作者简介 基思·斯坦诺维奇(Keith E.Stanovich),目前担任加拿大多伦多大学人类发展与应用心理学的国家首席教授,他的研究领域是推理和阅读的心理学机制。他于2010年获得格威尔美尔教育奖(Grawemeyer Award in Education)。他至今已发表了200多篇科学论文。在一项对于论文引用率的调查中,斯坦诺维奇位列引用率优选的50位发展心理学家之一,也是25位优选产的教育心理学家之一。他所撰写的《这才是心理学》(How to Think Straight about Psychology)一书被优选300多所心理学高等教育机构采用。
目录 Preface xiv 1 Psychology Is Alive and Well (and Doing Fine Among the Sciences)1 The Freud Problem 1 The Diversity of Modern Psychology 3 Implications of Diversity 4 Unity in Science 4 What, Then, Is Science 6 Systematic Empiricism 7 Publicly Verifiable Knowledge:Replication and Peer Review8 Empirically Solvable Problems:Scientists Search for Testable Theories 10 Psychology and Folk Wisdom:The Problem with “Common Sense” 11 Psychology as a Young Science 15 Summary 16 2 Falsifiability:How to Foil Little Green Men in the Head17 Theories and the Falsifiability Criterion 18 The Theory of Knocking Rhythms 19 Freud and Falsifiability 20 The Little Green Men 22 Not All Confirmations Are Equal 23 Falsifiability and Folk Wisdom 24 The Freedom to Admit a Mistake 25 Thoughts Are Cheap 27 Errors in Science:Getting Closer to the Truth 28 Summary 30 3 Operationism and Essentialism: “But, Doctor, What Does It Really Mean ” 31 Why Scientists Are Not Essentialists 31 Essentialists Like to Argue About the Meaning of Words 32 Operationists Link Concepts to Observable Events 32 Reliability and Validity 34 Direct and Indirect Operational Definitions 37 Scientific Concepts Evolve 38 Operational Definitions in Psychology 40 Operationism as a Humanizing Force 42 Essentialist Questions and the Misunderstanding of Psychology 43 Summary 44 4 Testimonials and Case Study Evidence: Placebo Effects and the Amazing Randi 45 The Place of the Case Study 47 Why Testimonials Are Worthless:Placebo Effects 48 The “Vividness” Problem 51 The Overwhelming Impact of the Single Case 53 Why Vivid Anecdotes and Testimonials Are So Potent 54 The Amazing Randi:Fighting Fire with Fire 55 Testimonials Open the Door to Pseudoscience 57 Summary 62 5 Correlation and Causation:Birth Control by the Toaster Method 63 The Third-Variable Problem 64 Why Goldbergers Evidence Was Better 65 The Directionality Problem 68 Selection Bias 70 Summary 72 6 Getting Things Under Control: The Case of Clever Hans 74 Snow and Cholera 75 Comparison, Control, and Manipulation 76 Random Assignment in Conjunction with Manipulation Defines the True Experiment 77 The Importance of Control Groups 79 The Case of Clever Hans, the Wonder Horse 83 Clever Hans in the 1990s and in the Present Day 85 Prying Variables Apart:Spe Conditions 88 Intuitive Physics 90 Intuitive Psychology 91 Summary 93 7 “But Its Not Real Life!”: The “Artifiity” Criticism and Psychology94 Why Natural Isnt Always Necessary 94 The Random Sample Versus Random Assignment Confusion96 Theory-Driven Research Versus Direct Applications 97 Applications of Psychological Theory 99 The “College Sophomore” Problem 101 The Real-Life and College Sophomore Problems in Perspective 104 Summary 105 8 Avoiding the Einstein Syndrome: The Importance of Converging Evidence 106 The Connectivity Principle 107 A Consumers Rule:Beware of Violations of Connectivity 108 The “Great-Leap” Model Versus the Gradual-Synthesis Model 109 Converging Evidence:Progress Despite Flaws 110 Types of Converging Evidence 113 Scientific Consensus 118 Methods and the Convergence Principle 118 The Progression to More Powerful Methods 119 A Counsel Against Despair 122 Summary 124 9 The Misguided Search for the “Magic Bullet”: The Issue of Multiple Causation 125 The Concept of Interaction 126 The Temptation of the Single-Cause Explanation 128 Summary 131 10 The Achilles Heel of Human Cognition:Probabilistic Reasoning 132 “Person-Who” Statistics 135 Probabilistic Reasoning and the Misunderstanding of Psychology 136 Psychological Research on Probabilistic Reasoning 138 Insufficient Use of Probabilistic Information 139 Failure to Use Sample-Size Information 140 The Gamblers Fallacy 142 A Further Word About Statistics