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Interviews and questionnaires were administered to a varied group of professional social change agents. A four-category typology of change agent types was developedfrom an inductive analysis of the data. The categorization scheme best accounted for differences in the following areas: personal characteristics, values relative to social change, conceptualizations about what mediates change, change technologies employed, and the settings in which change work is carried out. The four types of change agents which emerged were: (1) the Outside Pressure Type who works to change systems from outside through the application of pressure using such tactics as mass demonstration, civil disobedience, and violence; (2) the Analysis for the Top Type who works primarily with business and government units to improve efficiency and output and employs analytic procedures to develop expert advice; (3) the Organization Development Type who works to improve a system 's problem-solving capabilities through applied behavioral science techniques; and (4) the People Change Technology Type who works to change individual functioning in organizations through such techniques as behavior modification and need achievement.

An overview is presented of the social psychological research on the effects of media messages. Focus centers on the ways in which people receive & utilize information about the surrounding social universe. Most of the research described here involved the unobtrusive presentation of either confirming (good) or disconfirming (bad) news to people. Specific hypotheses concern the ways in which good & bad news have an impact upon people's willingness to help strangers, their descriptions of human nature, & their perceptions of others & of themselves. As recipients of information about the intentional actions of others, people's views of the social universe & their probabilistic estimates about human nature are constantly being influenced. These informational influences seem to alter behavioral choices & psychological perspectives, & lend these findings their particular significance for journalists & for others interested in the effects of media messages. Specifically, findings reveal that: (1) Information on PO is applied to specific others about whom nothing else is known. (2) News stories that are explicitly prosocial or antisocial elicit very different patterns of response. Antisocial news stories appear to alter one's sense of the surrounding social community & also to mobilize a sense of threat in people, leading to heightened discriminations between similar & dissimilar others, less leniency in judging guilt or innocence, & the increased occurrence of competitive behavior. (3) Good & bad news not based on human intention do not affect the likelihood of cooperative or competitive behavior. Nonintentional bad events (or good ones) do not change social perceptions & so do not alter the psychological states being measured. (4) Self-perceptions show signs of being cognitively more rigid in structure & more defensive in stance following the presentation of antisocial news. 6 Tables. AA.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Original Title -- Original Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction -- Factors Internal to the Discipline -- The Universities and the Funding Agencies -- Broader Societal Influences -- References -- PART I: PROBLEM-CENTERED RESEARCH IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY -- 2 Some Reflections Upon Losing Our Social Psychological Purity -- The Change in Perspective -- The Applied Orientation -- Fitting the Theory to the Data -- The World Is a Theoretical Bazaar -- Applied Social Psychology Is Like Eating Salted Peanuts -- What We Did: A Reprise -- Exerting Social Influence upon Society -- Some Implications for Training -- Some Serendipitous Cocktail Party Benefits -- Appendix -- References -- 3 Transforming Experimental Research into Advocacy for Social Change -- The Experience of Imprisonment -- Method -- Procedure -- Results -- Discovery -- Advocacy -- References -- 4 Studies of Societal Influences: Problems and Implications -- The Impact of Television on Children and Young People -- Follow-Up Study from Adolescence to Adulthood -- Implications for the Discipline of Social Psychology -- References -- 5 Effectiveness of Social Support for Stressful Decisions -- The Problem -- Epilogue: Some Implications for Research and Training in Social Psychology -- References -- 6 Is Aircraft Noise Harming People? -- Reactions to Aircraft Noise, Its Place in Empirical Research, and Applications -- Some Characteristics in Planning and Executing the Project -- Results -- A Case of Sociotechnological Application of Science -- Conclusions -- References -- PART II: USING SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AS A PRACTITIONER -- 7 Using Social Psychology to Create a New Plant Culture -- Diagnoses -- Nature of the Innovation -- Process of Designing and Introducing the Innovation -- Beyond the One Plant Intervention.

In dem Beitrag wird ein Versuch beschrieben und ausgewertet, bei dem die Methode, Organisationswandel zu bewirken, darin besteht, den Leitern eines Schulsystems in Gestalt von Befragungsergebnissen Feedback zu geben. Beim Feedback von Befragungsergebnissen handelt es sich darum, daß ein externer Stab und die Mitarbeiter der Organisation gemeinsam Daten sammeln, analysieren und interpretieren, die sich auf verschiedene Aspekte der Funktionsweise der Organisation und des Arbeitslebens ihrer Mitglieder beziehen, und daß sie unter Zugrundelegung der Daten anfangen, die Struktur der Organisation und die Arbeitsbeziehungen der Mitarbeiter zu verbessern und zu verändern. Die drei Bestandteile des Befragungsfeedbacks werden beschrieben: Material, Zusammenkünfte und Prozeßanalyse. Dann wird dargestellt, wie ein bestimmtes Programm für Befragungsfeedback untersucht wird, d. h. der methodische Ansatz wird erläutert. Es wird darauf hingewiesen, daß die Übereinstimmung zwischen den Veranstaltungen im Feedback-Programm und den theoretischen Komponenten des Befragungsfeedbacks als Indiz dafür zu werten ist, in welchem Maße es gelingt, die Ausgangsbedingungen, die zur Verbesserung in der Organisation führen, zu erfüllen. Für das konkret untersuchte Schulsystem wird allerdings festgestellt, daß keine dauerhaften Veränderungen erfolgt sind. (RW)