When speaking colloquially of political participation or civic action, one thinks, in the first instance, of groups and organizations such as political parties, social movements or various types of voluntary associations. The perspective of individuals is not the first thing that comes to mind when seeking to understand their functioning. In contrast to this vision, understanding the dynamics of participation requires taking a closer look at the individual, that is, at his or her moral dispositions and projects, his or her multiple and simultaneous identities, the breaking points in his or her biographical trajectory, the roles he or she adopts in an organization or the styles of communication which he or she uses. The book comprises a variety of case studies and theoretical and methodological contributions that, independent of rational choice theories, seek to understand collective action at the level of the individual and, in doing so, to articulate the various fields of study in this regard with the singularity of biographies and the reflective personal identities that characterize contemporary individualism.

When speaking colloquially of political participation or civic action, one thinks, in the first instance, of groups and organizations such as political parties, social movements or various types of voluntary associations. The perspective of individuals is not the first thing that comes to mind when seeking to understand their functioning. In contrast to this vision, understanding the dynamics of participation requires taking a closer look at the individual, that is, at his or her moral dispositions and projects, his or her multiple and simultaneous identities, the breaking points in his or her biographical trajectory, the roles he or she adopts in an organization or the styles of communication which he or she uses. The book comprises a variety of case studies and theoretical and methodological contributions that, independent of rational choice theories, seek to understand collective action at the level of the individual and, in doing so, to articulate the various fields of study in this regard with the singularity of biographies and the reflective personal identities that characterize contemporary individualism.

Personality and social psychology : moving toward a more perfect union / Mark Snyder and Kay Deaux -- Foundations of personality and social psychology -- The intertwined histories of personality and social psychology / Thomas F. Pettigrew -- Perspectives on the person: rapid growth and opportunities for integration / William Fleeson and Eranda Jayawickreme -- Perspectives on the situation / Harry T. Reis and John G. Holmes -- Neuroscience approaches in social and personality psychology / David M. Amodio, Eddie Harmon-Jones, and Elliot T. Berkman -- Evolutionary perspectives / Steven W. Gangestad -- Context in person, person in context : a cultural psychology approach to social-personality psychology / Glenn Adams and Tugçe Kurtis -- Behavior and behavior assessment / Janice R. Kelly and Christopher R. Agnew -- Conceptual and methodological issues in the analysis of cross-sectional and longitudinal dyadic data / Deborah A. Kashy and M. Brent Donellan -- Multilevel modeling in personality and social psychology / Oliver Christ, Christopher G. Sibley, and Ulrich Wagner -- Basic processes of personality and social psychology -- The self : dynamics of persons and their situations / Jennifer Crocker and Eddie Brummelman -- Identity : personal and social / Vivian L. Vignoles -- Morality / Jesse Graham and Piercarlo Valdesolo -- Motivation and goal pursuit : integration across the social/personality divide / Julie K. Norem -- Five questions about emotion: implications for social-personality psychology / Gerald L. Clore and Michael D. Robinson -- Cybernetic approaches to personality and social behavior / Colin G. DeYoung and Yanna J. Weisberg -- Initial impressions of others / James S. Uleman and S. Adil Saribay -- Attitudes and attitude change : social and personality considerations about specific and general patterns of behavior / Dolores Albarracin, Man-pui Sally Chan, and Duo Jiang -- From help-giving to helping relations : belongingness and independence in social interactions / Arie Nadler -- Antisocial behavior in individuals and groups : an empathy-focused approach / Emanuele Castano and David C. Kidd -- Personality and social interaction : interpenetrating processes / Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, Jordan B. Leitner, and Ozlem Ayduk -- Attachment theory expanded : a behavioral systems approach to personality and social behavior / Mario Mikulincer and Phillip R. Shaver -- Person-by-situation perspectives on close relationships / Jeffry A. Simpson and Heike A. Winterheld -- Personality influences on group processes : the past, present, and future / Craig D. Parks -- Intergroup processes : from prejudice to positive relations between groups / Linda R.Tropp and Ludwin E. Molina -- Power as active self : from acquisition to the expression and use of power / Ana Guinote and Serena Chen -- Personality and social psychology in key life domains -- Personality, social psychology, and psychopathology : reflections on a lewinian vsion / Philip R. Costanzo, Rick H. Hoyle, and Mark R. Leary -- Individual and societal well-being / Shigehiro Oishi and Samantha J. Heintzelman -- Multicultural identity and experiences : cultural, social, and personality processes / Verónica Benet-Martínez and Angela-MinhTu D. Nguyen -- Personality and social contexts as sources of change and continuity across the life span / Abigail J. Stewart and Kay Deaux -- The social psychology of personality and leadership : a person-in-situation perspective / Daan van Knippenberg -- Work and organizations: contextualizing personality and social psychology / Deidra J. Schleicher and David V. Day -- A person x intervention strategy approach to understanding health behavior / Alexander J. Rothman and Austin S. Baldwin -- Forensic personality and social psychology / Saul Kassin and Margaret Bull Kovera -- The psychology of collective action / Lauren E. Duncan -- Social policy: barriers and opportunities for personality and social psychology / Allen M. Omoto -- Conclusion -- Personality and social psychology : the evolving state of the union / Kay Deaux and Mark Snyder

Kirk Ludwig develops a novel reductive account of plural discourse about collective action and shared intention. He argues that collective action is a matter of there being multiple agents of an event and requires no group agents, while shared intentions are distributions of intentions across members of the group.

Kirk Ludwig develops a novel reductive account of plural discourse about collective action and shared intention. Part I develops the event analysis of action sentences, provides an account of the content of individual intentions, and on that basis an analysis of individual intentional action. Part II shows how to extend the account to collective action, intentional and unintentional, and shared intention, expressed in sentences with plural subjects. On the account developed, collective action is a matter of there being multiple agents of an event and it requires no group agents per se. Shared intention is a matter of agents in a group each intending that they bring about some end in accordance with a shared plan. Thus their participatory intentions (their we-intentions) differ from individual intentions not in their mode but in their content. Joint intentional action then is a matter of a group of individuals successfully executing a shared intention. The account does not reduce shared intention to aggregates of individual intentions. However, it argues that the content of we-intentions can be analyzed wholly in terms of concepts already at play in our understanding of individual intentional action. The account thus vindicates methodological individualism for plural agency. The account is contrasted with other major positions on shared intention and joint action, and defended against objections. This forms the foundation for a reductive account of the agency of mobs and institutions, expressed in grammatically singular action sentences about groups and their intentions, in a second volume.

Mara Marin complicates the primary ways in which we make sense of human and political relationships and our obligations within them. Rather than thinking of relationships in terms of our intentions, Marin thinks of them as open-ended and subject to ongoing commitments. By assessing three types of social relations - political-legal relations, intimate relations of care, and work relations - 'Connected by Commitment' examines our obligations to transform structures of oppression and offers commitment as a model for solidarity across race, gender, and class.