Advanced Social Psychology: The State of the Science

Citation

Finkel, E. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (Eds.). (2019). Advanced Social Psychology: The State of the Science (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.

Chapter Summary

The second edition is an edited textbook of twenty-one chapters, each written by an active researcher in the area. According to Roy Baumeister's own description of the book, its primary audience is first-year graduate students in social psychology, although it is also meant for upper-level undergraduate courses and for doctoral students in neighbouring fields such as marketing and organisational behaviour. The chapter authors are described as leaders on their topics who wrote to be engaging and accessible to students new to the discipline. The edition adds chapters on research methods, morality and computational psychology, and a new introduction that addresses the replicability debate.

Chapters 1–3: Social Psychology: Crisis and Renaissance; A Brief History of Social Psychology; New Developments in Research Methods

The first three chapters discuss replicability challenges and reforms to improve rigor and credibility. Brian Nosek writes that they set the stage for the idea that science has no canon of inarguable facts and that every finding, claim and theory is open to confrontation. The first chapter is by the editors, the history chapter by Harry Reis, and the methods chapter is among the new material in this edition.

Chapters 4–7: Social Cognition; The Self; Attitude Structure and Change; Social Influence

The next group covers core processes in how people think about themselves and others and how they are influenced. Susan Fiske writes on social cognition, Roy Baumeister on the self, Richard Petty, Pablo Briñol, Lee Fabrigar and Duane Wegener on attitudes, and Robert Cialdini and Vladas Griskevicius on social influence.

Chapters 8–11: Aggression; Attraction and Rejection; Close Relationships; Intergroup Relations

These chapters turn to relations between people and groups. Brad Bushman writes on aggression, the editors on attraction and rejection, Shelly Gable on close relationships and Marilynn Brewer on intergroup relations.

Chapters 12–13: Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination; Morality

Jack Dovidio and James Jones write on prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination. Linda Skitka and Paul Conway write the chapter on morality, which is new in this edition.

Chapters 14–17: Emotion; Social Neuroscience; Evolutionary Social Psychology; Cultural Psychology

This group looks at emotion and at the biological, evolutionary and cultural levels of explanation. The chapters are by Wendy Berry Mendes, Thalia Wheatley, Jon Maner and Steve Heine.

Chapters 18–21: Health, Stress, and Coping; Judgment and Decision Making; Personality; Computational Psychology

The final group moves to applications and connections with neighbouring areas: health, judgment and decision making (a new chapter in this edition, by Kathleen Vohs and Mary Frances Luce), personality (Charles Carver) and computational psychology (Michal Kosinski), which is also new.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–7: Foundations and Core Processes

• Replicability and reform: the focus of the opening chapters, which discuss challenges and reforms to improve rigor and credibility.
• Social cognition: how people process information about others.
• The self: the topic of Chapter 5.
• Attitudes and social influence: attitude structure and change, and the principles of influence.

Chapters 8–17: Relationships, Groups and Levels of Explanation

• Aggression, attraction and rejection, close relationships: the interpersonal chapters.
• Intergroup relations, prejudice and stereotyping: the group-level chapters.
• Morality: new in this edition.
• Emotion, social neuroscience, evolutionary and cultural approaches: chapters organised by level of explanation.

Chapters 18–21: Extensions

• Health, stress and coping: social psychology applied to health.
• Judgment and decision making: a new chapter.
• Personality: the topic of Chapter 20.
• Computational psychology: a new chapter on computational methods.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Specialists writing on their own topics. Baumeister describes the chapter authors as world-renowned leaders, and the endorsements on the retail listing from Brian Nosek, Paul van Lange, Rick Hoyle, Jeffry Simpson and Mahzarin Banaji describe a collective effort by leaders of the field.
• Direct engagement with replicability. Nosek's review notes that the first three chapters address replicability and reform, and that the chapters on attraction, morality, health and computation stand out for dealing with replicability success and challenges in their own domains.
• Breadth of coverage. Twenty-one chapters range from attitudes and influence to neuroscience, culture, health and computation, which is the range a graduate student needs to read journal articles across social psychology; Baumeister says that after reading the book a student should be able to understand almost any journal article or conference presentation in the field.
• Updated edition. Hoyle notes the new chapters on research methods, morality and computational psychology and an introduction that takes a forward-looking view of the field's future.

Limitations

• Uneven treatment of replicability. Nosek notes that the chapters differ: some address the issue directly, others implicitly by omission, and a few appear to have missed the news of the "reproducibility crisis", treating every cited claim with the same certainty. A reader should therefore check how well supported a claim is before relying on it.
• Survey, not depth. Each topic gets one chapter, so the book orients a reader to the field; for any one area it points to the literature without replacing it.
• Assumes background. The book is written for readers who already know the introductory material, with an undergraduate course in social psychology and a grounding in research methods and statistics the useful preparation, and it offers no review of that material.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the social psychology course, this is the graduate-level survey. The gentler books come before it: Richard Crisp's Social Psychology: A Very Short Introduction is a brief overview of the field, Robert Cialdini's Influence is a book on persuasion that connects with Chapter 7, and the textbooks by Aronson and by Gilovich, Keltner, Chen and Nisbett are undergraduate surveys of the whole field. Any of these is the right first step if the introductory material is not fresh.

Susan Fiske's Social Cognition: From Brains to Culture is an advanced text on how people think about themselves and others, and gives book-length treatment to the territory of Chapter 4 of this volume. The present book is the one to read for the range of social psychology; Fiske's is for depth on social cognition.

How to Use This Book

The book suits first-year graduate students, advanced undergraduates in a seminar, and researchers in neighbouring fields who need an orientation to social psychology. An undergraduate social psychology course plus research methods and statistics is the useful preparation.

A practical plan:

• Start with Chapters 1 to 3, which frame how to read the rest in light of the replicability debate, and keep that framing in mind for every empirical claim.
• Read the core processes (Chapters 4 to 7) and the interpersonal and group chapters (8 to 12) as the main body of a course.
• Choose from Chapters 13 to 21 by interest: morality, emotion, neuroscience, evolution and culture show the field's levels of explanation; health, decision making, personality and computation connect to other areas.
• Follow up in the literature: each chapter is a review of an area by its researchers, so use the chapters to choose papers to read in full.