Explanations, Accounts, and Illusions: A Critical Analysis

This book provides a lucid survey of the major viewpoints in social psychology concerning people’s self-awareness (or lack of it), their explanations of their own actions, and their cognitive illusions and self-misunderstandings. In this readable but scholarly review, John McClure examines the major approaches to social cognition developed in America and Europe, including orthodox models that draw on information-processing and behavioral concepts, and innovative approaches that draw on hermeneutic or interpretive models, discourse analysis, and, in particular, critical theory. The book provides a clear picture of what social psychology shows about people’s awareness of the causes of their own actions. It also describes the nature of the misperceptions and cognitive distortions that underlie psychological disorders and that contribute to people’s failure to achieve their potential and control their circumstances. This book will interest not only psychologists and advanced students in psychology, but all readers who are interested in consciousness, explanations of actions, and people’s illusions about themselves and their circumstances.