As I begin to write this Preface, I feel a rush of excitement. I have now finished the book; my gestalt is coming into completion. Throughout the months that I have been writing this, I have, indeed, been intrinsically motivated. Now that it is finished I feel quite competent and self-determining (see Chapter 2). Whether or not those who read the book will perceive me that way is also a concern of mine (an extrinsic one), but it is a wholly separate issue from the intrinsic rewards I have been experiencing. This book presents a theoretical perspective. It reviews an enormous amount of...

My Red Shirt and Me The red shirt incident begins with a rather ordinary red shirt. Not a brightly colored red shirt, not a dramatic cherry or firehouse red, more like a faded burgundy. But, for several days, my very iden tity was bound up in its redness. It was me, and I wore it with the pride a matador takes in his splendid cape, a hero in his medals of bravery, or a nun in her religious habit. I'll never forget the bound less joy I felt wearing that simple, pullover, short-sleeved red shirt in the hospital--or the rush of relief that I experienced when, at last, I decided to surrender it....

The chapters presented here provide the reader with an awareness of the divergent views of what constitutes racism and frameworks for reducing it. This book points out that the dialogue and research on this subject since the mid-1970s have yielded increased contro- versy over the theories, foundation, and continued existence of racism. Ironically, what we viewed in the 1954Brown decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964as the beginning of the end of racism turned out to be the beginning of confusion over the course of action to ensure societal acceptance of political mandates. Hence, the...

Whatever your reasons, kind reader, for reading these words, -what- ever your premises about forewords, whatever the epistemic motivation with which you approach them-Iet me urge you to turn immediately to Kruglanski's first chapter and skim it. If any enthusiasm for sodal psy- chology flows in your veins, you will certainly proceed then to read further in this important book. It represents some dozen years of Arie's thought and of his and his colleagues' research. Its intellectual scope covers 50 years of sodal psychology-from attitudes and attitude change, to balance, disso- nance, and the...

The topic of stigma came to the attention of modern-day behav ioral science in 1963 through Erving Goffman's book with the engaging title, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Following its publication, scholars in such fields as an thropology, clinical psychology, social psychology, sociology, and history began to study the important role of stigma in human interaction. Beginning in the early 1960s and continuing to the present day, a body of research literature has emerged to extend, elaborate, and qualify Goffman's original ideas. The essays pre sented in this volume are...

Early in this century, most empirically oriented psychologists believed that all motivation was based in the physiology of a set of non-nervous- system tissue needs. The theories of that era reflected this belief and used it in an attempt to explain an increasing number of phenomena. It was not until the 1950s that it became irrefutably clear that much of human motivation is based not in these drives, but rather in a set of innate psychological needs. Their physiological basis is less understood; and as concepts, these needs lend themselves more easily to psycho- logical than to physiological...

Decisions about self-disclosure-whether to reveal one's thoughts, feel- ings, or past experiences to another person, or the level of intimacy of such disclosure-are part of the everyday life of most persons. The nature of the decisions that a person makes will have an impact on his or her life. They will determine the kinds of relationships the person has with others; how others perceive him or her; and the degree of self- knowledge and awareness that the person possesses. The study of self-disclosure has interested specialists from many disciplines, including personality and social...