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FRANK W. SCHNEIDER, JAMIE A. GRUMAN, and LARRY M. COUTTS (Eds.) Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2005, 464 pages (ISBN 1-4129-1539-2, US$64.95 Paperback)
I approached the task of reviewing Schneider, Gruman, and Coutts' edited book, Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems, as someone trained in so-called basic social psychology whose exposure to applied social psychology has been derived more or less exclusively from reading the "extra" chapters tacked on to the end of my intro social psychology text, chapters on applications of social psychology to law, business, and health. In other words, I began the book with little sense of how diverse and rich the applied contributions of my counterparts in applied social psychology have been. Now, having read Applied Social Psychology, I have a renewed enthusiasm for my field and a much deeper appreciation of the range of situations in which social psychological theory and research may be, and indeed have been, applied, and a fuller understanding of the opportunities, perhaps even the obligation, that I have, as a social psychologist, to do research that positively impacts the world.
Though I think the appeal of Applied Social Psychology ought to extend well beyond the intended audience, Schneider et al. are marketing their book as an undergraduate level introductory text. It thus contains much of the pedagogy that instructors have come to expect in textbooks. For example, each chapter begins with an outline and ends with a summary, and important concepts are highlighted in bold within the body of the text. Most chapters also include brief "culture capsules" that highlight the role of culture in the topic area under discussion, as well as boxes entitled "focus on research" and "focus on intervention", which provide brief but detailed discussion of particular research studies and interventions, respectively. These boxes are a definite strength of the text and, in my opinion, are more effectively integrated with the other material discussed in the chapters than is often the case in undergraduate texts (where they often seem to...