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Psychology and Life

Psychology and Life

Richard J. Gerrig | Philip Zimbardo | Frode Svartdal | Tim Brennen | Roger Donaldson | Prof Author

(2013)

Additional Information

Book Details

Abstract

Psychology and Life introduces students to the core areas of psychology by showing them just how relevant these topics are to their day to day lives.  

Bringing Gerrig and Zimbardo’s classic textbook, now in its 19th edition, to a European audience, this exciting new adaptation for students of introductory psychology offers a greater focus on current European research while retaining the same rigorous, scientific approach and enthusiasm for applying psychology to daily life that has made it so popular with students.


Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Front Cover Cover
Contents vii
Preface xv
Guided tour xviii
About the authors xxi
Acknowledgements xxiii
1 Psychology and life 3
What makes psychology unique? 4
Denfitions 4
The goals of psychology 5
Psychology in your life: Can psychology help me find a career? 7
The emergence of modern psychology 8
Psychology’s historical foundations 8
Current psychological perspectives 10
Critical thinking in your life: Why do friendships end? 15
What psychologists do 16
Psychology in your life: In what ways do psychologists participate in the legal system? 17
How to use this book 18
Study strategies 18
Study techniques 19
Special features 19
Recapping main points 20
Practice tests 21
Essay questions 23
Research in your life 24
2 Research methods in psychology 27
The process of research 28
Observer biases and operational definitions 30
Experimental methods: alternative explanations and the need for controls 32
Critical thinking in your life: The lesson from Clever Hans 33
Correlational research 36
Sampling and generalization of results 37
Subliminal influence? 38
Psychology in your life: Can survey research affect your attitudes? 39
Psychological measurement 40
Achieving reliability and validity 41
Self-report measures 41
Behavioural measures and observations 42
Recording and imaging of brain activity 43
Ethical issues in research 44
Informed consent 45
Risk/gain assessment 45
Intentional deception 45
Debriefing 45
Issues in animal research 45
Critical thinking in your life: Psychological research: Basic and applied 46
Becoming a wiser research consumer 46
Psychology in your life: How can you evaluate psychological information on the web? 48
Recapping main points 48
Practice tests 49
Essay questions 51
Research in your life 52
Statistical supplement: Understanding statistics: Analysing data and forming conclusions 54
3 The evolutionary and biological bases of behaviour 65
Critical thinking in your life: How do brain imaging techniques work? 66
Heredity and behaviour 67
Evolution and natural selection 67
Variation in the human genotype 70
The nervous system in action 74
The neuron 74
Psychology in your life: Are your brain cells programmed to die? 76
Critical thinking in your life: Do early experiences affect the connectivity of your neurons? 77
The generation and propagation of action potentials 80
Synaptic transmission 84
Neurotransmitters and their functions 86
Biology and behaviour 88
Eavesdropping on the brain 88
The nervous system 88
Critical thinking in your life: What does ‘it’s genetic’ mean? 89
Brain structures and their functions 91
Hemispheric lateralization 98
The endocrine system 100
Plasticity and neurogenesis: our changing brains 101
Psychology in your life: Why does music have an impact on how you feel? 103
Recapping main points 104
Practice tests 105
Essay questions 107
Research in your life 108
4 Sensation and perception 111
Sensing, organizing, identifying and recognizing 112
The proximal and distal stimuli 113
Reality, ambiguity and illusions 114
Sensory knowledge of the world 116
Absolute thresholds and sensory adaptation 118
Response bias and signal detection theory 118
Difference thresholds 119
From physical events to mental events 120
The visual system 121
The human eye 121
The pupil and the lens 122
The retina 122
Processes in the brain 123
Seeing colour 126
Critical thinking in your life: Can technology restore sight? 127
Hearing 130
The physics of sound 130
Psychological dimensions of sound 131
The physiology of hearing 132
Your other senses 135
Smell 135
Taste 136
Psychology in your life: Can you see and smell without knowing about it? 137
Touch and skin senses 137
The vestibular and kinaesthetic senses 138
Pain 139
Organizational processes in perception 140
Attentional processes 140
Psychology in your life: Why is eating ‘hot’ food painful? 142
Principles of perceptual grouping 143
Spatial and temporal integration 144
Motion perception 144
Depth perception 145
Perceptual constancies 148
Identification and recognition processes 150
