According to portrayals in the news and popular media, psychologists seem to analyze personality, offer counseling, dispense child-raising advice, and testify in court. Do psychologists actually do these things? Yes—and much more. Consider some of psychology’s questions, which may have also been yours:

Psychology is a science that seeks to answer such questions.

1-1 How do the scientific attitude’s three main components relate to critical thinking?

Underlying all science is, first, a hard-headed curiosity, a passion to explore and understand without misleading or being misled. Some questions (Is there life after death?) are beyond science. Answering them in any way requires a leap of faith. With many other ideas (Can some people demonstrate ESP?), the proof is in the pudding. Let the facts speak for themselves.

Magician and paranormal investigator James Randi has used this empirical approach when testing those claiming to see glowing auras around people’s bodies:

Randi: Do you see an aura around my head?

Aura seer: Yes, indeed.

Randi: Can you still see the aura if I put this magazine in front of my face?

Aura seer: Of course.

Randi: Then if I were to step behind a wall barely taller than I am, you could determine my location from the aura visible above my head, right?

Randi once told me [DM] that no aura seer had yet agreed to take this simple test.

No matter how sensible-seeming or wild an idea, the smart thinker asks: Does it work? When put to the test, can its predictions be confirmed? Subjected to such scrutiny, crazy-sounding ideas sometimes find support. More often, science becomes society’s garbage disposal, sending crazy-sounding ideas to the waste heap, atop previous claims of perpetual motion machines, miracle cancer cures, and out-of-body travels into centuries past. To sift reality from fantasy, sense from nonsense, requires a scientific attitude: being skeptical but not cynical, open but not gullible.

“To believe with certainty,” says a Polish proverb, “we must begin by doubting.” As scientists, psychologists approach the world of behavior with a curious skepticism, persistently asking two questions: What do you mean? How do you know?

Putting a scientific attitude into practice requires not only curiosity and skepticism but also humility—awareness of our own vulnerability to error and openness to surprises and new perspectives. In the last analysis, what matters are the truths nature reveals in response to our questioning. If people or other animals don’t behave as our ideas predict, then so much the worse for our ideas. This humble attitude was expressed in one of psychology’s early mottos: “The rat is always right.”

Historians of science tell us that these three attitudes—curiosity, skepticism, and humility—helped make modern science possible. Some deeply religious people may view science, including psychological science, as a threat. Yet many of the leaders of the scientific revolution, including Copernicus and Newton, were deeply religious people acting on the idea that “in order to love and honor God, it is necessary to fully appreciate the wonders of his handiwork” (Stark, 2003a,b).

Of course, scientists, like anyone else, can have big egos and may cling to their preconceptions. It’s easy to get defensive when others challenge our cherished ideas. Nevertheless, the ideal of curious, skeptical, humble scrutiny of competing ideas unifies psychologists as a community as they check and recheck one another’s findings and conclusions.

The scientific attitude prepares us to think smarter. Critical thinking examines assumptions, appraises the source, discerns hidden biases, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusions. Whether reading online commentary or listening to a conversation, critical thinkers ask questions: How do they know that? What is this person’s agenda? Is the conclusion based on a personal story and gut feelings, or on evidence? Does the evidence justify a cause-effect conclusion? What alternative explanations are possible?

Critical inquiry can lead us to surprising findings. Some examples from psychological science: Massive losses of brain tissue early in life may have minimal long-term effects (see Chapter 2). Within days, newborns can recognize their mother’s odor (see Chapter 4). After brain damage, a person may be able to learn new skills yet be unaware of such learning (see Chapter 8). Diverse groups—men and women, old and young, rich and middle class, those with disabilities and without—report roughly comparable levels of personal happiness (see Chapter 11).

Critical inquiry sometimes also debunks popular presumptions, as we will see in ensuing chapters. Evidence indicates that sleepwalkers are not acting out their dreams (see Chapter 3). Our past experiences are not all recorded verbatim in our brains; with brain stimulation or hypnosis, one cannot simply “hit the replay button” and relive long-buried or repressed memories (see Chapter 8). Most people do not suffer from unrealistically low self-esteem, and high self-esteem is not all good (see Chapter 13). Opposites do not generally attract (see Chapter 12). In each of these instances and many others, what scientists have learned is not what is widely believed.

