Abstract

Offering a fresh, innovative approach, this international textbook encourages students to consider how social psychology can inform their understanding of the social world around them. Illustrative scenarios based on realistic everyday events, from shopping in a supermarket to taking a taxi, highlight just how relevant this subject is to tackling the issues that can arise in a diverse, multicultural society. By integrating core social psychology theories and concepts with more critical perspectives, Social Psychology and Everyday Life provides a valuable, broad, coherent and stimulating introduction that is suitable for all students interested in social psychology. The book also situates social psychology within the broader social sciences, and in particular scholarship on media, place, health, justice, indigeneity, immigration, and social change.

"Social Psychology and Everyday Life will serve as a valuable resource for social psychology lecturers and undergraduate students. It will have a special appeal for those who wish to foster critical perspectives, and to promote a variety of epistemological and ontological viewpoints among their students...I could envisage a place for the book as a core introductory text. I look forward to seeing where the approaches outlined by Hodgetts and his colleagues can take our discipline, and which buses my generation of social psychologists will get on." Timothy Gomersall, PhD student, University of Leeds, Social Psychological Review

"Social Psychology and Everyday Life is more engaging and more thought-provoking than any other Social Psychology text I have read. It is a well-researched and refreshing introduction to Social Psychology, its application and its importance for understanding social, cultural and political change. It offers a critical account of the field while acknowledging the value of more mainstream theories and classic studies. As such, it promises to be an enormously useful resource in teaching. Students at all levels will find it interesting, challenging and relevant to their lives and careers."

Dr Caroline Howarth, Social Psychology, London School of Economics

"I typically respond with great suspicion to textbooks that are a bit 'outside the square'. But this textbook is different: It embraces mainstream meta-theories in social psychology and puts them up-side-down in a way that respects the intelligence and sensitivities of the average reader. It does it in a way that is likely to appeal and be acceptable to a large audience." - Dr Stefania Paolini, Social Psychology lecturer, University of Newcastle, Australia

"Social Psychology in Everyday Life does what social psychology textbooks rarely dare to do: it applies the theories of social psychology to the everyday world we actually inhabit. Starting with social problems and experiences to which students can easily relate, the text then leads us from one insight to the next to show how social psychology can transform the world around us."

Alex Gillespie, Lecturer in Psychology, University of Stirling

DARRIN HODGETTS is an Associate Professor in Social Psychology at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. He has held positions in community medicine in Canada and media psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences. Darrin is the author of over 40 contributions to peer review journals and has acted as an issue editor for the Journal of Health Psychology and the Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology.
 
NEIL DREW is Foundation Head of Behavioural Science and Dean in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Notre Dame Fremantle, Australia. Prior to joining UNDA he was at the University of Western Australia as Director of the Institute for Regional Development after 12 years at the School of Psychology at Edith Cowan University. Neil has developed his career as a practitioner scholar with a particular interest in the social psychology of justice. It is this interest that has informed his approach to community work as principled practice.  
 
CHRISTOPHER SONN is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology at Victoria University, Australia. His research is in the area of community and applied social psychology, bringing a political and cultural focus to understanding individual and community responses to intergroup relations. He teaches qualitative social research methods and has a strong commitment to developing curricula that promote critical and socially responsive practice. 
 
OTTILIE STOLTE is a Lecturer at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. She has worked on research teams investigating rural socio-economic and geographic issues, and urban ecological restoration and is currently a researcher on a Marsden funded project titled 'More than Bricks and Mortar: Homelessness and Social Reintegration.'   
   
LINDA WAIMARIE NIKORA is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Director of the Maori& Psychology Research Unit at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. She specializes in bringing perspectives relevant to Maori development, indigeneity, culture change, and diversity to the teaching, research and practice of social psychology. 
 
CATE CURTIS is a Lecturer in Social Psychology at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. She has held positions with the University of Auckland and Massey University and with private research organisations, following extensive experience working with social agencies. She has particular interests in psychosocial factors in mental health and wellbeing and related government policy.