Social psychology / Theodore M. Newcomb.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Newcomb, Theodore M., author.

Series:

Dryden Press publications in inter-personal relations

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social psychology.

Interpersonal relations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 690 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

New York : Dryden Press, 1950.

Summary:

"Of the writing of texts in social psychology there is no end. The author or each of them believes that he has a special justification for offering his own particular version of the common theme, and I am no exception to this general rule. Perhaps I can formulate the raison d'etre of this volume by outlining a little of its history and by expressing my indebtedness to a few of the individuals from whom its main ideas have been borrowed. These and other converging influences have led me to frame nearly every kind of social-psychological problem in terms of psychological processes which take their particular form from the interactional context in which they occur. And I have come to see group memberships as providing the sine qua non for specifying the interactional context of human social behavior. Groups provide their members with shared frames of reference--particularly in the form of positions and roles, in terms of which they perceive themselves as well as one another. So little social behavior is immune to such shared influences, and so much of it is very largely determined by them, that I have come to accord them a central place in my own thinking. I hope that, in so doing, I have not fallen into the fallacy of assuming that social behavior springs merely from the interiorizing of social norms. This would be quite as disastrous as to ignore social norms altogether. At any rate, this point of view has led me to view social behavior as occurring on the part of biological organisms which are also group members. To understand it we must study both individual life and group life, in terms of a single body of coherent concepts and principles. I have therefore tried to sketch an outline of the psychology of group membership in a way which is neither merely psychological nor merely sociological but which, I hope, may contribute to the growth of a body of concepts and principles of truly social-psychological nature"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.