Social psychology is a lively, growing discipline. Writing a textbook about it is therefore a bit like trying to take a still photograph of a bird in flight. Just to get the target in focus is hard enough. To achieve a balanced composition, and a clear picture of the background, as well, needs a good measure of luck. In this book, I have tried to present a glimpse of where social psychology is going, a hope fully balanced, though undeniably selective, insight into the perspectives which different researchers have adopted, and a broader view of the various empirical and theoretical traditions from which contemporary work derives.

In 1980 my previous textbook, Cognitive Social Psychology: A Guidebook to Theory and Research, was published by McGraw-Hill. The present volume includes both a thorough revision and reorganization of my previous work and much completely new material. The change of title is deliberate too. At the end of the seventies, most apparently successful theories in social psychology were placing a heavy emphasis on the primacy of cognition, information-processing and decision-making. The term ‘cognitive’ took on an imperialistic breadth of application, and a consequential looseness of meaning. In the last six or seven years, however, a noticeable reaction has set in, and some of my own views have changed too.