Pillars of Social Psychology

Stories and Retrospectives

Saul Kassin

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781009214292
• eBook ISBN: 9781009214278
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This collection of first-person accounts from legendary social psychologists tells the stories behind the science and offers unique insight into the development of the field from the 1950s to the present. One pillar, the grandson of a slave, was inspired by Kenneth Clark. Yet when he entered his PhD program in the 1960s, he was told that race was not a variable for study. Other pillars faced first-hand a type of sexism that was hardly subtle, when women were not permitted into the faculty dining room. Still others have lived through a tremendous diversification of social psychology, not only in the United States but in Europe and Asia, that characterizes the field today. Together these stories, always witty and sometimes emotional, form a mosaic of the field as a whole – its legends, their theories and research, their relationships with one another, and their sense of where social psychology is headed.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• 1 Introducing the Pillars of Social Psychology
• 2 Seven Decades in Social Psychology
• 3 A Career Emerging from an Unnecessary Analysis
• 4 Once a Social Psychologist, Always a Social Psychologist
• 5 Abe and Leon and Me
• 6 My Contributions to Social Psychology Over Many Decades
• 7 Influences and Dissonances
• 8 From Ideomotor Theory to the IAT in Just 35 Years
• 9 Curiosity
• 10 The Emergence and Evolution of Social Realities
• 11 The Good Old Days
• 12 ''What Ever Happened to that Blond Girl?''
• 13 A Quest for Social Psychology That Spans the Psychological and the Social
• 14 Reasoning
• 15 Chance and Choice: My Career in Social Psychology
• 16 Looking Back on a Charmed Career
• 17 My Train Ride to Social Psychology
• 18 The Making and Remaking of a Cross-Cultural Psychologist in Six Acts: A Character in Search of Four Co-authors
• 19 A Professional Past of Arranging to Be Compelled
• 20 A Social Psychological and Personality Approach to Human Motivation
• 21 Wandering into Psychology and Law
• 22 My Meandering Journey into Social Psychology
• 23 A Career in Ten Episodes
• 24 Getting Lucky
• 25 Mindsets: From Bathtubs to Hot Beliefs to Social Change
• 26 Social Psychology and Me: The Ties That Bind
• 27 My Life as a Social Psychologist
• 28 You Can't Be a Self by Yourself
• 29 Getting to Here from There
• 30 A Relational Life
• 31 Planning Is Overrated: A Case Study
• 32 Symptoms, Secrets, Writing, and Words
• 33 How Chance Encounters Can Foster a Career
• 34 A Multi-Decade Journey between the Lab and the Real World
• 35 A Long and Winding Road
• 36 Tales of a Devoted but Disillusioned Party Crasher
• 37 Social Cognition, Always the Great Beyond
• 38 The Accidental Social Psychologist
• 39 The Power of Firmly Held Beliefs: A Troubled Child, Schachter's Incredulity, and the Roots of Extreme Behavior
• 40 My Career in Social Psychology: More Than Just Fun and Games
• 41 Chasing Self-Esteem
• 42 The Basement Tapes
• 43 Evolutionary Social Psychology: A Scientific Revolution in Progress
• 44 One Man's Search for (the Assignment of) Meaning
• 45 Meetings with Remarkable Men: A Fortunate Journey in Social Psychology
• 46 Dear Vera, Chuck, and Dave
• 47 Always Buy the Handbook of Social Psychology (1968) at a Railway Station in India
• 48 Empowering People to Break the Prejudice Habit: (Re)Discovering My Inner Cialdini
• 49 Seeking the Middle Way: An Exploration of Culture, Mind, and the Brain
• 50 The Pillars, Their Stories, Retrospectives, and Signals Loud and Clear
• Index