Ross Lee Nisbett Richard E Gladwell Malcolm The person and the situation perspectives of social psychology Pinter and Martin Ltd (2011)

Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Contents......Page 6
Foreword by Malcolm Gladwell......Page 11
Preface......Page 14
Preface to the First Edition......Page 16
Acknowledgements......Page 20
1 Introduction......Page 21
The Weakness of Individual Differences......Page 22
The Power of Situations......Page 24
The Subtlety of Situations......Page 25
The Predictability of Human Behavior......Page 27
The Conflict Between the Lessons of Social Psychology and the Experience of Everyday Life......Page 28
The Tripod on Which Social Psychology Rests......Page 29
The Principle of Situationism......Page 30
The Principle of Construal......Page 32
The Concept of Tension Systems......Page 35
Predictability and Indeterminacy......Page 39
Prediction by Social Scientists......Page 40
Prediction by Laypeople......Page 41
The Problem of Effect Size......Page 43
Statistical Criteria of Size......Page 44
Pragmatic Criteria of Size......Page 45
Expectation Criteria of Size......Page 46
Overview and Plan of the Book......Page 48
2 The Power of the Situation......Page 51
Uniformity Pressures in the Laboratory: Sherif’s” Autokinetic” Studies and the Asch Paradigm......Page 52
The Bennington Studies......Page 60
Sherif’s Studies of Intergroup Competition and Conflict......Page 63
Inhibition of Bystander Intervention......Page 66
Why Is Social Influence So Powerful?......Page 70
On Selling War Bonds......Page 73
Time to Be a Good Samaritan......Page 75
Effects of Minimal Compliance......Page 77
Putting It All Together: Stanley Milgram and the Banality of Evil......Page 79
3 Construing the Social World......Page 87
Subjectivist Considerations in Objective Behaviorism......Page 88
Relativity in Judgment and Motivation Phenomena......Page 90
Some Nonobvious Motivational Consequences of Reward......Page 94
The Construal Question in Social Psychology......Page 96
Solomon Asch and the “Object of Judgment”......Page 98
Partisanship and Perception......Page 101
The Tools of Construal......Page 105
The Attribution Process......Page 107
Normative and Descriptive Principles of Causal Attribution......Page 108
Attributions Regarding the Self......Page 110
Failure to Allow for the Uncertainties of Construal......Page 113
The False Consensus Effect......Page 114
Overconfident Social and Personal Predictions......Page 117
Situational Construal and the Fundamental Attribution Error......Page 119
4 The Search for Personal Consistency......Page 122
An Overview of Conventional Theories of Personality......Page 123
The Scientific Findings and the Debate......Page 126
The Challenge of 1968......Page 127
Empirical Studies of Cross-Situational Consistency......Page 129
Implications of the Empirical Challenge......Page 133
Professional Responses to the Challenge of 1968......Page 135
Bem’s Revival of the Nomothetic-Idiographic Distinction......Page 136
Methodological Objections and Alternative Empirical Approaches......Page 139
Epstein’s Claims for the Power of Aggregation......Page 141
Making Sense of “Consistency” Correlations......Page 143
Predictions Based on Single Observations......Page 146
Predictions Based on Multiple Observations......Page 149
The Relative Likelihood of Extreme Behaviors......Page 151
Qualitative Aspects of Lay Personality Theory......Page 155
Quantitative Aspects of Lay Personality Theory......Page 158
Inferring Dispositions from Situationally Produced Behavior......Page 162
Slighting the Situation and Context in Favor of Dispositions......Page 166
Overconfidence in Predictions Based on Dispositions......Page 171
Dispositionism and the Interview Illusion......Page 174
When Are Dispositional Data Useful?......Page 176
The Sources of Lay Dispositionism......Page 177
Perception and the Dispositionist Bias......Page 178
Differing Causal Attributions for Actors and Observers......Page 179
Construal and the Dispositionist Bias......Page 180
Statistics and the Dispositionist Bias......Page 181
How Could We Be So Wrong?......Page 182
6 The Coherence of Everyday Social Experience......Page 184
Scientific Disentangling versus Real-World Confounding......Page 186
Scientific Disentangling of Person and Situation......Page 187
Real-World Confounding of Person and Situation......Page 188
Audience-Induced Consistency and Predictability......Page 190
Choosing and Altering Situations......Page 194
Responsiveness to Others’ Needs for Predictability......Page 196
Continuity of Behavior over the Lifespan......Page 198
The Utility of Lay Personology Reconsidered......Page 201
The Search for More Powerful Conceptions of Personality......Page 204
7 The social Psychology of Culture......Page 211
Effects of Ecology, Economy, and Technology......Page 213
The Situation of the “Middleman” Minority......Page 217
Culture, Ideology, and Construal......Page 219
The Protestant Vision and the Growth of Capitalism......Page 220
Associationism and Economic Development......Page 223
Collectivism versus Individualism......Page 224
Social Context and Attribution in East and West......Page 228
Social Class and Locus of Control......Page 231
Regional Differences in the United States as Cultural Differences......Page 232
Enforcement of Cultural Norms......Page 238
Cultural Change in America......Page 239
Blacks and Whites in the American South......Page 242
Traditional Japanese Culture and Capitalism......Page 245
Traits, Ethnicities, and the Coordinates of Individual Differences......Page 247
Can Ethnicities Substitute for Traits?......Page 248
Why Is Ethnicity an Increasingly Important Factor in Modern Life?......Page 249
8 Applying Social Psychology......Page 251
Methodological Lessons for Research Practitioners and Consumers......Page 252
The Value of “True Experiments”......Page 253
The Hawthorne Saga......Page 257
Situationism, Liberalism, and the Politics of Intervention......Page 261
A Case History: The Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study......Page 262
Lewinian Discussion Groups and Democratic Procedures......Page 268
“Modeling” Effects on Prosocial Behavior......Page 272
Interventions that Encourage Minority-Student Success......Page 273
Distal versus Proximal Interventions......Page 275
Social Labels and Self-Fulfilling Expectations......Page 277
Labeling versus Exhortation to Achieve Behavior Change......Page 278
Motivational Consequences of Superfluous Inducements......Page 280
Attributions for Classroom Success and Failure......Page 283
Placebo Effects and Reverse Placebo Effects......Page 286
The Beneficial Effect of Forewarning and Coping Information......Page 289
The Health Consequences of Perceived Efficacy and Control......Page 292
Everyday Application of Social Psychology......Page 295
Afterword......Page 299
References......Page 308
Index of Authors and Names......Page 335
Subject Index......Page 351