Social Psychology: Unraveling the Mystery

I have all of Cialdini's books, and if you can afford it, you will love this one! Dr. Cialdini continues to do a wonderful job of teaching in the area of social psychology, but the benefit of this book is that it is much more complete than his other shorter works, such as, "Influence." The clarity and interesting examples will keep you reading and reading. Normally one would not find a social psychology text book described as "hard to put down," but this one most assuredly is! If you are looking for that one great social psychology book, be it for a class, to understand what social psychology is all about, or just to get more of Cialdini's works, then get this book. I would buy it for you if I could (but then you wouldn't appreciate it as much. (he, he, recall "commitment and consistency")

After reading a few of the reviews I found it extremely interesting that every one of them gave their opinion about what the book should have been. I have a comment, "It has already been written and there's not much that can be done other than publishing a new edition. I feel that since the scope of social psychology is extremely broad, just pinning it down is a challenge. At this point, you might be woundering why I hold such perspective. As a future reasearcher, I feel that people don't realize how much work it takes to put reasearch toghter. If this people that wrote their reviews even got a little taste of what it takes to put toghter all this work, they would realize that their comments are quite insignificant. Now, as for the content of the book, I feel that it was well written because one can easily read through it, understand it and at times identify with it. It also holds large amounts of reasearch that help build a strong fundation for and non psychology majors. I can probably give many tips as how to study with this book but I think I would deviate from the purpose and scope of the book and this review. SO, in conclution, I found the book extremly helpful and would recomment it to anyone that wants to learn about "the fundamentals" about social psychology.

this book opens the doors of cognition ; in fact , when tiing a famous person ( ie : demora , luther king , kenwrinkel ) to notions of social psychology like ( social role , influence , aggression , etc ) , it allows our memory to widen , and teach a method to learn more and more easily !that is , build couples : idea and picture !this book uses cognition methods and invite us to study that field !... opening the doors of cognition ...teaches too , that very simple tools may have terrific and positive effects !

The most valuable benefits of adopting this book for my class was the unbelievable support from the publisher. A & B provided a study guide, a test bank, a huge package of transparencies, a powerpoint presentation CD...--all of this for free. I have been astonished by the sevice and free benfits I have gotten as the result of choosing this otherwise excellent book.Let's hope the competition emulates this author and publisher.

After reading Mr. Cialdini's comments about his book, I wondered: is he trying to employ his "scarcity principle" to influence book sales? ;)