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Social Perception and Social Reality: Why Accuracy Dominates Bias and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Social Perception and Social Reality contests the received wisdom in the field of social psychology that suggests that social perception and judgment are generally flawed, biased, and powerfully self-fulfilling.
486 pages, Hardcover
First published March 9, 2012
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Displaying 1 of 2 reviews
September 2, 2020
This was a beast to read. I recommend it for people with a social science degree who may not fully understand how stereotypes work and maybe think that stereotypes are nearly always wrong. But the topic and main argument could have been presented in a much shorter format.
Pro:
It's a book that has a lot of good studies about stereotypes. More than anything else I have read by far. So in this acpect it's a book that now is a must-read for anyone studying racism or anyone who thinks racism and sexism are big problems in our society. If you think that pick up this book. It's written from a soft liberal perspective. And it will in fact convince you that stereotypes are most often correct.
Con:
Unfortunately it's not really my kind of book. It has some very good info and some good chapters but it also has a lot of chapters and pages that are overwritten and don't really take the argument forward. Jussim writes the book for the reader who believes that stereotypes are just misperceptions about people. So he makes sure to explain all his moral arguments and minor points in-depth while not really presenting the studies in-depth. Now, I'm not someone who has a hard time accepting a new scientific idea so for me all those chapters could have been removed making the book 150-200 pages shorter. That's a lot of pages to read that just don't inform you about anything much!
And furthermore it's hard to really understand who this book is for. I get that very few studies exist on stereotypes themselves as most psychologists are too afraid to even state that some stereotypes may be valid and can be studied from that point of view. It's horrible that most psychology is biased and bad. But I still don't think many psychologists don't understand that stereotypes can be real. It's not a hard concept to grasp. If a reader picks up this book he is surely ready to accept the message for now. Those 200 extra pages just make it a harder sell and don't really seem to be there to engage any type of typical reader.
It's not an academic text as studies are often just introduced with very few details. We don't even know what traits people judged in races in most examples. It's also not pop-science as some of the numbers were even hard for me to graps.
And the constant appealing to progressives is weird too. I don't really care if he is racist or not. I care about the data. No need to support minorities in every chapter by stating opinions outright. It just ads an ill fitting diary style to the book. How many papers have authors defend themselves this way?
Conclusion:
It's a good intro to the topic if you are a social scientist with a lot of time. But I do feel like I could have read 1,5 informative books in the time it took me to read this one. And even though I'm very interested in the topic I wasn't really fully engaged in the book.
Pro:
It's a book that has a lot of good studies about stereotypes. More than anything else I have read by far. So in this acpect it's a book that now is a must-read for anyone studying racism or anyone who thinks racism and sexism are big problems in our society. If you think that pick up this book. It's written from a soft liberal perspective. And it will in fact convince you that stereotypes are most often correct.
Con:
Unfortunately it's not really my kind of book. It has some very good info and some good chapters but it also has a lot of chapters and pages that are overwritten and don't really take the argument forward. Jussim writes the book for the reader who believes that stereotypes are just misperceptions about people. So he makes sure to explain all his moral arguments and minor points in-depth while not really presenting the studies in-depth. Now, I'm not someone who has a hard time accepting a new scientific idea so for me all those chapters could have been removed making the book 150-200 pages shorter. That's a lot of pages to read that just don't inform you about anything much!
And furthermore it's hard to really understand who this book is for. I get that very few studies exist on stereotypes themselves as most psychologists are too afraid to even state that some stereotypes may be valid and can be studied from that point of view. It's horrible that most psychology is biased and bad. But I still don't think many psychologists don't understand that stereotypes can be real. It's not a hard concept to grasp. If a reader picks up this book he is surely ready to accept the message for now. Those 200 extra pages just make it a harder sell and don't really seem to be there to engage any type of typical reader.
It's not an academic text as studies are often just introduced with very few details. We don't even know what traits people judged in races in most examples. It's also not pop-science as some of the numbers were even hard for me to graps.
And the constant appealing to progressives is weird too. I don't really care if he is racist or not. I care about the data. No need to support minorities in every chapter by stating opinions outright. It just ads an ill fitting diary style to the book. How many papers have authors defend themselves this way?
Conclusion:
It's a good intro to the topic if you are a social scientist with a lot of time. But I do feel like I could have read 1,5 informative books in the time it took me to read this one. And even though I'm very interested in the topic I wasn't really fully engaged in the book.
Displaying 1 of 2 reviews