Originally published in 1975, these contributions surveyed the range of social intervention technology available to psychologists at the time, but they are more than a simple cataloguing of technology. The stress is on articulating certain metatheoretical assumptions that underlie different strategies of social intervention. For example, assumptions about the personal agency, the nature of social systems, and levels and forms of interpersonal influences are all examined. The implications for the training of psychologists are developed, and specific attention is given to the identity crisis in social psychology precipitated by existing pressures and potentials for change at the time.
Acknowledgements. 1. Morton Deutsch Introduction Part 1: Problem-Centered Research in Social Psychology 2. Jerome E. Singer and David C. Glass Some Reflections Upon Losing Our Social Psychological Purity 3. Philip G. Zimbardo Transforming Experimental Research into Advocacy for Social Change 4. Hilde T. Himmelweit Studies of Societal Influences: Problems and Implications 5. Irving L. Janis Effectiveness of Social Support for Stressful Decisions 6. Martin Irle Is Aircraft Noise Harming People? Part 2: Using Social Psychology as a Practitioner 7. Richard E. Walton Using Social Psychology to Create a New Plant Culture 8. Jacobo A. Varela Can Social Psychology Be Applied? 9. Claude Faucheux Theory and Practice: Brief Reflections on Three Cases of Consulting Practice 10. Steven J. Ruma Easier Said Than Done: Theory and Practice in Applied Social Science 11. Harvey A. Hornstein Social Psychology as Social Intervention Part 3: Graduate Training in Social Psychology 12. Christina Maslach The Social Psychologist as an Agent of Change: An Identity Crisis 13. Harold H. Kelley Training for Applications of Social Psychology: An Attributional Analysis of Competence 14. Morton Deutsch Graduate Training of the Problem-Oriented Social Psychologist. Author Index. Subject Index.