They need to hire a better editor. I found numerous grammar errors.

It was such a dread when I realized that I needed to take Social Psychology this summer in order to finish my graduation requirements in four years. Well, it turned out to not be as bad as I thought it would be. The class was relatively simple and this book is very easy to understand. The authors, Robert Baron and Donn Byrne do a very good job on personalizing stories and studies to their own lives and make ideas clear and presentatble. The reviews at the end of each chapter are very helpful when studying for quizes and exams. I also would advise purchasing the study guide because a lot of the questions appeared in different form on the exams. Good luck.

This is the best book to read to your friends outloud. It is so funny. All the people that are quoted are funny or incredibly proufound. Well worth a read.

I was disappointed that I had never heard of 50% of the people that are quoted in this book. I was expecting more exciting and funny quotes from famous people from all areas. What happened to great quotes from presidents, rock stars, movie stars, and scientists? There are so many people who said great things that are left out of this book. There has to be a better book of quotes out there!

Apparently this quote from Barry Commmoner was correct. Where on earth did Byrne find some of this stuff?

There are dozens of well-known compilations of quotations, and hundreds of lesser known ones. This book tends more toward the humorous or cynical side than the more serious collections such as Bartlett's or the Penguin Dictionary of Quotations. And though those two volumes belong on any professional writer's collection, it's a toss up whether you need these 1,911 quotes, especially given how mean-spirited many of these quotes are.

For instance, we have Bhagwhan Shree Rajneesh noting, "Jesus was a crackpot." Or Leo Tolstoy opining "Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal," a quote the author was so fond of that he included it on at least four different pages. Of course, there are those moments when material of this ilk fits the bill.

One big strike is that the book is not that easy to use. You have to rely on the indices to find quotes by either the person's name or by topic. Then, the topics sometimes do not seem, in my estimation, to match the quotes. The author also saw fit to cram a bunch of his own quotes throughout the text. Oddly, he didn't bother checking with you or me to see what wit we might have dispensed.

If you run across this book used, find one in the remainders section, or see a discarded copy on a city bus, you may wish to snare it. Otherwise, you can do just as well with some of the Web sites that provide quotes. (Incidentally, I think 2 and a half stars might be a more accurate rating.)

Would rate another star if it weren't for the author placing his own 100-or-so quotable quotes in the midst of the truly classic zingers.

I make specific what book this is a review of, because if you look at the user reviews for Shelly Taylor & D. Sears' social psychology textbook, you will find the exact same 5 reviews as are below mine. Either Amazon or some user are up to something sneaky.

Despite the comments below, which may or may not reflect someone who has actually read or used the book, my comments are based on using this book when I took the course and ordering it for a course I am teaching this summer.

Regarding the infractions cited below, I have not found this text any worse than others. It covers a wide range of an exciting subfield of psychology, and it does so in a way accessible to an initiate to the field. Allyn and Bacon provide excellent support for the text, as well.

Finally, I wish to note that while I am currently working in the same Psychology department as Donn Byrne, the second author, we are not affiliated in any way.

I highly recommend "Social Psychology" to practically any adult who can read. We are social beings and understanding each other helps us to create better relations. A better world. This book is excellent to examine and understand not only others' behavior but also ours.

Here is an excerpt that caught my attention: "how we interpret, analyze, remember, and use information about the social world-suggests that we are far from perfect in our ability to think clearly about other persons and reach accurate decisions or judgments about them."

"Social Psychology" covers many branches of psychology but the chapters give you enough information to learn just the basics. I think that this is great for lay people or new students in Psychology. I found that the personal stories that both authors used, helped me to better understand the topic of the chapters; however the, I met this psychologist and have been friends with since, led me to believe that this reaction was due to a schema. Perhaps our society has created a schema in which others' names define who we are. I particularly don't sympathize much with this.

The colorful pictures and cartoons in the book, I enjoyed greatly. I tend to be very visual in many occasions. In fact, I feel that many of the pictures were more thought provoking than the text. I found them very helpful to understand the subject. I also sensed that the targeted audience was mainly young students since many of the studies were conducted or focused on young students. I just wished that the authors had not forgotten that there are older people (like this book reviewer) who go back to school or who want to learn about social psychology. Once again, I highly recommend this book to anyone. You'll learn to view the world under a new perspective.

I read several chapters from this book before I took a social psychology course, and saw that it was indeed very helpful. The author uses a lot of examples, which makes the concepts understandable. Also, the narrative text of the book is very high in quality according to me. It's pure, understandable, friendly and in harmony. (Look at the Franzoi's 1st edition: You will understand what I mean by no-harmony). I strongly believe that to write such a good book should have taken much time for the author. In addition, the author most probably had had an empathetic approach to understand the needs of the student and write accordingly. I don't mean to harm or criticize in any way those that made negative comments on this book. Nevertheless, let me convey you my opinion. According to me, using "I", the author only intended to provide a warm atmosphere to the student sharing his experiences and understandings. But, this is a way to encourage the student think of his/her own experiences in real life, which causes the assimilation of the knowledge more effectively. It's not to advertise himself(author), as far as I perceived from the book. Another thing is that, in psychology, phenomena that seem not logical to a human eye may be significant in a statistical sense. Very small differences, after the elimination of the error margin, may still be significant and therefore, meaningful. In the book, there are graphs not starting from the 0 point, and thus the difference may appear larger when looking superficially. Nonetheless, when looking carefully, undoing the illusory magnification, still the difference is observed, and I believe that the author made focus on the significant part of the graph to draw the attention of the reader and to make him understand better and easier. According to me, this is a good feature of the book and intention of the author.