The Righteous Mind

Sample

Bernard Weiner

This intriguing new work provides a careful examination of how judgments of ourselves and others relate to problems and, in so doing, yields valuable insight into human interactions and motivational processes. Laying out a general theory of social motivation, the author incorporates a number of well-researched areas in social psychology and motivation to elucidate basic principles that guide human conduct across culture and time. Chapters reveal how responsibility inferences are reached, the manner in which such judgments affect emotions, and the role that "cold" judgments of responsibility versus "hot" feelings, such as anger, play in producing both positive and negative behaviors. The author demonstrates that the ways others are perceived influence the behaviors directed toward them, showing how attributions of personal causality are followed by judgments of responsibility. These inferences then give rise to other-directed emotions such as anger and sympathy which, in turn, generate antisocial and prosocial actions. Providing a conceptual system that permits readers a deeper understanding of motivational processes and suggests guidelines for more effective interventions, this book is insightful reading for a wide range of scholars.

Sample

Alan Page Fiske and Tage Shakti Rai

"What motivates violence? How can good and compassionate people hurt and kill others, or themselves? Why are people much more likely to kill or assault people they know well, rather than strangers? This provocative and radical book shows that people mostly commit violence because they genuinely feel that it is the morally right thing to do. In perpetrators' minds, violence may be the morally necessary and proper way to regulate social relationships according to cultural precepts, precedents and prototypes. These moral motivations apply equally to the violence of the heroes of the Iliad, to parents smacking their child, and many modern murders and everyday acts of violence. Virtuous Violence presents a wide-ranging exploration of violence across different cultures and historical eras, demonstrating how people feel obligated to violently create, sustain, end, and honor social relationships in order to make them right, according to morally motivated cultural ideals"--

Sample

Tony Bennett ... [et al

*Culture, Class, Distinction* is a major contribution to international debates regarding the role of cultural capital in relation to modern forms of inequality. Drawing on a national study of the organisation of cultural practices in contemporary Britain, the authors review Bourdieu’s classic study of the relationships between culture and class in the light of subsequent debates. In doing so they re-appraise the relationships between class, gender and ethnicity, music, film, television, literary, and arts consumption, the organisation of sporting and culinary practices, and practices of bodily and self maintenance. As the most comprehensive account to date of the varied interpretations of cultural capital that have been developed in the wake of Bourdieu’s work, Culture, Class, Distinction offers the first systematic assessment of the relationships between cultural practice and the social divisions of class, gender and ethnicity in contemporary Britain. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the relationships between culture and society. —Publisher

Sample

Craig McGarty and S. Alexander Haslam

Social psychology is a staggeringly broad sub-discipline that is characterized by many different approaches. In this book twenty-five of the world's most eminent social psychologists address what they see as the principal lessons to be learned from the study of social psychology. In doing this they provide their own provocative and original answers to the key questions for social psychology and other related social sciences, as well as a wealth of specific, up-to-date insights into the practical applications of social psychology, its key phenomena and theoretical ideas, the history of the field, and the practice of conducting social-psychological research.