ABSTRACT
Let us begin with a story about the history of social psychology, forged in the shadow of the Second World War and the even longer shadow of the Holocaust. It is no exaggeration to say that contemporary social psychology was shaped by the work of a substantial number of Jewish refugees who fl ed the rise of Hitler and Nazism, relocating to Britain, other countries in Western Europe and the USA. The list is a long one, and what follows is by no means exhaustive, but it would include Henri Tajfel, Solomon Asch, Stanley Milgram, Marie Jahoda, Paul Lazarsfeld, Gustav Jahoda, Theodore Adorno and many more. Respect is due to these eminent Jewish theorists and researchers, whose work was often informed by attempts to understand the social and psychological dimensions of the hateful regimes from which they escaped. Jewish social psychologists produced some of the key theoretical and empirical work in the fi eld between the 1930s and the 1950s. Contemporary social psychology was formed, in large part, out of this foundational work on prejudice, stereotyping, racism, social infl uence, obedience to authority, intergroup relations, social identity, cooperation and competition.
