Although modern social psychology is thought of as a largely cognitive discipline, many of the most fascinating research questions are not susceptible to a purely cognitive analysis and are only likely to be fully understood by a tripartite approach in terms of cognition, emotion and motivation. Emotion and Motivation is a collection of readings from the four-volume set of Blackwell Handbooks of Social Psychology that acknowledge the importance of emotion and motivation as counterparts to, and complements of, a largely cognitive discipline. The readings have been selected to provide a representative sampling of exciting research and theory on emotion and motivation that is both comprehensive and current and cross-cuts the levels of analysis from intrapersonal to intergroup.


The book is organized into two sections: affect and emotions, which illustrates the insights of an approach highlighting affect and emotions across some of the different levels of analysis within social psychology; and social motivation, which underlines the significance of motivational concepts in many social-psychological theories, spanning the breadth of the field.