Julian Smith
Social psychology explains why you act differently around other people than you do alone. This introduction covers influence, identity, and group behavior, and it tells you which famous findings survived retesting and which fell apart. Nine chapters move from one mind reading a situation, to two people sizing each other up, to crowds, juries, and workplaces. Every claim sits next to the study behind it, with the design and the numbers stated plainly so you can weigh the evidence yourself. No background in the subject is assumed. Topics covered across the chapters: - The person-situation debate and construal, meaning your reading of a situation drives your response more than the facts of it do - Research methods: random assignment, correlational and archival work, and the ethical rules that grew out of studies like Milgram’s - Self-concept, self-esteem, social comparison, and impression management - Attribution theory and the mental shortcuts that make a stranger’s rudeness look like character while your own looks like a bad morning - Cognitive dissonance, the elaboration likelihood model, source credibility, and the gap between stated beliefs and actual behavior - Conformity, foot-in-the-door and door-in-the-face tactics, obedience to authority, and how a small minority moves a majority - Cohesion, social facilitation, loafing, groupthink, leadership, and intergroup conflict - Stereotype formation, the fight over implicit bias measurement, and which prejudice interventions produce results - The bystander effect, altruism, aggression, and applied work in hospitals, offices, courtrooms, and public policy Back matter you will actually use: a historical timeline running from the 1890s through the current period of methodological reform, discussion questions closing every chapter with worked example answers, a glossary of terms, and a works cited list that sends you to the original studies rather than secondhand summaries. Three readers get the most out of this: - Students taking a first course who need the vocabulary and the standards before the exam - Managers, teachers, clinicians, and anyone else whose job is reading people accurately - Curious readers who want the real research on why humans behave one way alone and another way in company The replication crisis reset this field after 2011, and the book treats that reckoning as part of the material rather than a footnote. You get the Asch line studies, the seminary students who stepped over a groaning stranger, and the hotel towel card that beat the environmental appeal. You also get where the Stanford Prison Experiment went wrong and why effect sizes published before 2011 run about double what careful retesting finds. Telling the survivors from the casualties is most of what it means to understand the subject today.
