Abstract

Endowed with an inherently social nature and the ability to think and to reflect, humans likely have entertained, since the dawn of time, varied “social psychological” hunches about interpersonal issues, relationships, and collective phenomena. Recorded history of human thought is rich in intriguing (and often profound) insights into people’s social nature, variously divined by authors, playwrights, philosophers, and others. Yet the “official” history of social psychology as a field of science is, understandably, much briefer. In what follows, we offer a thumbnail sketch of the “meteoric” rise of scientific social psychology and its global expansion over the past century or so. This introductory chapter is intended to give readers a mere “bird’s eye” view on major developments en route to our field’s current status as a crucible where a variety of psychological approaches and levels of analysis productively intersect. A more detailed look at these trends and their intriguing impact on social psychology’s many subfields is featured in the substantive chapters that make up this handbook.