Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s 1974 paper ‘Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases’ is a landmark in the history of psychology. Though a mere seven pages long, it has helped reshape the study of human rationality, and had a particular impact on economics – where Tversky and Kahneman’s work helped shape the entirely new sub discipline of ‘behavioral economics.’The paper investigates human decision-making, specifically what human brains tend to do when we are ...

Leon Festinger’s 1957 A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance is a key text in the history of psychology – one that made its author one of the most influential social psychologists of his time. It is also a prime example of how creative thinking and problem solving skills can come together to produce work that changes the way people look at questions for good.Strong creative thinkers are able to look at things from a new perspective, often to the point of challenging the very fra...

For decades, social scientists had used a mythical figure to describe how humans make decisions: homo economicus. He was logical and conscientious. To make a decision, he would evaluate all the options open to him, then choose the most rational course of action. ¶Of course, this character wasn’t representative of real human behavior, but no one had come up with a better model to explain how humans make decisions. Then along came Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. In ‘Judgment under Uncertai...

Why do we attempt to justify decisions that are clearly irrational? The answer lies in “cognitive dissonance,” the feeling of mental discomfort we experience when we hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time. American social psychologist Leon Festinger believed that we have developed mechanisms to try to deal with the stress brought on by holding incompatible beliefs. So we change existing attitudes, adjust their relative importance, or accept dubious evidence to justify our choices ...

How does the situation we're in influence the way we behave and think? Professors Ross and Nisbett eloquently argue that the context we find ourselves in substantially affects our behavior in this timely reissue of one of social psychology's classic textbooks.

This volume presents theoretical, methodological, and empirical advances in understanding, and also in the effects of understanding, individual and societal values.

While categorization has always been one of the primary focuses of the social sciences, recent trends within these disciplines have tended to categorize various behaviours as disorders. Researching Resilience challenges this tendency to pathologize, and marks a profound shift in research methods from the study of disorder to the study of well-being.This collection assembles qualitative and quantitative studies from a diverse group of scholars and disciplines, stressing the...

Lev Vygotsky's approach to children's learning and development centers on adult mediation: adults engage children in age-appropriate activities and promote in this context the development of new motives and tools for thinking, problem solving, and self-regulation. Although this approach has earned widespread recognition in the global scientific community, English-speaking educators remain relatively unfamiliar with its contemporary elaborations for practical application. Yuriy V. Karpov of...

A work specifically written to encourage research into multicultural education and to help researchers work through some of the inherent problems that face schools with mulicultural students.

This volume is devoted to the fascinating topic of social communication - fascinating because communication is ubiquitous, in that one cannot not communicate. And yet, the art of effective communication can be extremely demanding and elusive, because a tricky trade-off problem has to be solved. For communication to be successful, it must be at once informative - somehow indicating an intended direction of thought or action - as well as subtle - somehow concealing intentions and in...

Every year in this country, some 10,000 college and university courses are taught in applied ethics. And many professional organizations now have their own codes of ethics. Yet social science has had little impact upon applied ethics. This book promises to change that trend by illustrating how social science can make a contribution to applied ethics.The text reports psychological studies relevant to applied ethics for many professionals, including accountants, college students and ...

Gain a broad yet thorough understanding of Social Psychology, exploring both classic and contemporary theories, concepts and research.Social Psychology, 9th Edition by Michael Hogg and Graham Vaughan is a trusted, market-leading text that offers the most comprehensive coverage of Social Psychology in the market, and is an essential learning resource whether you are studying, teaching, or researching this fascinating subject.The current ed...