Is psychology good for our health? What is the effect of class on social behaviour? In this comprehensive and fully up-to-date accoung of the psychology of everyday life, Michael Argyle looks at the most interesting and practically important areas of social psychology. He takes social psychology out of the laboratory into real-life settings and helps us to understand the world in which we live. He covers many of the pressing concerns of the day - conflict and aggression, racial prejudice, social class, relationships, health, happiness - and emphasisies the practical applications of social psychology.
Social psychologist. He is regarded as one of Britain's best known and most productive academic psychologist of the twentieth century. He first read Mathematics, but had to serve in WWII as a navigator in the Royal Air Force, he read Moral Science and Experimental Psychology at Cambridge. From 1950 to 1952 he worked at the Psychological Laboratory at Cambridge, and in 1952 he became lecturer in Social Psychology at Oxford University, where he spent the whole of his academic career, being promoted to Reader in 1969. He was also tutor in psychology at Balliol College and a Founding Fellow of Wolfson College. Throughout his career, he showed strong preferences for experimental methods in social psychology, having little time for alternative approaches such as discourse analysis. Sonia Argyle (1922-1999) was his first wife.