An Outline Of Social Psychology

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This book begins with a description of the author's sense of the disciplinary problems of social psychology--framing them in terms of the field's defining mission to explain the reciprocal influence of the person and his or her social environment. The literature of proposed conceptual strategies for relating the social and the psychological is next surveyed. The emphasis at this point is not upon the substantive details of the various strategies but upon the different strategic choices that scholars have made. He then offers his own integrative model and definition of social psychology.

Excerpt from Social Psychology: An Outline and Source Book It requires some hardihood to put forth this, the pioneer treatise, in any language, professing to deal systematically with the subject of social psychology. In spite of infinite pains and thirteen years of experience in university teaching of the subject, I feel sure this book is strewn with errors. The ground is new, and among the hundreds of interpretations, inferences, and generalizations I have ventured on, no doubt scores will turn out to be wrong. Of course I would strike them out if I knew which they are. I would hold back the book could I hope by longer scrutiny to detect them. But I have brought social psychology as far as I can unaided, and nothing is to be gained by delay. The time has come to hand over the results of my reflection to my fellow-workers, in the hope of provoking discussions which will part the wheat from the chaff and set it to producing an hundred fold. Nothing puts an edge on one's thinking like coming on new and interesting truth mixed, nevertheless, with some error. Therefore, if the young science is to advance rapidly, its friends must not be too fearful of being found wrong on a few points. Let each prospector - to change the metaphor - empty out his sack of specimens before his brother prospectors, even though he knows their practised glance will recognize some of his prized nuggets as mere pyrites. Then it will not take long to locate the rich veins. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.