The Social Animal

This book made me fall in love with social psychology all over again. Aronson chooses interesting studies for each topic and then relates them to hypothetical examples, books, movies, commercials, and historical events. There are also really interesting cartoons of people with egg-shaped heads. Even though this edition of the book released in 03 a lot of the information is still very relevant. Would recommend to anyone and everyone.

The Social Animal, 9th ed., is a newer addition than the one I used for a Social Psychology class at TAMU-CC years ago. The topics in the book and the information addressing the topics are priceless. It is a joy to review. Since that class in social psyc., I eventually earned an MA--Clinical Psychology...and then a JD.

Great primer for those interested in Social Psychology. Aronson is a fab writer and uses tons of examples to illustrate complex theories and ideas. I use this book as a the main text book in a course I teach in this subject.

I think the book explains that we have a person on the exterior that seeks to compromise with society and inside we have a belief or philosophy that is sometimes quite different.

A fine book. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars were because of two "flaws." The first "flaw" is that any reader that doesn't have a firm (and I mean firm) grasp of statistics will have difficult understanding the data produced by many of the studies. This book probably served as a textbook back when it came out, and I think it presumes that the readers are knowledgeable statisticians. The second "flaw" is that the chapter on Jackie Robinson repeats the often cited (but debunked) episode where Pee Wee Reese allegedly put his arm around Robinson. Both men became good friends, but that incident (which the movie "42" repeated) almost certainly didn't happen. Not a huge issue, but I'm picky when it comes to books being factual. Nonetheless, this is an interesting book that, despite the heavy reliance on statistics and psychology jargon, is worth reading if you are interested in learning more about people's decision-making processes.

That's a classic!

Loved it!

Book was slightly damaged

Easy read, full of experimental evidence.

Good

I like this book because it is easy to understand even to people whose first language is not English. The author used simple English to express complicated psychological concepts in social psychology. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested to know more about social psychology.

awesome!