Critical thinking in your life: How do we recognize faces? 150
Bottom-up and top-down processes 151
The influence of contexts and expectations 152
Final lessons 153
Recapping main points 154
Practice tests 156
Essay questions 159
Research in your life 160
5 Mind, consciousness and alternate states 163
The contents of consciousness 164
Awareness and consciousness 164
Studying the contents of consciousness 166
Critical thinking in your life: Introspection revisited 167
The functions of consciousness 168
The uses of consciousness 168
Studying the functions of consciousness 169
Sleep and dreams 170
Circadian rhythms 170
The sleep cycle 171
Why sleep? 172
Sleep disorders 173
Dreams: theatre of the mind 174
Psychology in your life: Do you get enough sleep? 175
Altered states of consciousness 177
Lucid dreaming 177
Hypnosis 178
Meditation 180
Psychology in your life: What is hypnotherapy? 180
Religious ecstasy 181
Mind-altering drugs 181
Dependence and addiction 182
Varieties of psychoactive drugs 183
Critical thinking in your Life: Does ecstasy harm the brain? 184
Recapping main points 186
Practice tests 187
Essay questions 189
Research in your life 190
6 Learning and behaviour analysis 193
The study of learning 194
What is learning? 194
Behaviourism and behaviour analysis 195
Basic forms of learning 196
Classical conditioning: learning predictable signals 196
Pavlov’s surprising observation 196
Processes of conditioning 198
Focus on acquisition 201
Importance of classical conditioning 202
Psychology in your life: How does classical conditioning affect cancer treatment? 204
Operant conditioning: Learning about consequences 205
The law of effect 205
Experimental analysis of behaviour 206
Reinforcement contingencies 207
Properties of reinforcers 210
Critical thinking in your life: Unexpected effects of rewards 211
Schedules of reinforcement 212
The partial reinforcement extinction effect 213
Shaping 214
Biology and learning 215
Instinctual drift 215
Critical thinking in your life: Animal intelligence 215
Taste-aversion learning 216
Cognitive influences on learning 218
Comparative cognition 218
Psychology in your life: Learning and awareness 220
Observational learning 221
Recapping main points 223
Practice tests 224
Essay questions 227
Research in your life 228
7 Memory 231
What is memory? 232
Types of memory 232
An overview of memory processes 234
Memory over the short term 235
Iconic memory 236
Short-term memory 237
Working memory 240
Long-term memory: encoding and retrieval 241
Psychology in your life: How much do you think you will remember from your psychology degree in 10 years’ time? 241
Retrieval cues 242
Context and encoding 243
The processes of encoding and retrieval 244
Why we forget 246
Improving memory for unstructured information 248
Metamemory 250
Critical thinking in your life: How can memory research help you prepare for exams? 250
Structures in long-term memory 252
Memory structures 252
Remembering as a reconstructive process 255
Critical thinking in your life: Can a brain scanner tell whether what you remember really happened or not? 257
Biological aspects of memory 258
Searching for the engram 258
Amnesia 259
Psychology in your life: Why does Alzheimer’s disease affect memory? 260
Brain imaging 261
Recapping main points 263
Practice tests 264
Essay questions 265
Research in your life 266
8 Cognitive processes 269
Studying cognition 271
Discovering the processes of mind 271
Mental processes and mental resources 271
Language use 274
Language production 274
Language understanding 277
Language and evolution 280
Critical thinking in your life: How does gesture influence language processing? 281
Language, thought and culture 282
Psychology in your life: Why and how do people lie? 283
Visual cognition 284
Using visual representations 284
Combining verbal and visual representations 286
Problem-solving and reasoning 289
Problem-solving 289
Deductive reasoning 292
Inductive reasoning 294
Judgement and decision-making 296
Heuristics and judgement 296
The psychology of decision-making 299
Psychology in your life: What to ask your doctor when you test positive for something 301
Critical thinking in your life: Can political experts predict the future? 304
Recapping main points 305
Practice tests 306
Essay questions 307
Research in your life 308
9 Intelligence and Intelligence Assessment 311
What is assessment? 312
History of assessment 312
Basic features of formal assessment 313
Intelligence assessment 316
The origins of intelligence testing 316
Critical thinking in your life: From Cyril L. Burt to cutting edge – hereditary basis of IQ: current gene–environment interactions 317
IQ tests 318
Extremes of intelligence 319
Psychology in your life: The front line of psychology – fetal alcohol syndrome 321
Theories of intelligence 322
