The success of this best-selling text lies in the author's belief that a good text talks with, rather than at, its readers. Shaffer does an extraordinary job of anticipating students' interests, questions, and concerns while treating them as active participants in the process of learning about social and personality development. The Fifth edition of SOCIAL AND PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT features clearly written, current coverage of social and personality development that aids students in discovering the causes, processes, and complexities that underlie developmental change. Students learn why biological and environmental factors, contextual factors such as cross-cultural, familial, neighborhood, school, and peer-group influences cause change in children. Shaffer also explores the approaches that researchers use to test their theories and answer important questions about developing children and adolescents. This book's effective coverage of field research stands out from other texts not only for its accuracy and currency, but because Shaffer consistently juxtaposes classic research with the latest breakthroughs in a way that helps students appreciate how knowledge builds on earlier findings. This edition features a much stronger emphasis on cultural influences on development.

I think the strength of this text is that it does a great job of covering the important topics in this area, and there are very few texts that focus on social/emotional development; it is well written, student friendly, thorough, and comprehensive I can speak first hand to the fact that students enjoy this textbook.

David Shaffer is a professor of psychology, chair of the Social Psychology program, and past chair of the Life-Span Developmental Psychology program at the University of Georgia, where he has taught courses in human development to graduate and undergraduate students for the past 30 years. His many research articles have concerned such topics as altruism, attitudes and persuasion, moral development, sex roles and social behavior, self-disclosure, and social psychology and the law. He has also served as associate editor for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Bulletin, and Journal of Personality. In 1990, Dr. Shaffer received the Josiah Meigs award for Excellence in Instruction, the University of Georgia's highest instructional honor.