Psychology’s critical inquiry can also identify effective policies. To deter crime, should we invest money in lengthening prison sentences or increase the likelihood of arrest? To help people recover from a trauma, should counselors help them relive it, or not? To increase voting, should we tell people about the low turnout problem, or emphasize that their peers are voting? When put to critical thinking’s test—and contrary to common practice—the second option in each case wins (Shafir, 2013).

1-2 What were some important milestones in psychology’s early development?

To be human is to be curious about ourselves and the world around us. Before 300 B.C.E., the Greek philosopher Aristotle theorized about learning and memory, motivation and emotion, perception and personality. Today we chuckle at some of his guesses, like his suggestion that the source of our personality is the heart. But credit Aristotle with asking the right questions.

Psychological Science Is Born

PSYCHOLOGY’S FIRST LABORATORY Philosophers’ thinking about thinking continued until the birth of psychology on a December day in 1879, in a small, third-floor room at Germany’s University of Leipzig. There, two young men were helping an austere, middle-aged professor, Wilhelm Wundt, create an experimental apparatus. Their machine measured the time it took for people to press a telegraph key after hearing a ball hit a platform (Hunt, 1993). Curiously, people responded in about one-tenth of a second when asked to press the key as soon as the sound occurred—and in about two-tenths of a second when asked to press the key as soon as they were consciously aware of perceiving the sound. (To be aware of one’s awareness takes a little longer.) Wundt was seeking to measure “atoms of the mind”—the fastest and simplest mental processes. So began the first psychological laboratory, staffed by Wundt and by psychology’s first graduate students.

PSYCHOLOGY’S FIRST SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT Before long, this new science of psychology became organized into different branches, or schools of thought, each promoted by pioneering thinkers. Two early schools were structuralism and functionalism. As physicists and chemists discerned the structure of matter, so psychologist Edward Bradford Titchener aimed to discover the mind’s structure. He engaged people in self-reflective introspection (looking inward), training them to report elements of their experience as they looked at a rose, listened to a metronome, smelled a scent, or tasted a substance. What were their immediate sensations, their images, their feelings? And how did these relate to one another? Alas, introspection proved somewhat unreliable. It required smart, verbal people, and its results varied from person to person and experience to experience. As introspection waned, so did structuralism. Hoping to assemble the mind’s structure from simple elements was rather like trying to understand a car by examining its disconnected parts.

Philosopher-psychologist William James thought it would be more fruitful to consider the evolved functions of our thoughts and feelings. Smelling is what the nose does; thinking is what the brain does. But why do the nose and brain do these things? Under the influence of evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin, James assumed that thinking, like smelling, developed because it was adaptive—it contributed to our ancestors’ survival. Consciousness serves a function. It enables us to consider our past, adjust to our present, and plan our future. To explore the mind’s adaptive functions, James studied down-to-earth emotions, memories, willpower, habits, and moment-to-moment streams of consciousness.

PSYCHOLOGY’S FIRST WOMEN As these names illustrate, the early pioneers of most fields, including psychology, were predominantly men. In 1890—thirty years before American women had the right to vote—James admitted Mary Whiton Calkins into his graduate seminar over the objections of Harvard’s president (Scarborough & Furumoto, 1987). When Calkins joined, the other students (all men) dropped out. So James tutored her alone. Later, she finished all of Harvard’s Ph.D. requirements, outscoring all the male students on the qualifying exams. Alas, Harvard denied her the degree she had earned, offering her instead a degree from Radcliffe College, its undergraduate “sister” school for women. Calkins resisted the unequal treatment and refused the degree. She nevertheless went on to become a distinguished memory researcher and the American Psychological Association’s (APA’s) first female president in 1905.

The honor of being the first official female psychology Ph.D. later fell to Margaret Floy Washburn, who also wrote an influential book, The Animal Mind, and became the APA’s second female president in 1921. But Washburn’s gender barred doors for her, too. Although her thesis was the first foreign study Wundt published in his psychology journal, she could not join the all-male organization of experimental psychologists founded by Titchener, her own graduate adviser (Johnson, 1997).

Psychological Science Develops

1-3 How did psychology continue to develop from the 1920s through today?