and Probability 144 Summary 146 11 The Role of Chance in Psychology 147 The Tendency to Try to Explain Chance Events 147 Explaining Chance:Illusory Correlation and the Illusion of Control 150 Chance and Psychology 151 Coincidence 151 Personal Coincidences 153 Accepting Error in Order to Reduce Error:Clinical Versus Actuarial Prediction 155 Summary 160 12 The Rodney Dangerfield of the Sciences 162 Psychologys Image Problem 163 Psychology and Parapsychology 163 The Self-Help Literature 165 Recipe Knowledge 166 Psychology and Other Disciplines 167 Our Own Worst Enemies 168 Our Own Worst Enemies, Part II:Psychology Has Become an Ideological Monoculture 172 Isnt Everyone a Psychologist Implicit Theories of Behavior 178 The Source of Resistance to Scientific Psychology 179 The Final Word 182 References 183 Name Index 210 Subject Index 217
精彩内容 There exists a body of knowledge that is unknown to most people. This information concerns human behavior and consciousness in their various forms. It can be used to explain, predict, and control human actions. Those who have access to this knowledge use it to gain an understanding of other human beings. They have a more complete and accurate conception of what determines the behavior and thoughts of other individuals than do those who do not have this knowledge. Surprisingly enough, this unknown body of knowledge is the discipline of psychology. What can I possibly 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 and websites quote people called psychologists talking about a variety of topics. Yet, despite all of this, there is an important sense in which the field of psychology is unknown. The transfer of “psychological” knowledge that is taking place via the media is largely an illusion. Few people are aware that the majority of the books they see in the psychology sections of many bookstores are written by individuals with absolutely no standing in the psychological community. Few are aware that many of the most visible psychological “experts” have contributed no information to the fund of knowledge in the discipline of psychology. The flurry of media attention paid to “psychological” topics has done more than simply present inaccurate information. It has also obscured the very real and growing knowledge base in the field of psychology. The general public is unsure about what is and is not psychology and is unable to independently evaluate claims about human behavior. Adding to this problem is the fact that many people have a vested interest in a public that is either without evaluative skills or that believes there is no way to evaluate psychological claims. The latter view, sometimes called the “anything goes” attitude, is one of the fallacies discussed in this book, and it is particularly costly to the public. Many pseudosciences are multimillion-dollar industries that depend on the lack of public awareness that claims about human behavior can be tested. The general public is also unaware that many of the claims made by these pseudosciences (e.g., astrology, psychic surgery, speed reading, biorhythms, therapeutic touch, subliminal self-help tapes, facilitated communication, indigo children, psychic detectives) have been tested and proved false. The existence of the pseudoscience industry, which is discussed in this book, increases the media’s tendency toward sensationalistic reporting of science. This tendency is worse in psychology than in other sciences, and understanding the reasons why this is so is an important part of learning how to think straight about psychology. This book, then, is directed not at potential researchers in psychology but at a much larger group: the consumers of psychological information. The target audience is the beginning psychology student and the general reader who have encountered information on psychological issues in the general media and have wondered how to go about evaluating its validity. This
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