Essays by leading international researchers on the psychology of social judgments discuss the role of evolutionary, neuropsychological and developmental influences on social judgments, in addition to the role of high-level reasoning processes. The delicate interplay between conscious, rational and unconscious automatic mechanisms is emphasized in determining judgmental outcomes. The implications of recent advances in understanding everyday social judgments in people's personal and working lives are stressed.

This book focuses on the ubiquitous and powerful effects of ostracism, social exclusion, rejection, and bullying. Human beings are an intrinsically gregarious species. Most of our evolutionary success is no doubt due to our highly developed ability to cooperate and interact with each other. It is thus not surprising that instances of interpersonal rejection and social exclusion would have an enormously detrimental impact on the individual. Until 10 years ago, however, social psychology regarded ostracism, rejection and social exclusion as merely outcomes to be avoided, but we knew very little about their antecedents and consequences, and about the processes involved when they occurred. Furthermore, the literatures of ostracism, social exclusion and rejection have not until now included discussions of the bullying literature.

This book focuses on the ubiquitous and powerful effects of ostracism, social exclusion, rejection, and bullying. Human beings are an intrinsically gregarious species. Most of our evolutionary success is no doubt due to our highly developed ability to cooperate and interact with each other. It is thus not surprising that instances of interpersonal rejection and social exclusion would have an enormously detrimental impact on the individual. Until 10 years ago, however, social psychology regarded ostracism, rejection, and social exclusion as merely outcomes to be avoided, but very little was known about their antecedents and consequences, and about the processes involved when they occurred.
Understanding how people relate to each other, why they choose to exclude others, and how and why individuals and groups respond as they do to acts of rejection and exclusion has never been of greater importance than today. Acts of exclusion have been linked to depression, alienation, suicide, and mass killings. Marginalization leads people to seek stronger bonds with fringe elements, thus creating more opportunities for anti-social behaviors.
The main objective of this book is to explore the powerful consequences of being socially outcast at the neurophysiological, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral levels. The contributors offer integrative theories that encapsulate the experience of ostracism, exclusion, and rejection. Several chapters explore the role of individual differences in how people respond to exclusion, and the role of social exclusion in triggering adaptive, pro-social or dysfunctional, anti-social behaviors is discussed.
The book is written in a readable yet scholarly style, and researchers, practitioners, and students at both the undergraduate and graduate level should find it an engaging overview of the field. It can be used as a core textbook in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses dealing with social exclusion, and should be of particular interest to practitioners and researchers in applied areas such as clinical, counseling, health, and organizational psychology where the real-life antecedents and consequences of social exclusion are of vital interest.

This book seeks to combine the study of human social cognition - the way we think, decide, plan and analyze social situations - with an evolutionary framework that considers these activities in light of evolutionary adaptations for solving problems of survival faced by our ancestors over thousands of generations. The chapters report recent research and theories illustrating how evolutionary principles can shed new light on the subtle and often subconscious ways that cognitive mechanisms guide peoples' thoughts, memories, judgments, attitudes and behaviors in social life. The contributors to this volume, who are leading researchers in their fields, seek answers to such intriguing questions as: how can evolutionary principles help to explain human beliefs, attitudes, judgments, prejudice, and group preferences? Are there benefits to behaving unpredictably? Why are prototypical faces more attractive than atypical ones? How do men and women think about, and select potential mates? What are the adaptive functions of negative affect? What are the evolutionary influences on the way people think about and respond to social exclusion and ostracism? Evolution and the Social Mind offers a highly integrated and representative coverage of this emerging field, and is suitable as a textbook in advanced courses dealing with social cognition and evolutionary psychology.

This book seeks to combine the study of human social cognition - the way we think, decide, plan and analyze social situations - with an evolutionary framework that considers these activities in light of evolutionary adaptations for solving problems of survival faced by our ancestors over thousands of generations. The chapters report recent research and theories illustrating how evolutionary principles can shed new light on the subtle and often subconscious ways that cognitive mechanisms guide peoples??? thoughts, memories, judgments, attitudes and behaviors in social life.

The contributors to this volume, who are leading researchers in their fields, seek answers to such intriguing questions as: how can evolutionary principles help to explain human beliefs, attitudes, judgments, prejudice, and group preferences? Are there benefits to behaving unpredictably? Why are prototypical faces more attractive than atypical ones? How do men and women think about, and select potential mates? What are the adaptive functions of negative affect? What are the evolutionary influences on the way people think about and respond to social exclusion and ostracism?

Evolution and the Social Mind offers a highly integrated and representative coverage of this emerging field, and is suitable as a textbook in advanced courses dealing with social cognition and evolutionary psychology.

"A rollicking tour through humanity's evolutionary past, and von Hippel is the consummate tour guide. With equal parts wisdom, humor, authority, and charm, he shows how our past explains the present and why our well-being rests on an understanding of how our minds evolved."-Adam Alter, New York Times bestselling author of Drunk Tank Pink and Irresistible Human psychology is rife with contradictions: We work hard to achieve our goals, but happiness at our success is fleeting. We hope our friends will do well but can't help but feel jealous if they do too well. We're aghast at the thought of people we know being murdered, but are unconcerned when our armed forces kill enemies we've never met. We complain about difficult bosses but are often just as bad when we're in charge. These inconsistencies may seem irrational, but each evolved to serve a vital function in our lives. Indeed, the most fundamental aspects of our psychology were permanently shaped by the "social leap" our ancestors made from the rainforest to the savannah. In their struggle to survive on the open grasslands, our ancestors prioritized teamwork and sociality over physical prowess, creating an entirely new kind of intelligence that forever altered our place on this planet. A blend of anthropology, biology, history, and psychology with evolutionary science, The Social Leap traces our evolutionary history to show how events in our distant past continue to shape our lives today. From why we exaggerate to why we believe our own lies, the implications are far-reaching and extraordinary.

The objective of this book, which was originally published in 2003, is to provide an informative, scholarly yet readable overview of advances on judgmental research, and to offer a closer integration between implicit, subconscious, and explicit conscious judgmental mechanisms. The chapters draw on key research on social cognition, evolutionary psychology, neuropsychology, and personality dynamics to achieve this objective. The contributions offer important insights into the way everyday judgmental processes operate and are organized into three sections, dealing with fundamental influences on judgmental processes, the role of cognitive and intra-psychic mechanisms in social judgments and the role of social and interpersonal variables in judgments. The book is written in a readable yet scholarly style, and researchers, practitioners, and students both at the undergraduate and at the graduate level should find it an engaging overview of the field.