Preface
Those of us who teach introductory psychology have the privilege and the challenge of introducing students to our discipline, which is more expansive than ever as psychological research continues to proliferate in the many subareas covered in the course. This task has become increasingly problematic as the authors of introductory textbooks have struggled to keep pace, resulting in books that are more encyclopedic, too long, and thus seemingly impossible to complete in one term. The choices of which topics to assign and to what depth to cover them have become more difficult for teachers. Teachers end up either omitting entire chapters or asking students to read chapters at a pace too hurried for optimal learning. Further, introductory textbooks have become much more expensive, with many priced over $200, leading many students to not even purchase them. As an introductory psychology teacher, I grappled with these critical issues. Psychology: A Concise Introduction is the result of my own search for a textbook that includes the essential core content in psychology but is also economical in both size and cost.
Chapter Topics. To make the most informed choices of chapter topics for the first edition of this text, I consulted Benjamin Miller and Barbara Gentile’s national survey of 761 introductory psychology teachers at 490 schools (Miller & Gentile, 1998). They asked teachers to rate the importance of and need for coverage of 25 different topics in their courses. Since my first chapter covered psychology as a science, I chose the highest-rated topics in Miller and Gentile’s study as the subjects of the other nine chapters. To maintain the book’s brevity, I paired sensation with perception and cognitive development with social development in single chapters. The topic order is the standard one—introduction/methods, neuroscience, sensation/perception, learning, memory, thinking/intelligence, developmental psychology, personality, social psychology, and abnormal psychology. Because the topics of emotion, motivation, and states of consciousness were rated just below the chosen topics, I included sections on emotion and consciousness in the neuroscience chapter and on motivation in the learning chapter. My choices of chapter topics were further validated by Scott Bates’s analysis of topic coverage for 107 introductory psychology course syllabi (Bates, 2004). His topic coverage findings based on syllabi analysis match my chapter topic choices almost perfectly.
These 10 chapter topic choices also fit nicely with the American Psychological Association’s Board of Educational Affairs Working Group’s new model for teaching the introductory psychology course (Gurung et al., 2016). They recommend covering at least two topics in each of five specified pillars (groups) of topics (see Figure 1, page 120), and my 10 chapter topics allow introductory course teachers to meet this recommendation, even without teaching all 10 chapters. This is because some of the chapter topics are members of more than one pillar. A good example is the sensation and perception chapter. These two topics are members of different pillars (pillars 1 and 2). Thus, if you teach this chapter, a topic in each of two pillars is covered. In sum, although there are only 10 chapters in my book, the particular chapter topics that I chose allow teachers flexibility in how they meet this recommendation, if they choose to do so. It is also important to point out that this APA working group cautions against attempting to provide exhaustive coverage of all the various topics in the five pillars given the one-term nature of the vast majority of introductory courses. This caution resonates well with the logic behind the concise nature of my text.
Pedagogical Program. In writing Psychology: A Concise Introduction, I have tried to offer solid topical coverage in an engaging, conversational style. The content in each chapter has been reduced to the core content within that topic domain. Illustrations are full-color and pedagogically sound. Students will find this book easy to learn from. It incorporates both pedagogical aids and study guide exercises to structure their learning. My choice of pedagogical aids was primarily based on research findings about student perception of the use and importance of the many aids employed in textbooks. I included the aids that students report valuing and using in their learning. Each chapter begins with an overview in the form of a topical outline, and key terms are identified by boldface type and then defined both in the text and in a marginal glossary. Detailed summaries are provided at the end of each major chapter section. Study guide exercises begin with ConceptCheck questions at the end of each chapter section. These questions lead students to think more deeply about the material in that section. For example, a question may ask students to contrast concepts to understand differences between them or to demonstrate their understanding of a concept by applying it in a novel situation. At the end of each chapter there is a list of Key Terms and a Key Terms Exercise to test student knowledge of these terms. A multiple-choice Practice Test on the chapter’s content follows the Key Terms Exercise. Answers to this test along with answers to the Key Terms Exercise and the sectional ConceptChecks are provided at the end of each chapter. These exercises combined with the pedagogical aids should foster sufficient review and self-assessment, eliminating the need for and additional expense of a separate study guide.