Psychometric theories of intelligence 322
Critical thinking in your life: Can you trust intelligence assessment on the internet? 324
Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence 324
Gardner’s multiple intelligences 325
Emotional intelligence 326
Psychology in your life: Do theories of intelligence matter? 327
The politics of intelligence 328
The history of group comparisons 328
Heredity and IQ 329
Environments and IQ 330
Culture and the validity of IQ tests 331
Creativity 333
Assessing creativity and the link to intelligence 333
Extremes of creativity 334
The ethics of assessment 335
Recapping main points 336
Practice tests 337
Essay questions 339
Research in your life 340
10 Human development across the lifespan 343
Studying development 344
Physical development across the lifespan 346
Prenatal and childhood development 346
Critical thinking in your life: What is a ‘crack baby’? 348
Physical development in adolescence 350
Physical changes in adulthood 351
Cognitive development across the lifespan 352
Piaget’s insights into mental development 352
Contemporary perspectives on early cognitive development 355
Cognitive development in adulthood 357
Psychology in your life: Will your brain work differently as you age? 359
Acquiring language 360
Perceiving speech and perceiving words 360
Learning word meanings 361
Acquiring grammar 362
Social development across the lifespan 363
Erikson’s psychosocial stages 364
Social development in childhood 365
Critical thinking in your life: How is the Strange Situation Test relevant today? 367
Social development in adolescence 370
Social development in adulthood 371
Sex and gender differences 374
Sex differences 374
Gender identity and gender roles 375
Moral development 377
Kohlberg’s stages of moral reasoning 377
Gender and cultural perspectives on moral reasoning 378
Learning to age successfully 379
Psychology in your life: Can physical exercise reduce the negative effects of normal ageing and Alzheimer’s disease? 380
Recapping main points 380
Practice tests 381
Essay questions 385
Research in your life 386
11 Motivation 389
Understanding motivation 390
Critical thinking in your life: Functions of motivational concepts 390
Sources of motivation 391
A hierarchy of needs 393
Eating 394
The physiology of eating 395
The psychology of eating 396
Psychology in your life: How does genetics contribute to obesity? 397
Sexual behaviours 400
Non-human sexual behaviours 400
Human sexual arousal and response 402
The evolution of sexual behaviours 403
Sexual norms 404
Homosexuality 405
Motivation for personal achievement 407
Need for achievement 407
Psychology in your life: Achievement and well-being 409
Attributions for success and failure 409
Work and organizational psychology 411
Critical thinking in your life: How does motivation affect academic achievement? 412
Recapping main points 413
Practice tests 414
Essay questions 417
Research in your life 418
12 Emotion, stress and health 421
Emotions 422
Basic emotions and culture 422
Theories of emotion 425
Functions of emotion 428
Critical thinking in your life: Why are some people happier than others? 431
Stress of living 432
Physiological stress reactions 433
Psychological stress reactions 436
Psychology in your life: The stress of life events 436
Coping with stress 441
Positive effects of stress 446
Health psychology 447
The biopsychosocial model of health 447
Health promotion 448
Treatment 450
Critical thinking in your life: Healthy behaviour in Sweden 451
Personality and health 453
Psychology in your life: A toast to your health 455
Recapping main points 456
Practice tests 457
Essay questions 459
Research in your life 460
13 Understanding human personality 463
Type and trait personality theories 465
Categorizing by types 465
Describing with traits 466
Psychology in your life: Can you rely on the results from an online personality test? 469
Traits and heritability 469
Do traits predict behaviours? 470
Evaluation of type and trait theories 471
Psychodynamic theories 471
Freudian psychoanalysis 471
Psychology in your life: Why are some people shy? 472
Evaluation of Freudian theory 476
Extending psychodynamic theories 477
Humanistic theories 478
Features of humanistic theories 478
Evaluation of humanistic theories 479
Social-learning and cognitive theories 480
Mischel’s cognitive–affective personality theory 480
Bandura’s cognitive social-learning theory 481
Cantor’s social intelligence theory 483
Evaluation of social-learning and cognitive theories 483
Self theories 484
Dynamic aspects of self-concepts 484
Self-esteem and self-presentation 485
The cultural construction of self 486
Evaluation of self theories 487
Critical thinking in your life: Who are you on the internet? 488
Comparing personality theories 488
Assessing personality 489
