George R. Goethals

Brian Mullen

In the fall of 1983, we began to organize a symposium entitled "General Social Psychological Theories of Group Behavior." Our goal was to encourage the extension and application of basic current social psychology to group behavior. The symposium was presented in the spring of 1984 at the Eastern Psychological Association convention in Baltimore and the interest that it generated led to discussions with colleagues and friends about similar efforts by social psychologists, eventually resulting in the present book. Some clarification about the contents is in order. First, the theories presented here are clearly social psychological in scope and level of analysis, as discussed in the Introduction (Chapter 1). However, we are not trying to encompass sociological, anthropological, political, or historical theoretical approaches to group behavior. Second, while the theories comprise a wide-ranging and representative, if not quite exhaustive, selection of social psychological theories of group behavior, there are some interesting and general perspectives that are not represented. For example, one perspective that is conspicuous by its absence is some variant of learning theory. Aside from the rare, notable exception (e.g., Buss, 1979), little work currently is being done on group behavior from a learning theoretic perspective. Our inclusion or exclusion of a theory reflects our judgment regarding its currency and accessibility to social psychological researchers.

Theories of Group Behavior

In response to the growing emphasis on precision in the summarization and integration of research literature, Advanced BASIC Meta-Analysis presents an overview of strategies, techniques, and procedures used in meta-analysis. The book and software provide an integrated and comprehensive combination of meta-analytic tools for the statistical integration of independent study results. Advanced BASIC Meta-Analysis has three distinct goals: * to provide a clear and user-friendly introduction to the procedures and rules of effective meta-analytic integration; * to present the implicit assumptions and strategies that guide successful meta-analytic integrations; and * to develop a meta-analytic database management system that allows users to create, modify, and update a database, including the relevant statistical information and predictors, for a given research domain. The companion software system allows users to perform a full complement of meta-analytic statistical functions with the speed and flexibility of a database management system. It can also construct a wide array of meta-analytic graphic displays. This text and software package serves as a useful introduction to the quantitative assessment of research domains for those new to meta-analyses. It is also a valuable sourcebook for those who have already conducted meta-analyses.

Brian Mullen

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