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Social Psychology 5th Edition

3 stars (Social Psychology 5th ed) - This book is very easy to understand, and the real-world examples/analogies are helpful (even if they are a little in excess). It's one of the few textbooks I've bought that I don't consider a (total) waste of money. 1 stars (Fuzzy, unstructured and too politically correct book ) - This is 5th edition of the book written in early 90th (first edition was in 1994). The book did not change much since. This is fuzzy, politically correct and watered down presentation of the subject. For example when you learn about cognitive dissonance you are not told that the original Festinger experiment was connected with the behavior of a flood doomsday cult after the target date of the flood passed. This might be an OK book as a second of third book for self-education (you can save money buying any previous edition, but in no way this should be your first or only book on the subject), but this can be a horror show if this is your standard textbook at the university 101 Social physiology course and you need to pass an exam. Here the inability of the authors to distinguish between important and unimportant will hunt you down. The authors are too fond of abusing "social-psychology-speak" and introduce too many pseudo-scientific terms without real necessity: it looks like they try artificially inflate both themselves and the subject by immersing trivial notions in obscure jargon. This infatuation with jargon, on the level completely unacceptable for the introductory course is one of the worst features of the book. It especially evident are summaries which are the Achilles spot of the book: badly written, badly thought-out, somewhat detached from the chapters content, horribly structured and weakly typeset. The other problem with this book as an introductory (101 type) book is that it is just too big. Story-telling approach that authors use is not bad per se, but inability of authors to distinguish between really important and entertaining p...
Prentice Hall :: Psychology & Psychiatry & General :: Sociology - General :: Sociology :: Social Psychology :: Psychology :: General :: Robin M Akert :: Timothy D Wilson :: Elliot A :: Social Psychology (5th Edition)