Fifth Edition Changes. Reaching the goal of a textbook that could be covered in a single term at a reasonable price without sacrificing essential content was and continues to be a challenge, but based on the overwhelmingly positive market response, the publisher and I seem to have been successful. With only 10 chapters, Psychology: A Concise Introduction has fit nicely into introductory courses on both semester and quarter systems. The breadth of the audience for the text has also been gratifying. It has been used successfully at all types of colleges and universities, from 2-year schools to research institutions. Given this success and to maintain the text’s basic goal of conciseness, the content was expanded and revised only where necessary. The 10 chapters (those topics taught most frequently by introductory teachers) remain the same, and content additions were made judiciously.
The fourth edition revisions were well received, so my fifth edition revisions are mostly along the same lines. I’ll describe some examples of the types of revisions that I made. I updated content where necessary (e.g., evidence of Phineas Gage’s probable psychosocial recovery in Chapter 2; Nobel prize–winning cognitive mapping research on the inner GPS in rats and humans in Chapter 4; meta-analytic findings that indicate the Rorschach Inkblot Test is not as invalid as previously thought in Chapter 8; and recent criticisms, studies, and theoretical developments that argue that Milgram’s obedience experiments were not really about following orders from an authority in Chapter 9). I added content that provides better closure on a topic (e.g., a discussion of red-green color blindness to facilitate the understanding of the theories of color vision in Chapter 3, a discussion of the recent discovery of Little Albert’s identity resulting in a happier ending to his story in Chapter 4, and a discussion of the research using the visual cliff apparatus to help understand infant perceptual abilities in Chapter 7). I also added content that has value to students in their everyday lives (e.g., coverage of the regression toward the mean phenomenon and how it relates to our perception of patterns in the real world in Chapter 1 and an explanation of The Dress color illusion that went viral on the Internet recently and how it relates to brightness constancy in Chapter 3). I also added new concepts if they served to strengthen a discussion of a related concept (e.g., addition of the concept of spurious correlations to facilitate understanding of the third-variable problem present in correlational studies in Chapter 1, the addition of working memory to strengthen understanding of short-term memory in Chapter 5, and the addition of the concepts of experimenter bias and demand characteristics to strengthen understanding of the impact of methodological flaws on drawing conclusions from research findings in Chapter 9). Lastly, I have revised and noticeably lengthened my discussions of Milgram’s obedience study and Zimbardo’s Stanford prison study in Chapter 9 and Rosenhan’s pseudopatient study in Chapter 10. All three studies are now discussed as “contentious classics” (Tavris, 2014), and coverage of the substantial criticism that has been levied against each of these studies is now included, severely limiting and modifying the conclusions that can be soundly drawn from their findings. I also revised the discussion in Chapter 2 on the numerical relationship of glial cells to neurons to reflect the latest research indicating it is 1 to 1 rather than 10 or more to 1, and I updated the discussion in Chapter 4 on mirror neuron systems to reflect the current debate about whether these systems are present in humans, and if so, exactly what they do.
In this new edition, the visual pedagogical program was expanded and strengthened throughout the text. Because this program is an integral part of the learning process, I carefully examined each figure, table, illustration, photo, and cartoon to ensure that it served a clear pedagogical function, and any that needed improvement were either revised or replaced. In addition, the tables were redesigned to facilitate their use, and new illustrations, historical photos, and cartoons were added where necessary to further improve the pedagogical value of the visual program. The text’s interior design was also revised to have a cleaner look and thus enhance its use. Because of their success in the first four editions, the specific pedagogical aids employed (those that research has found students report valuing and using in their learning) and the structure of the integrated study guide remain the same. All of the questions in the ConceptCheck sections, Key Terms Exercises, and multiple-choice Practice Tests were reevaluated and revised if necessary. In sum, I think that students will find this new edition even easier to learn from than previous editions.
As with the first four editions, the textbook’s smaller size and lower cost allow teachers the option of adding supplemental readings to customize their courses to fit their own goals and interests. To facilitate the task of finding supplemental materials, Worth offers several options. They are described in the next section, and each of them can be packaged with the textbook for a nominal additional cost.