Abstract
Knud S. Larsen Reidar Ommundsen Kees van der Veer It would be redundant to say that the world we live in is not perfect. Our social life is often plagued by prejudice and discrimination, our social contacts frequently end up in some form of aggression, different persons or groups constantly try to persuade us to do things that serve them and may end up being harmful for us. At a larger scale history tends to repeat itself and the atrocities of the past – wars, torture, terrorism and genocide, to name just a few of the most damaging – describe the society of today as they did in the last centuries. On the other hand we encounter in our daily lives instances of cooperation and altruism, we see some people sacrificing themselves for the good of others and, at a macro level, see how nations try to work together in order to fight worldwide threats like global warming. The social world we live in is definitively a world of contrasts. How can we explain this “diversity”? How to make sense of crime and also of heroism? How do we make sense of ourselves? These are all central questions for the discipline of social psychology. Answers for questions like the above and for many other similar interrogations are put forward in the book “Being Human: Relationships and You. A Social Psychological Analysis”. Aimed to be a useful resource for students and scholars in social psychology, and more broadly in psychology, this text will certainly be of interest for social scientists in general and for all readers concerned with the intricacies of our social and psychological life.
