Exploring the most important ideas in social psychology, this collection of classic and contemporary reading includes accounts of specific experimental findings as well as more general articles summarizing studies on such topics as attraction and aggression.

Joshua Aronson is associate professor of developmental, social, and educational psychology at New York University. Focusing on the social and psychological influences on academic achievement, he has won numerous awards for his scholarships, including the Career Award from the National Science Foundation, the William T. Grant Scholars Award, and the Kidder Early Career Award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. One of the most frequently cited psychologists in the past decade, he is the editor of Improving Academic Achievement and The Scientist and The Humanist. Elliot Aronson is one of the most eminent and versatile psychologists of our time. He is the only person in the 120-year history of the American Psychological Association to have won all three of its major awards: Distinguished Research (1999), Distinguished Teaching (1973), and Distinguished Writing (1975). In addition, among his many honors are the Gordon Allport Prize for his contributions to the betterment of intergroup relations and the Donald Campbell Award for distinguished research in social psychology. In 1981, he was named Professor of the Year by the American Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. Inducted in 1992, he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2007, he was named a William James Fellow in commemoration of a lifetime of creative contributions to scientific psychology.