The inaugural Purdue Symposium on Psychological Sciences (PSPB) gathered leading thinkers in social psychology to consider theoretical and empirical issues relevant to behavior, across the field and with respect to various subfields of social psychological inquiry. This volume presents the contributions of the PSPS symposium participants. Each contributor highlights theoretical and/or measurement issues about behavior, including how behavior is treated in current social psychological theory and research. The book's coverage of behavior is divided into two overarching sections: (1) behavior and ... More

The inaugural Purdue Symposium on Psychological Sciences (PSPB) gathered leading thinkers in social psychology to consider theoretical and empirical issues relevant to behavior, across the field and with respect to various subfields of social psychological inquiry. This volume presents the contributions of the PSPS symposium participants. Each contributor highlights theoretical and/or measurement issues about behavior, including how behavior is treated in current social psychological theory and research. The book's coverage of behavior is divided into two overarching sections: (1) behavior and intra-individual processes, including social cognition and individual differences, and (2) behavior and inter-individual processes, including close relationships and group dynamics. Despite the imposed sections, there is significant overlap in issues examined across sections. Focusing attention on a multiplicity of issues surrounding the study of behavior is timely and important. Some scholars believe that, across various sub-disciplines of the field, social psychology has contributed a great deal to our understanding of behavior and its antecedents. From this perspective, there is considerable utility in drawing together such work in one place. Other scholars suggest that, though there has been great progress elucidating the internal cognitive, affective and motivational underpinnings of behavior, much less research focuses on external behavior itself. From this perspective, it is important to identify the theoretical gaps, the empirical needs, and the focal issues that still demand attention. In this volume, we review some of these key issues with contributions from some of the world's leading social and personality psychologists.