School psychology has long benefited from the insights of social psychologists. Lab research and field studies have developed concepts such as the elaboration-likelihood model of persuasion, the fundamental attribution error, and stereotype threat, all of which have influenced school psychological theory and practice. One contemporary social psychological area of inquiry that remains underutili...

In the present chapter, we first overview the precursors that allowed the development of cognitive theories of consciousness, and in particular we consider the notions of attention, working-memory, modularity and the distinction between automatic and controlled processes. Then we present a selection of influential contemporary accounts of consciousness, based on three themes: consciousness resu...

Neuroimaging can inform cognitive theories to the extent that particular patterns of brain activity are sensitively and specifically associated with particular types of cognitive processes. We illustrate the utility of neuroimaging data in one specific case: understanding cognitive influences on pain. We first argue that pain self-reports are often inadequate to fully characterize pain experien...

Three studies tested a theory-based approach to significant-other representations. The central hypothesis was that perceivers are especially likely to possess lay theories to explain the responses of their significant others, and this is reflected in the content and structure of significant-other representations. Theories were defined in IF-THEN terms as beliefs about the psychological states (...

Cognitive dissonance theory shares much in common with other perspectives that address anomalies, uncertainty, and general expectancy violations. This has led some theorists to argue that these theories represent overlapping psychological processes. If responding to dissonance and uncertainty occurs through a common psychological process, one should expect that the behavioral outcomes of feelin...

OBJECTIVES The aims were to overview the previous use of psychological theories for oral health education in adolescents and to discuss current approaches which could enhance the effectiveness of behaviour modification in this age group. MATERIAL The MEDLINE via OVID database was searched for relevant papers published during the last four decades. RESULTS Only a few studies using psychologi...

After a brief introduction of a cultural psychological perspective, this paper turns to the concept of self. The paper proposes to conceive of that reality to which the concepts of self refer as a narrative, employing especially autobiographies and other ego-documents in empirical exploration. After discussing some psychological theories about "self," the paper points out that they may well be ...

This paper summarizes the concept of subjective well-being, from ancient philosophical reflection to the first psychological, empirical research on the construct of positive psychology. The author examined the different conceptual definitions of subjective well-being throughout history as well as the dominant themes in the philosophical theories, concluded with some contemporary philosophical t...