The participants of the conference out of which this volume grew were asked to address how theories of social cognition, a perspective that dominates contemporary psychological social psychology, might inform the relationship between self and society. Thus in one sense this book is an update of the “two social psychologies” (or three, House, 1977) literature (Stryker, 1977; Cartwright, 1979) Stryker reviews briefly in chapter 1. This literature contends that there are substantial costs associated with the prevailing mutual ignorance among the three branches of social psychology – psychological, sociological, and personality and social structure. This volume is one attempt to redress this ignorance.

The book is organized into three sections. The first section includes four chapters that address the general interface between sociological theories of the self and theories of social cognition. The second section presents four chapters that address affective and motivational links with cognition, and the third section includes six chapters that illustrate links between the self and cognition as manifested in different forms of behavior. The organization of the volume as a whole thus echos a theme that emerges in a striking number of the individual contributions, that is, reference to the tripartite division of behavior, cognition, and affect.

Over the course of the twentieth century, social psychology has revolved around these three poles of behavior, cognition, and affect.