前言 PrefaceNew to the Tenth EditionThe tenthedition of How to Think Straight About Psychology has no major structuralrevisions because a chapter reorganization occurred in a previous edition. Thecontent and order of the chapters remain the same. At the request of reviewersand users, this edition remains at the same length as the ninth edition.Readers and users have not wanted the book to lengthen and, indeed, it has not.I have continued to update and revise the examples that are used in the book(while keeping those that are reader favorites).Some datedexamples have been replaced with more contemporary studies and issues. I havemade a major effort to use contemporary citations that are relevant to thevarious concepts and experimental effects that are mentioned. A large number ofnew citations appear in this edition (172 new citations, to be exact!), so thatthe reader continues to have up-to-date references on all of the examples andconcepts.The goal of thebook remains what it always was—to present a short introduction to thecritical thinking skills that will help the student to better understand thesubject matter of psychology. During the past decade and a half there has beenan increased emphasis on the teaching of critical thinking in universities(Abrami et al., 2008; Sternberg, Roediger, & Halpern, 2006). Indeed, somestate university systems have instituted curricular changes mandating an emphasis on criticalthinking skills. At the same time, however, other educational scholars werearguing that critical thinking skills should not be isolated from specificfactual content. How to Think Straight About Psychology combines thesetwo trends. It is designed to provide the instructor with the opportunity toteach critical thinking within the rich content of modern psychology.Readers areencouraged to send me comments at: keith.stanovich@utoronto.ca.There exists abody of knowledge that is unknown to most people. This information concernshuman behavior and consciousness in their various forms. It can be used toexplain, predict, and control human actions. Those who have access to thisknowledge use it to gain an understanding of other human beings. They have amore complete and accurate conception of what determines the behavior andthoughts of other individuals than do thosewho do not have this knowledge.Surprisinglyenough, this unknown body of knowledge is the discipline of psychology.What can Ipossibly mean when I say that the discipline of psychology is unknown? Surely,you may be thinking, this statement was not meant to be taken literally.Bookstores contain large sections full of titles dealing with psychology.Television and radio talk shows regularly feature psychological topics.Magazine articles quote people called psychologists talking about a variety oftopics. Nevertheless, there is an important sense in which the field of psychology isunknown.Despite muchseeming media attention, the discipline of psychology remains for the most parthidden from the public. The transfer of “psychological”knowledge that is taking place via the media is largely an illusion. Few peopleare aware that the majority of the books they see in the psychology sections ofmany bookstores are written by individuals with absolutely no standing in thepsychological community. Few are aware that many of the people to whomtelevision applies the label psychologist would not beconsidered so by the American Psychological Association or the Association forPsychological Science. Few are aware that many of the most visiblepsychological “experts” have contributed no information to thefund of knowledge in the discipline of psychology.The flurry ofmedia attention paid to “psychological”topics has done more than simply present inaccurate information. It has alsoobscured the very real and growing knowledge base in the field of psychology. Thegeneral public is unsure about what is and is not psychology and is unable toindependently evaluate claims about human behavior. Adding to the problem isthe fact that many people have a vested interest in a public that is eitherwithout evaluative skills or that believes there is no way to evaluate psychologicalclaims. The latter view, sometimes called the “anythinggoes” attitude, is one of the fallacies discussed inthis book, and it is particularly costly to the public. Many pseudosciences aremultimillion-dollar industries that depend on the lack of public awareness thatclaims about human behavior can be tested. The general public is also unawarethat many of the claims made by these pseudosciences (e.g., astrology, psychicsurgery, speed reading, biorhythms, therapeutic touch, subliminal self-helptapes, facilitated communication, and psychic detectives) have been tested andproved false. The existence of the pseudoscience industry, which is discussedin this book, increases the media’s tendency towardsensationalistic reporting of science. This tendency is worse in psychologythan in other sciences, andunderstanding the reasons why this is so is an importantpart of learning how to think straight about psychology.This book, then,is directed not at potential researchers in psychology but at a much largergroup: the consumers of psychological information. The target audience is thebeginning psychology student and the general reader who have encounteredinformation on psychological issues in the general media and have wondered howto go about evaluating its validity. This book is nota standard introductory psychology text. It does not outline a list of factsthat psychological research has uncovered. Indeed, telling everyone to take anintroductory psychology course at a university is probably not the ultimatesolution to the inaccurate portrayal of psychology in the media. There are manylaypeople with a legitimate interest in psychology who do not have the time,money, or access to a university to pursue formal study. More importantly, as ateacher of university-level psychology courses, I am forced to admit that mycolleagues and I often fail to give our beginning students a true understandingof the science of psychology. The reason is that lower-level courses often donot teach the critical analytical skills that are the focus of this book. Asinstructors, we often become obsessed with “content”—with “covering material.” Every time we stray alittle from the syllabus to discuss issues such as psychology in the media, wefeel a little guilty and begin to worry that we may not cover all the topicsbefore the end of the term.Consider the average introductory psychology textbook.Many now contain between 600 and 800 multicolumned pages and referenceliterally hundreds of studies in the published literature. Of course, there isnothing wrong with such books containing so much material. It simply reflects theincreasing knowledge base in psychology. There are, however, some unfortunateside effects. Instructors are often so busy trying to cram their students fullof dozens of theories, facts, and experiments that they fail to deal with someof the fundamental questions and misconceptions that students bring with themto the study of psychology. Rather than dealing directly with thesemisconceptions, the instructors (and the introductory textbook authors) oftenhope that if students are exposed to enough of the empirical content ofpsychology, they will simply induce the answers to their questions. In short, the instructorshope that students will recognize the implicit answers to these questions inthe discussions of empirical research in several content areas. All too oftenthis hope is frustrated. In a final review session—or in office hoursat the end of the term—instructors are often shockedand discouraged by questions and comments that might have been expected on thefirst day of the course but not after 14 weeks: “But psychologyexperiments aren’t real life; what can they tell us?”; “Psychology just can’t be a real science like chemistry, can it?”; “But I heard a therapist on TV say the opposite of what our textbooksaid”; “I think this theory isstupid—my brother behaves just the opposite of what it says”; “Psychology is nothing more than commonsense, isn’t it?”; “Everyone knows what anxietyis—why bother defining it?” For many students, such questions are not implicitly answeredmerely by a consideration of the content of psychology. In this book, I dealexplicitly with the confusions that underlie questions and comments such asthese.Unfortunately,research has shown that the average introductory psychology course doessurprisingly little to correct some of entering students’ misconceptionsabout the discipline (Keith & Beins, 2008; Kowalski & Taylor, 2009;Standing & Huber, 2003; Taylor & Kowalski, 2004). This unfortunate factprovides the rationale for this book. Psychology students need explicit instructionin the critical thinking skills that will make them into independent evaluatorsof psychological information.Years afterstudents have forgotten the content of an introductory psychology course, theywill still use the fundamental principles covered in this book to evaluatepsychological claims. Long after Erikson’s stages of development have beenforgotten, students will be using the thinking tools introduced in this text toevaluate new psychological information encountered in the media. Once
以下为对购买帮助不大的评价