Explanations, Accounts, and Illusions: A Critical Analysis

by John McClure

• ISBN13: 9780521047500
• ISBN10: 0521047501
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-01-14
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book provides a lucid survey of the major viewpoints in social psychology concerning peoples self-awareness (or lack of it), their explanations of their own actions, and their cognitive illusions and self-misunderstandings. In this readable but scholarly review, John McClure examines the major approaches to social cognition developed in America and Europe, including the more orthodox models which draw on information-processing and behavioural concepts; and the innovative approaches which draw on hermeneutic models, discourse analysis and, in particular, critical theory. The book provides a clear picture of what social psychology shows about peoples awareness of the causes of their own actions. It also describes the nature of the misperceptions and cognitive distortions that underlie psychological disorders, and that contribute to peoples failure to achieve their aims.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Paradigms of explanation

Consciousness and illusions: critical perspectives

Self-perception and social cognition

New accounts: ethogenics and hermeneutics

Self-presentation and discourse analysis

Illusions, control and helplessness

Phenomenological, cognitive and linguistic therapies

Discounting and dialectics: contradictions in explanations

Conclusions

References

Index of names

Index of subjects

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