In psychology’s early days, many psychologists shared with English essayist C. S. Lewis the view that “there is one thing, and only one in the whole universe which we know more about than we could learn from external observation.” That one thing, Lewis said, is ourselves: “We have, so to speak, inside information” (1960, pp. 18-19). Wundt and Titchener focused on inner sensations, images, and feelings. James also engaged in introspective examination of the stream of consciousness and emotion. For these and other early pioneers, psychology was defined as “the science of mental life.”

That definition endured until the 1920s, when the first of two provocative American psychologists appeared on the scene.

BEHAVIORISM John B. Watson, and later B. F. Skinner, dismissed introspection and redefined psychology as “the scientific study of observable behavior.” You cannot observe a sensation, a feeling, or a thought, they said. But you can observe and record people’s behavior as they are conditioned—responding to and learning in different situations. Many agreed, and behaviorism became one of psychology’s two major forces well into the 1960s.

FREUDIAN PSYCHOLOGY The second major force was Freudian psychology, which emphasized the ways our unconscious thought processes and emotional responses to childhood experiences affect our behavior. (In chapters to come, we’ll look more closely at Sigmund Freud’s ideas.)

HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY As the behaviorists had rejected the early-twentieth-century definition of psychology, other groups rejected the behaviorists’ definition in the 1960s. The humanistic psychologists, led by Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, found both Freudian psychology and behaviorism too limiting. Rather than focusing on the meaning of early childhood memories or the learning of conditioned responses, the humanistic psychologists drew attention to ways that current environmental influences can nurture or limit our growth potential, and to the importance of having our needs for love and acceptance satisfied.

MODERN DEFINITION OF PSYCHOLOGY Today’s psychology builds upon the work of these earlier scientists and their schools of thought. To encompass psychology’s concern with observable behavior and with inner thoughts and feelings, today we define psychology as the science of behavior and mental processes. Let’s unpack this definition. Behavior is anything an organism does—any action we can observe and record. Yelling, smiling, blinking, sweating, talking, and questionnaire marking are all observable behaviors. Mental processes are the internal, subjective experiences we infer from behavior—sensations, perceptions, dreams, thoughts, beliefs, and feelings.

The key word in psychology’s definition is science. Psychology is less a set of findings than a way of asking and answering questions. Our aim, then, is not merely to report results but also to show you how psychologists play their game. You will see how researchers evaluate conflicting opinions and ideas. And you will learn how all of us, whether scientists or simply curious people, can think smarter when experiencing and explaining the events of our lives.

1-4 How has our understanding of biology and experience, culture and gender, and human flourishing shaped contemporary psychology?

Psychology’s roots lie in many disciplines and countries. The young science of psychology developed from the more established fields of philosophy and biology. Wundt was both a philosopher and a physiologist. Ivan Pavlov, who pioneered the study of learning, was a Russian physiologist. Freud was an Austrian physician. Jean Piaget, the last century’s most influential observer of children, was a Swiss biologist. James was an American philosopher. This list of pioneering psychologists—“Magellans of the mind,” as science writer Morton Hunt (1993) has called them—illustrates the diversity of psychology’s origins.

Like the pioneers, today’s psychologists are citizens of many lands. The International Union of Psychological Science has 82 member nations, from Albania to Zimbabwe. Psychology is growing and it is globalizing. The story of psychology is being written in many places, with interests ranging from nerve cell activity to international conflicts.

The Cognitive Revolution

Psychologists in the 1960s pioneered a “cognitive revolution,” leading the field back to its early interest in mental processes. Cognitive psychology today continues its scientific exploration of how we perceive, process, and remember information, and the cognitive roots of anxiety, depression, and other psychological disorders. Cognitive neuroscience was birthed by the marriage of cognitive psychology (the science of mind) and neuroscience (the science of brain). This interdisciplinary field studies the brain activity underlying mental activity.

Evolutionary Psychology and Behavior Genetics

Are our human traits present at birth, or do they develop through experience? The debate over this huge nature–nurture issue is ancient. Greek philosopher Plato (428–348 B.C.E.) assumed that we inherit character and intelligence and that certain ideas are inborn. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) countered that there is nothing in the mind that does not first come in from the external world through the senses.

