Explanations, Accounts, and Illusions
A Critical Analysis

A survey of the major viewpoints in social psychology concerning peoples's self-awareness, explanations of their actions, cognitive illusions and self-misunderstandings.

John McClure (Author)

9780521385329, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 July 1991

200 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.47 kg

This book provides a lucid survey of the major viewpoints in social psychology concerning people's 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 people's 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 people's failure to achieve their aims.

Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. Paradigms of explanation
3. Consciousness and illusions: critical perspectives
4. Self-perception and social cognition
5. New accounts: ethogenics and hermeneutics
6. Self-presentation and discourse analysis
7. Illusions, control and helplessness
8. Phenomenological, cognitive and linguistic therapies
9. Discounting and dialectics: contradictions in explanations
10. Conclusions
References
Index of names
Index of subjects.

Subject Areas: Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Social, group or collective psychology [JMH]