Pountain and Robins offer a serious, systematic analysis of the attitude known in the vernacular as cool. They examine the history, psychology and importance of cool, situating it in a new cultural category.

Racial tension divides American society. Racial equality remains a distant goal. Although the potion of Black Americans has improved in recent years, the widespread enthusiasm for the Civil Rights movement has waned. Why has progress slowed? What makes racial problems in America so difficult to solve? A principal cause, according to The Anatomy of Racial Attitudes, is the way in which white Americans explain, or account for, the social conditions in which most black Americans find themselves. A substantial proportion of whites believe that stereotypes that Black Americans are relatively less well off because blacks do not try hard enough to better themselves or because of the difference due to genertics or to God's plan. Whites who hold such views have relatively little sympathy for programs designed to improve the social conditions. In contrast, whites who believe that Black Americans are kept back either by deliberate discrimination or by the accumulated social results of past discrimination are much more receptive to policies designed to help blacks. Using qualitative and quantitive data, this book explores the variety and extent of these explanations for social differences; it also describes how each explanation--or combination of explanations--influences a person's views on policies designed to bring about greater racial equality. This study promises to influence not only the course of future academic research on race relations but also the formulation of public policy to deal with racial problems. It reveals that the resistance of many whites to policies favorable to racial equality are not isolated phenomenon but instead is part of a comprehensive view of how society works. If strides toward racial equality are to be made in the foreseeable future, the insights provided here must be considered seriously by policy makers and be incorporated into their strategies. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1983.

Racial tension divides American society. Racial equality remains a distant goal. Although the potion of Black Americans has improved in recent years, the widespread enthusiasm for the Civil Rights movement has waned. Why has progress slowed? What makes racial problems in America so difficult to solve? A principal cause, according to The Anatomy of Racial Attitudes, is the way in which white Americans explain, or account for, the social conditions in which most black Americans find themselves. A substantial proportion of whites believe that stereotypes that Black Americans are relatively less well off because blacks do not try hard enough to better themselves or because of the difference due to genertics or to God's plan. Whites who hold such views have relatively little sympathy for programs designed to improve the social conditions. In contrast, whites who believe that Black Americans are kept back either by deliberate discrimination or by the accumulated social results of past discrimination are much more receptive to policies designed to help blacks. Using qualitative and quantitive data, this book explores the variety and extent of these explanations for social differences; it also describes how each explanation--or combination of explanations--influences a person's views on policies designed to bring about greater racial equality. This study promises to influence not only the course of future academic research on race relations but also the formulation of public policy to deal with racial problems. It reveals that the resistance of many whites to policies favorable to racial equality are not isolated phenomenon but instead is part of a comprehensive view of how society works. If strides toward racial equality are to be made in the foreseeable future, the insights provided here must be considered seriously by policy makers and be incorporated into their strategies. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1983.

How was the concept of 'personality' perceived in (late-imperial) China? Re-constructing the main features describing the individual, this volume, firmly based in textual sources, is a reflection on personality and its attributes in China. It discusses terms that express the propensity, inclinations, predispositions, and temperament of subjects, departing from the descriptions that represent one’s and the other’s self, as well as terms that describe or label a person's main qualities or defects. As judgments contribute to formulate the image of ourselves and others, when talking of personality not only individual characters (biological traits, cultural basis, innate and acquired traits and habits) are looked into, but also social values and collective mentality, as well as individual and group subjectivity.

The Anatomy of Achievement Motivation focuses on the study of individual differences in motivations, including the determinants of specific motives and methods of assessing motive strength. The book first offers information on content analysis and evaluative dispositions, as well as the theory of thematic apperception method, experimental method, and sociocultural frames of references and their change over historical time. The manuscript then highlights the important dimensions of experience and conflict. The publication takes a look at the general structure of goals and performance and valence and motive arousal, including psychic distance and discrepancy between a present and a future state. The book then examines goal setting and level of aspiration, performance period, and the origin and development of achievement motivation. The manuscript is a dependable reference for psychologists and readers interested in the facets of achievement motivation.