More insight into nature’s influence on behavior arose after a 22-year-old seafaring voyager, Charles Darwin, pondered the incredible species variation he encountered, including tortoises on one island that differed from those on nearby islands. His 1859 On the Origin of Species explained this diversity by proposing the evolutionary process of natural selection: From among chance variations, nature selects traits that best enable an organism to survive and reproduce in a particular environment. Darwin’s principle of natural selection is still with us 150+ years later as biology’s organizing principle, and now an important principle for twenty-first-century psychology. This would surely have pleased Darwin, who believed his theory explained not only animal structures (such as a polar bear’s white coat) but also animal behaviors (such as the emotional expressions associated with human lust and rage).

The nature–nurture issue recurs throughout this text as today’s psychologists explore the relative contributions of biology and experience. They ask, for example, how are we humans alike because of our common biology and evolutionary history? That’s the focus of evolutionary psychology. And how are we diverse because of our differing genes and environments? That’s the focus of behavior genetics. Are gender differences biologically predisposed or socially constructed? Is children’s grammar mostly innate or formed by experience? How are intelligence and personality differences influenced by heredity, and by environment? Are sexual behaviors more “pushed” by inner biology or “pulled” by external incentives? Should we treat psychological disorders—depression, for example—as disorders of the brain, disorders of thought, or both?

Over and over again we will see that in contemporary science, the nature–nurture tension dissolves: Nurture works on what nature endows. Our species is biologically endowed with an enormous capacity to learn and adapt. Moreover, every psychological event (every thought, every emotion) is simultaneously a biological event. Thus, depression can be both a brain disorder and a thought disorder.

Cross-Cultural and Gender Psychology

What can we learn about people in general from psychological studies done in one time and place—often with participants from what some psychologists (Henrich et al., 2010) call the WEIRD cultures (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic)? As we will see time and again, culture—shared ideas and behaviors that one generation passes on to the next—matters. Our culture shapes our standards of promptness and frankness, our attitudes toward premarital sex and varying body shapes, our tendency to be casual or formal, our willingness to make eye contact, our conversational distance, and much, much more. Being aware of such differences, we can restrain our assumptions that others will think and act as we do.

It is also true, however, that our shared biological heritage unites us as a universal human family. The same underlying processes guide people everywhere. Some examples:

We are each in certain respects like all others, like some others, and like no other. Studying people of all races and cultures helps us discern our similarities and our differences, our human kinship and our diversity.

You will see throughout this book that gender matters, too. Researchers report gender differences in what we dream, in how we express and detect emotions, and in our risk for alcohol use disorder, depression, and eating disorders. Gender differences fascinate us, and studying them is potentially beneficial. For example, many researchers have observed that women carry on conversations more readily to build relationships, while men talk more to give information and advice (Tannen, 2001). Knowing this difference can help us prevent conflicts and misunderstandings in everyday interactions.

But again, psychologically as well as biologically, women and men are overwhelmingly similar. Whether female or male, we learn to walk at about the same age. We experience the same sensations of light and sound. We remember vivid emotional events and forget mundane details. We feel the same pangs of hunger, desire, and fear. We exhibit similar overall intelligence and well-being.

The point to remember: Even when specific attitudes and behaviors vary by gender or across cultures, as they often do, the underlying processes are much the same.

Positive Psychology

Psychology’s first hundred years focused on understanding and treating troubles, such as abuse and anxiety, depression and disease, prejudice and poverty. Much of today’s psychology continues the exploration of such challenges. Without slighting the need to repair damage and cure disease, Martin Seligman and others (2002, 2005, 2011) have called for more research on human flourishing. These psychologists call their approach positive psychology. They believe that happiness is a by-product of a pleasant, engaged, and meaningful life. Thus, positive psychology uses scientific methods to explore the building of a “good life” that engages our skills, and a “meaningful life” that points beyond ourselves.

Psychology’s Three Main Levels of Analysis

1-5 What are psychology’s levels of analysis and related perspectives?

Each of us is a complex system that is part of a larger social system. But each of us is also composed of smaller systems, such as our nervous system and body organs, which are composed of still smaller systems—cells, molecules, and atoms.

