Book contents
- Pillars of Social Psychology
- Pillars of Social Psychology
- Copyright page
- Contents
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 26 Social Psychology and Me
- 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
- 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
- 40 My Career in Social Psychology
- 41 Chasing Self-Esteem
- 42 The Basement Tapes
- 43 Evolutionary Social Psychology
- 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
- 49 Seeking the Middle Way
- 50 The Pillars, Their Stories, Retrospectives, and Signals Loud and Clear
- Index
- References
43 - Evolutionary Social Psychology
A Scientific Revolution in Progress
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2022
- Pillars of Social Psychology
- Pillars of Social Psychology
- Copyright page
- Contents
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 26 Social Psychology and Me
- 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
- 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
- 40 My Career in Social Psychology
- 41 Chasing Self-Esteem
- 42 The Basement Tapes
- 43 Evolutionary Social Psychology
- 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
- 49 Seeking the Middle Way
- 50 The Pillars, Their Stories, Retrospectives, and Signals Loud and Clear
- Index
- References
Summary
My first course in social psychology in 1972 or 1973 was with Elliot Aronson, a premier social psychologist of his era. He mesmerized the class. The first edition of his book The Social Animal had just been published and it was our textbook for the course. My most vivid memory was learning about cognitive dissonance theory and T-groups (then popular Sensitivity Training Groups). Elliot was a big proponent of both. In front of a class of several hundred, he would hold up his book and ask: “Doesn’t it read like a novel?” The class burst into applause. Some women shouted out “We love you Elliot!” He an extraordinarily charismatic lecturer, setting a high bar that was only exceeded in my experience when I heard Phil Zimbardo give a lecture in a class I was a T.A.-ing for his wife, Christina Maslach at Berkeley. During that guest lecture, students broke into applause several times during the lecture, and thunderously at the end. With these introductions to social psychology, nothing seemed more fascinating to me than social interactions and the prospect of uncovering our underlying social psychological machinery.
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- Pillars of Social PsychologyStories and Retrospectives, pp. 367 - 376Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022