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This textbook presents overviews of 12 landmark studies in psychology from diverse areas of research such as consciousness, developmental psychology, learning, memory, social psychology and psychopathology. Through a range of critical thinking exercises and reflective questions, students can evaluate the methodology and impact of these classic studies and quickly hone their analytical and critical thinking skills.
Accessible, clearly-structured and written with undergraduate students in mind, this book will make essential reading for any psychology course.
List of contents
1. Introduction to Critical Thinking
2. John Watson and the 'Little Albert' Study: how to create a phobia?
3. The Nurture Assumption: Does Parental Influence during childhood offer the greatest impact on personality development?
4.The Obedience Studies: Ordinary People and Extraordinary Evil?
5.On Being Sane in Insane Places: Pseudopatients or Pseudoscience?
6.The Stanford Prison Study: Are Ordinary People Capable of Extraordinary Cruelty?
7.Media Research: Is Violent Media Making Us More Aggressive?
8.Recovered Memories: Do We Dare Trust Them?
9.The psi Studies: Psychological Science versus Pseudoscience
10.The Ethics of Caring about Human Beings
11.Benjamin Libet: Do Human Beings Really Have Free Will?
12.The Placebo Effect: How Do Antidepressants Work?
13.The Enriched Environment Studies: A NeuroscientificCase for Early Learning?
About the author
Jared M. Bartels is Assistant Professor of Psychology at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, USA.William E. Herman is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the State University of New York College at Potsdam, USA.
Summary
This textbook presents overviews of 12 landmark studies in psychology from diverse areas of research such as consciousness, developmental psychology, learning, memory, social psychology and psychopathology. Through a range of critical thinking exercises and reflective questions, students can evaluate the methodology and impact of these classic studies and quickly hone their analytical and critical thinking skills.
Accessible, clearly-structured and written with undergraduate students in mind, this book will make essential reading for any psychology course.
Foreword
An undergraduate textbook written to encourage critical thinking. A useful supplementary aid to students of courses in psychology which offers a comprehensive introduction to the key experiments and studies in social psychology and a comparative analysis of their methodological efficacy.