These tiered systems suggest different levels of analysis, which offer complementary outlooks. It’s like explaining horrific school shootings. Is it because the shooters have brain disorders or genetic tendencies that cause them to be violent? Because they have been rewarded for violent behavior? Because they live in a gun-promoting society that accepts violence? Such perspectives are complementary because “everything is related to everything else” (Brewer, 1996). Together, different levels of analysis form a biopsychosocial approach, which integrates biological, psychological, and social-cultural factors (FIGURE 1.1).

Each level provides a valuable playing card in psychology’s explanatory deck. It’s a vantage point for viewing a behavior or mental process, yet each by itself is incomplete. Like different academic disciplines, psychology’s varied perspectives ask different questions and have their own limits. The different perspectives described in TABLE 1.1 complement one another. Consider, for example, how they shed light on anger:

The point to remember: Like two-dimensional views of a three-dimensional object, each of psychology’s perspectives is helpful. But each by itself fails to reveal the whole picture.

Psychology’s Subfields

1-6 What are psychology’s main subfields?

Picturing a chemist at work, you probably envision a scientist in a laboratory, surrounded by test tubes and high-tech equipment. Picture a psychologist at work and you would be right to envision

The cluster of subfields we call psychology is a meeting ground for different disciplines. Thus, it’s a perfect home for those with wide-ranging interests. In its diverse activities, from biological experimentation to cultural comparisons, psychology is united by a common quest: describing and explaining behavior and the mind underlying it.

Some psychologists conduct basic research that builds psychology’s knowledge base. We will meet a wide variety of such researchers, including biological psychologists exploring the links between brain and mind; developmental psychologists studying our changing abilities from womb to tomb; cognitive psychologists experimenting with how we perceive, think, and solve problems; personality psychologists investigating our persistent traits; and social psychologists exploring how we view and affect one another.

These and other psychologists also may conduct applied research, tackling practical problems. Industrial-organizational psychologists, for example, use psychology’s concepts and methods in the workplace to help organizations and companies select and train employees, boost morale and productivity, design products, and implement systems.

Although most psychology textbooks focus on psychological science, psychology is also a helping profession devoted to such practical issues as how to have a happy marriage, how to overcome anxiety or depression, and how to raise thriving children. As a science, psychology at its best bases such interventions on evidence of effectiveness. Counseling psychologists help people to cope with challenges and crises (including academic, vocational, and marital issues) and to improve their personal and social functioning. Clinical psychologists assess and treat people with mental, emotional, and behavior disorders. Both counseling and clinical psychologists administer and interpret tests, provide counseling and therapy, and sometimes conduct basic and applied research. By contrast, psychiatrists, who also may provide psychotherapy, are medical doctors licensed to prescribe drugs and otherwise treat physical causes of psychological disorders.

Rather than seeking to change people to fit their environment, community psychologists work to create social and physical environments that are healthy for all (Bradshaw et al., 2009; Trickett, 2009). To prevent bullying, for example, they might study how the school and neighborhood foster bullying and how to increase bystander intervention (Polanin et al., 2012).

With perspectives ranging from the biological to the social, and with settings ranging from the laboratory to the clinic to the office, psychology relates to many fields. Psychologists teach not only in psychology departments, but also in medical schools, business schools, law schools, and theological seminaries, and they work in hospitals, factories, and corporate offices. They engage in interdisciplinary studies, such as psychohistory (the study of people’s historical motivations), psycholinguistics (the study of language and thinking), and psychoceramics (the study of crackpots).¹

Psychology also influences culture. And psychology deepens our appreciation for how we humans perceive, think, feel, and act. By so doing it can indeed enrich our lives and enlarge our vision. Through this book we hope to help guide you toward that end. As educator Charles Eliot said a century ago: “Books are the quietest and most constant of friends, and the most patient of teachers.”

Learning Objectives

Test Yourself by taking a moment to answer each of these Learning Objective Questions (repeated here from within the chapter). Research suggests that trying to answer these questions on your own will improve your long-term memory of the concepts (McDaniel et al., 2009).

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Terms and Concepts to Remember

Test yourself on these terms.

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Experience the Testing Effect

Test yourself repeatedly throughout your studies. This will not only help you figure out what you know and don’t know; the testing itself will help you learn and remember the information more effectively thanks to the testing effect.

Question 1.1

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Question 1.8

Use to create your personalized study plan, which will direct you to the resources that will help you most in .