ABSTRACT
A book structured like this one—starting with a target chapter in which the researchers provide an integrated account of their program of studies, followed by comments by diversely relevant critics chosen by the editors, and concluding with a reply by the initial researchers—is a rare and valuable opportunity for the researchers. Writing the target chapter challenges them to interrelate their series of studies to make the whole more informative than the sum of its parts. The researchers must describe their aims, procedures, and findings succinctly enough to minimize time demands on the busy critics, but fully enough to allow them to grasp the purposes and the yield of the program. Especially valuable for researchers is to get considered comments and suggestions from such a spectrum of stellar critics, picked by the editors for their acumen, relevance, and variety. A researcher cannot get such feedback even from dissertation advisors, and still less from symposium discussants or by submitting his or her manuscript to a journal where it may get brief criticisms and briefer suggestions from two or three reviewers, written more to help the editor than the researcher. The privileged writers of the target chapter in this Wyer and Srull series have reason to be grateful for the rare opportunity these volumes provide for getting constructive criticism.
