J. Gross – Psychology (8th edition)

Автор: J. Gross
Название книги: Psychology (8th edition)
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Психология
Страницы: 849
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

The Eighth Edition has been reorganized and streamlined to mirror the organization of today’s courses, updated to include extensive coverage of the latest discoveries and research, and reimagined with new pedagogy, figures, and technology.

James Gross, co-author of the text and Director of the Psychology One Teaching Program at Stanford University, believes in an integrated approach that looks at multiple perspectives to understand the larger complexities of the field. In the Eighth Edition, the authors present psychology as a central discipline that connects to the humanities as well as the exciting advances in neuroscience.

From one end to the other, psychology is an exciting field.
It’s a field that addresses questions that have intrigued humanity for ages—including
what it is that all humans have in common, distinguishing us from other species, and
also how it is that humans differ from each other. It’s a field that addresses deep
philosophical issues—like the nature of consciousness, or the degree to which each of
us is in control of our own actions. But it’s also a field that addresses practical
problems—such as how to help the mentally ill, how to raise our children, or even
how, in general, to make people happier.
The excitement attached to these questions is what originally motivated us to join the
field of psychology, and it is what continues to motivate us as teachers and researchers.
It is, of course, also what motivated us in writing this book. But the drive to write this
book was further enhanced by another consideration, namely that psychology is also a
dynamic field, with new ideas and new data emerging at a remarkable pace. For this
reason, any description of the field—such as the coverage in a textbook—will soon need
updating, and so, in each revision of this text, we’ve introduced our field’s new
discoveries, addressed new issues and new problems, and also benefitted from the
insightful suggestions offered by our readers, both students and colleagues.
NEW IN THIS EDITION
This is the eighth edition of Psychology, and it is our most ambitious revision so far.
We have—of course—added an enormous amount of new content, ranging from new
discoveries about the neural bases of pleasure and pain to new insights into how to
treat serious illnesses such as depression. But we’ve also changed the book in deeper
ways. The table of contents itself is revised, with new chapters on research methods
(Chapter 1), genetics and the evolutionary roots of behavior (Chapter 2), and consciousness
(Chapter 6). To allow for this crucial new material, we’ve also reorganized
other sections of the book (Chapters 13 and 14), integrating material that had been previously
covered in separate chapters, allowing us to highlight important linkages and
bring key themes into greater prominence.We’ve also shifted the sequence of chapters,
to emphasize (among other points) the links between our understanding of thinking in
general (Chapter 9) and our understanding of how people differ in their intellectual
abilities (Chapter 11).
We’ve also made significant changes inside the chapters. This edition, like every
prior edition, has been guided by a profound sense of respect both for our field and for
our readers:We are certain that readers both want and deserve a sophisticated treatment
of our field, one that conveys the substance of our field and captures the
methodological power of our science. At the same time, we want the book to be as
accessible as it is sophisticated, and so we’ve revised the prose throughout the book
with the goal of making the text both intellectually intriguing and also fun to read.
We’ve also added a new art program and a collection of new features—special figures
to highlight research methods; margin definitions to highlight key terms; concrete
vignettes to invite readers into each chapter—all of which, we hope, will make the
book a more pleasurable read!
THE UNITY OF PSYCHOLOGY
As you will see in the chapters that follow, the field of psychology covers an extraordinary
range of topics, and tackling these topics demands a remarkable diversity of
methods and intellectual perspectives. We have done all we can to convey this
diversity, so that readers can see the full richness of our field. At the same time, psychology
is a coherent intellectual enterprise, with many strands uniting the various
types of work that psychologists do and the broad range of issues that psychologists
care about. In writing Psychology, we have tried to convey both the field’s breadth and
its unity, so that readers can understand how the various elements of our field form
a rich, cohesive fabric.
One of the principal ways we do this is by showcasing the methods of psychology.
Psychology tackles a diverse set of issues and employs many different methods. As a result,
the exact procedures we use in, say, a study of how the brain makes vision possible are
quite different from the procedures we use in, say, a study of whether a particular form of
psychotherapy is effective. No matter what the issue, though, and no matter what the procedure,
psychology insists on the logic and rigor of the scientific method, guaranteeing
that our claims are always well-rooted in fact.
We showcase the scientific method throughout this text. Chapter 1, for example, puts
psychology’s use of the scientific method in plain view right at the start; illustrations of
method—and the safeguards needed to ensure good science—then echo throughout the
entire book. Many of these illustrations are presented graphically—in special Scientific
Method figures—to capture as clearly as possible how psychologists do their work.
Why this focus on methods? There are three reasons. First, the issues in play throughout
this book are deep and often consequential: How should we think about human
nature? How should we raise our children? What is “mental health,” and how can we
promote it? With issues as important as these, it’s essential that we provide solid, fully
justified, fully defensible claims, claims that are as accurate as we can possibly make
them. The scientific method is our best bet of reaching that goal.
The second reason is straightforwardly educational. In our own classrooms and in
our writing, we want to make sure students understand the field of psychology. This
understanding has to include both what we know and also how we know it, because our
methods are, in truth, a significant part of what defines the modern field of psychology.
Indeed, our methods are a central part of what makes our field different from the other
endeavors seeking to understand and explain human behavior—the study of history,
for example, or the claims made in novels or religious texts. As a result, we would argue
that anyone hoping to “know psychology” simply has to understand our field’s methods,
and so methods must be showcased in the text.
The third reason is also educational—but in a different sense. Much has been
written about the importance of “critical thinking,” and the need to train students to
be better critical thinkers. We happily note, therefore, that several lines of evidence
indicate that this training can be provided by education in psychology—especially if
that education emphasizes psychology’s methods. And, in truth, this should not be surprising:
We’ve already noted that psychology tackles real world problems, and, in our
science, we carefully test our claims. We pay close attention to whether our sample of
data is large enough and representative of broader patterns. We seek out alternative
explanations of the observations we’ve made so far. Surely these methodological steps,
applied to day-to-day issues, are part of what we mean by (and hope for!) in critical
thinking. This makes it entirely reasonable that scientific training in psychology
can build critical thinking habits in students—and this in turn provides powerful
motivation for our showcasing of methods in this text.