Book Review for Social Psychologists 

 Prepare a three-page (double-spaced) review of the course textbook intended for social psychologists and other mental health or social work professionals. 

Identify themes from the book that are important to social workers who focus on social psychology. 

Determine which theme(s) you want to focus on in your review and connect these with current and/or past practices of social psychology.  

This is not a book report: your review is an evaluation of the book and its value to policymakers, not just a summary.   

These questions can help develop your review:

 ○ How is social psychology relevant to people's lives? How might their lives be different with or without the advancements of social psychology? Offer examples, or explain examples from the course text. 

○ Which themes from the book excite you and/or draw an emotional response? What is the emotional heart or focus of the book?  

○ What are some main arguments of the book? If the writer wanted you to take away one idea from the book, what would it be? ○ What issues were raised that were left unaddressed?  

○ How has the book helped you understand this subject? Would you recommend this book?  

○ Why should policymakers care about this book?  

○ How does this book guide social psychologists and other policymakers?  

The structure of the review is up to you, but you must give each section of your 

3-page-paper 

a title/subheading that tells us what that particular section will discuss.  

 Tips for writing your book review:  

Keep summary sections brief; share the important issues, themes, and argument you have identified rather than retelling the entire book. 

Avoid using direct quotations from the book (unless it’s the phrase or idea so essential that it can’t be conveyed with other words). 

Instead, use your own words to distill and paraphrase themes, ideas, people, settings, or events. This will require some more effort on your part but your words matter! Along with the summary section, you can also share important details from the book as evidence to support your claims and conclusions. 

 Papers must be written and formatted in the correct APA 7th style. 

This includes font, margins, spacing, capitalization, indentation, page numbers, headers, citations, 

References, and properly removing the extra space between paragraphs inserted by Microsoft 

Word and other programs.