The Scope of Social Psychology
Social psychology attempts to understand, explain, predict, and, when needed, change people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. It is an aweinspiring task, yet for a relatively young discipline it has made great strides. Although many of the major pioneers such as Lewin, Asch, Kelley, and Festinger worked in the period around the 1940s and 1950s, social psychology matured only at the end of the 1960s.

Since then it has blossomed, both in investigating the basics of the discipline and in applying the insights from fundamental social psychology to different fields related to the area. This volume is devoted to the development of understanding in the field of social psychology over the last four decades, focusing on both basic and applied social psychology.

Contributions are gathered under five main areas: attitudes and attitude change, social cognition and emotion, interpersonal and group processes, health behaviour, and bereavement and coping. These five domains not only illustrate the scope of social psychology, but also pay tribute to one of the key figures in modern social psychology, Wolfgang Stroebe. He has, remarkably, made significant contributions across all five of these areas, and his research achievements exemplify the progress, prospects, and problems faced by modern social psychology over the last 40 years.

This volume includes contributions from some of the most distinguished names in the field, and all authors provide an overview or critical look at their specific area of expertise, tracing historical developments where appropriate. The Scope of Social Psychology provides a broad-ranging, illustrative review of the .eld of modern social psychology.

Miles Hewstone is Professor of Social Psychology and Fellow of New College, University of Oxford. He has published widely on the topics of attribution theory, social cognition, stereotyping, and intergroup relations. He is cofounding editor of the European Review of Social Psychology, and a former editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology.

Henk A. W. Schut is Assistant Professor in the Department of Clinical Psychology at Utrecht University, where he also earned his PhD. His research interests cover the processes of coping with loss, (the efficacy of) grief therapy, and the counselling of bereaved persons. He has co-authored several books and a large number of articles on grief and bereavement.

John B. F. de Wit is Associate Professor in Social Psychology of Health at Utrecht University. His past research focused on social-cognition models of health behaviour, and included work in attitude and behaviour change through the use of fear appeals and risk communication. His recent work is concerned with functional aspects of goal-setting and volitional processes in goal striving that are subsumed under a self-regulation perspective on health behaviour.

Kees van den Bos is Professor of Social Psychology at Utrecht University. His research interests focus on the psychology of fairness judgements and how people react to events they consider fair or unfair. His other research interests include uncertainty, social cognition, the psychology of religion and cultural worldviews, human decision making, and organisational behaviour.

Margaret S. Stroebe is Associate Professor in the Department of Clinical Psychology at Utrecht University. She received her PhD from the University of Bristol in cross-cultural psychology. Her major research interest is the study of reactions to interpersonal loss, particularly bereavement, focusing on theoretical approaches to grief and grieving, interactive patterns of coping, and the eficacy of bereavement intervention.