13 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Richard Hanania's research center producing heterodox scholarship on political psychology, partisanship, and ideology — outside the mainstream of academic political science.
Roy Baumeister's theory that self-control draws on a limited mental resource — 'ego' — which becomes depleted with use, causing subsequent self-control failures.
German-American psychologist who founded social psychology's experimental tradition by developing field theory — representing behavior as a function of the person and their psychological environment — and pioneered the study of group dynamics.
American social psychologist at Columbia Business School whose Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together examines how tribal psychology shapes behavior and how understanding cultural instincts can build cross-group cooperation.
Research center founded by Kurt Lewin at MIT in 1945, later relocated to the University of Michigan, that institutionalized the experimental study of group behavior, social influence, and organizational change.
American psychologist who collaborated with Roger Schank on script theory and made contributions to attitude change research and the psychology of belief systems.
American social psychologist whose Influence is the most widely read account of the principles of persuasion — a systematic account of the psychological mechanisms underlying compliance.
American social psychologist whose research on ego depletion (self-control as a depleting resource), free will, and gender differences has been highly influential — and whose Is There Anything Good About Men? makes an empirically grounded evolutionary case for understanding male social behavior.
The social psychological theory, derived from Ernest Becker, that human culture and self-esteem function as buffers against the terror of mortality — and that reminders of death trigger worldview defense and self-esteem striving.
William von Hippel's account of human evolution as primarily a social achievement — the 'social leap' from our primate ancestors to large-scale cooperative societies as the key to understanding human psychology.
Australian-American evolutionary psychologist who applies evolutionary theory to social behavior, arguing in The Social Leap that the transition from trees to the ground produced the unique human capacities for cooperation, creativity, and social imagination.
W. Keith Campbell is a social psychologist and professor at the University of Georgia known as one of the world's leading researchers on narcissism. He co-authored The Narcissism Epidemic with Jean Twenge, documenting rising narcissism scores in American society, and has written extensively on the psychology, measurement, and social consequences of narcissistic personality traits.
German social psychologist at Heidelberg University, known for rigorous methodological work on cognition, language, and social judgment, and for his role in the meta-science and replication-crisis discussions within psychology.