Applied Social Psychology: A Global Perspective (Paperback - 2023)

In the past two decades, several books have been written on applied social psychology, the focus primarily being on research and its interpretation in the Western countries, with a clear distinction being made between basic research in social psychology and the applicable, applicability and applied nature of the findings. This latter issue has, however, not always been appreciated by many scholars in non-Western parts of the world. As a result, scholars of social psychology in non-Western regions of the world have frequently erred in their judgment of what constitutes the “applied” nature of social psychology. Secondly, applied social psychology depends a great deal on intervention programs that not only invite work beyond the basic, applicable and applicability aspects but also are costly to implement and time consuming. Due to both these reasons, most of the books from the non-Western countries fall short of the true applied aspects of social psychology. In this respect, Applied Social Psychology: A Global Perspective is a pioneering book dealing with applied social psychology from both the Western and the non-Western perspectives. The book also points out the limits of non-Western social psychological findings claimed as ‘applied” though lacking the support of intervention programs. At the same time, the problems, issues and challenges in intervening at the cross-cultural level have been succinctly dealt with.

In writing this book, the authors have gone beyond the topics found in traditional textbooks of applied social psychology, for example, applied social psychology of the environment, health, law, education, consumer behavior etc, and have also focused on two extremely important areas of our life, that have otherwise remained neglected in most books on applied social psychology. These are the realms of technology and religion. Another important addition is a chapter on aggression and non-violence. Overall, this book presents a wide range of topics that describe how social psychology can be applied to daily life and its problems.

It is expected that this book will not only serve as an ideal textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate students but will also prove informative and useful for researchers and professionals from various walks of life.

“Applied Social Psychology: A Global Perspective is an exceptional book in many ways. First, it is a pioneering work in covering the global issues as compared to other books on the subject that are narrowly focussed on either the Western or the non-Western issues. Second, it covers many vital topics such as technology and religion that are not covered in the other available books on applied social psychology. And last but not the least important, the book deals with real “Applied” issues involving interventions, a problem in many non-Western publications that fail to distinguish between basic, applicable, applicability and applied issues of social psychology and mislabel many among them as “applied”. I commend the authors for their deligence in presenting the facts collected from researches in many countries.”

Omar Sayeed,
Dean of Research, NITIE, Mumbai

V.K. Kool is Professor of Psychology at the SUNY Institute of Technology, New York, USA, since 1991. He has held faculty positions in several universities during his four decades of teaching psychology. He has published several books and research articles. A recipient of Fulbright Senior Research Award (2005), he served the editorial board of several journals, including Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, a publication of Peace Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association.

Rita Agrawal was Reader and Head, Department of Psychology, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar in India. Author of several books and research articles published in many Western and Eastern countries, she has been a consulting faculty at IIM, Ahmedabad; IIM, Indore; XLRI, Jamshedpur; IMT, Ghaziabad, etc. She received many gold medals, scholarships and faculty awards during her three decades of academic career. Her latest book is Stress in Life and at Work (2001).