Psychologists Do Research

    Chapter 3: Social Cognition: How We Think about the Social World

    Chapter 4: Social Perception: How We Come to Understand Other People

    Chapter 5: Self-Knowledge: How We Come to Understand Ourselves 

    Chapter 6: The Need to Justify Our Actions

    Chapter 7: Attitudes and Attitude Change: Influencing Thoughts and Feelings 

    Chapter 8: Conformity: Influencing Behavior

    Chapter 9: Group Processes: Influence in Social Groups 

    Chapter 10: Interpersonal Attraction: From First Impressions to Close Relationships

    Chapter 11: Prosocial Behavior: Why Do People Help?

    Chapter 12: Aggression: Why We Hurt Other People

    Chapter 13: Prejudice: Causes and Cures

    Chapter 14: Making a Difference with Social Psychology: Attaining a Sustainable Future

    Chapter 15: Social Psychology and Health

    Chapter 16: Social Psychology and the Law

    Elliot Aronson 

    Elliot Aronson is one of the most renowned social psychologists in the world. In 2002 he was chosen as one of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the twentieth century. He is currently Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Santa Cruz and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Stanford University.

     

    Dr. Aronson is the only person in the 110-year history of the American Psychological Association to have received all three of its major awards: for distinguished writing, distinguished teaching, and distinguished research. Many other professional societies have honored his research and teaching as well. These include: the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which gave him its highest honor, the Distinguished Scientific Research award; the American Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, which named him Professor of the Year of 1989; the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, which awarded him the Gordon Allport prize for his contributions to the reduction of prejudice among racial and ethnic groups. In 1992, he was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as President of the Western Psychological Association as well as President of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology.

    Tim Wilson 

    Tim Wilson did his undergraduate work at Williams College and Hampshire College and received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Currently Sherrell J. Aston Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, he has published numerous articles in the areas of introspection, attitude change, self-knowledge, and affective forecasting, as well as the recent book, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious. His research has received the support of the National Science Foundation and the National Institute for Mental Health. He has been associate editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and a member of the Social and Groups Processes Review Committee at the National Institute of Mental Health. He has been elected twice to the Executive Board of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology and is a Fellow in the American Psychological Society. Wilson has taught the Introduction to Social Psychology course at the University of Virginia for more than twenty years. He was recently awarded an All University Outstanding Teaching Award.

    Robin Akert

    Robin Akert graduated summa cum laude from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she majored in psychology and sociology. She received her Ph.D. in experimental social psychology from Princeton University. She is currently a professor of psychology at Wellesley College, where she was awarded the Pinanski Prize for Excellence in Teaching early in her career. She publishes primarily in the area of nonverbal communication and recently received the AAUW American Fellowship in support of her research. She has taught the social psychology course at Wellesley College every semester for over twenty years.

     

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    • 0132398141Social Psychology, CourseSmart eTextbook, 6/E
      Aronson, Wilson & Akert
      © 2007 | Prentice Hall | Electronic Book; 694 pages | Instock
      ISBN-10: 0132398141 | ISBN-13: 9780132398145
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      Aronson, Wilson & Akert
      © 2008 | Prentice Hall | Café Scribe | Estimated Availability: 10/15/2008
      ISBN-10: 0205693962 | ISBN-13: 9780205693962

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