A pragmatic social cognitive psychology covers a lot of territory,
mostly in personality and social psychology but also in clinical,
counseling, and school psychologies. It spans a topic construed as an
experimental study of mechanisms by its natural science wing and as a
study of cultural interactions by its social science wing. To learn
about it, one should visit laboratories, field study settings, and
clinics, and one should read widely. If one adds the fourth dimen- sion,
time, one should visit the archives too. To survey such a diverse field,
it is common to offer an edited book with a resulting loss in
integration. This book is coauthored by a social personality
psychologist with historical interests (DFB: Parts I, II, and IV) in
collaboration with two social clinical psychologists (CRS and JEM: Parts
III and V). We frequently cross-reference between chapters to aid
integration without duplication. To achieve the kind of diversity our
subject matter represents, we build each chapter anew to reflect the
emphasis of its content area. Some chapters are more historical, some
more theoretical, some more empirical, and some more applied. All the
chapters reflect the following positions.