ABSTRACT
At or near the heart of this book is an intriguing paper about groups written more than 40 years ago by Campbell (1958). For many years, that paper had little impact on social psychologists who study groups. In fact, simply referring to the paper was long viewed as evidence of scholarship among some group researchers. But in recent years the papers impact has increased considerably (see, for example, Dasgupta, Banaji, & Abelson, 1999; Lickel, Hamilton, Wieczorkowska, Lewis, Sherman, & Uhles, 2000; McConnell, Sherman, & Hamilton, 1997; Pickett, 2001). Why? Maybe because the paper has been interpreted as an analysis of how groups are perceived, which links it to a powerful trend in recent research on groups (Moreland, Hogg, & Hains, 1994), namely the use of social cognition theories and methods to study group behavior (see Fiske & Goodwin, 1996).