Objective tests 489
Critical thinking in your life: How many items are necessary? 491
Projective tests 492
Recapping main points 494
Practice tests 496
Essay questions 497
Research in your life 498
14 Psychological disorders 501
The nature of psychological disorders 502
Deciding what is abnormal 503
The problem of objectivity 504
Classifying psychological disorders 505
The aetiology of psychopathology 508
Anxiety disorders 510
Generalized anxiety disorder 510
Panic disorder 511
Phobias 511
Obsessive-compulsive disorder 512
Post-traumatic stress disorder 514
Causes of anxiety disorders 514
Mood disorders 516
Major depressive disorder 517
Bipolar disorder 518
Causes of mood disorders 518
Critical thinking in your life: Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) – a controversial diagnosis and a controversial treatment 521
Gender differences in depression 521
Suicide 522
Personality disorders 523
Psychology in your life: How can we pinpoint interactions of nature and nurture? 523
Borderline personality disorder 524
Antisocial personality disorder 525
Somatoform and dissociative disorders 526
Somatoform disorders 526
Dissociative disorders 528
Schizophrenic disorders 529
Major types of schizophrenia 530
Causes of schizophrenia 531
Critical thinking in your life: What is insanity? 534
Psychological disorders of childhood 535
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder 536
Autistic disorder 537
Psychology in your life: DAMP: a Scandinavian diagnosis 537
The stigma of mental illness 538
Recapping main points 540
Practice tests 541
Essay questions 543
Research in your life 544
15 Therapies for psychological disorders 547
The therapeutic context 548
Goals and major therapies 548
Therapists and therapeutic settings 549
Historical perspectives on institutional treatment 550
Psychodynamic therapies 552
Freudian psychoanalysis 552
Psychology in your life: Are lives haunted by repressed memories? 554
Behaviour therapies 555
Counterconditioning 555
Contingency management 557
Social-learning therapy 558
Generalization techniques 560
Cognitive therapies 560
Changing false beliefs 560
Cognitive behavioural therapy 563
Psychology in your life: How many sessions are necessary? 564
Humanistic therapies 565
Client-centred therapy 565
Gestalt therapy 566
Group therapies 566
Couple and family therapy 567
Support groups 568
Biomedical therapies 568
Drug therapy 568
Psychosurgery 571
Critical thinking in your life: The dark age of psychiatry? 571
ECT and rTMS 572
Critical thinking in your life: Does therapy affect brain activity? 573
Treatment evaluation and prevention strategies 574
Evaluating therapeutic effectiveness 574
Evidence-based treatments 576
Prevention strategies 576
Recapping main points 578
Practice tests 580
Essay questions 581
Research in your life 582
16 Social cognition and relationships 585
Constructing social reality 586
Social perception 586
Attribution theory 587
The fundamental attribution error 588
Self-serving biases 589
Critical thinking in your life: Is the fundamental attribution error universal? 589
Psychology in your life: Does it matter which attributions you make? 591
Expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies 591
Attitudes, attitude change and action 592
Attitudes and behaviours 592
Processes of persuasion 594
Persuasion by your own actions 596
Compliance 597
Prejudice 599
Origins of prejudice 599
Critical thinking in your life: Do latenight TV ads really work? 600
Effects of stereotypes 601
Reversing prejudice 602
Social relationships 603
Liking 603
Loving 604
Psychology in your life: Can lasting relationships form on the internet? 607
Recapping main points 607
Practice tests 608
Essay questions 611
Research in your life 612
17 Social processes, society and culture 615
The power of the situation 616
Roles and rules 616
Social norms 618
Conformity 618
Psychology in your life: Conformity in everyday life 621
Critical thinking in your life: Conformity and compliance revisited 622
Decision-making in groups 622
Situational power: Candid Camera revelations 623
Altruism and prosocial behaviour 623
The roots of altruism 624
Motives for prosocial behaviour 625
The effects of the situation on prosocial behaviour 626
Aggression 628
Evolutionary perspectives 628
Individual differences 629
Critical thinking in your life: On the de.nition of aggression 630
Situational influences 631
Cultural constraints 633
Psychology in your life: Bullying 635
The psychology of conflict and peace 636
Obedience to authority 636
The psychology of genocide and war 639
Peace psychology 642
A personal endnote 644
Recapping main points 645
Practice tests 646
Essay questions 647
Research in your life 648
Answer appendix A2
Glossary G1
A G1
B G2
C G2
D G4
E G5
F G6
G G6
H G7
I G7
J G8
K G8
L G8
M G9
N G9
O G10
P G10
R G12
S G13
T G15
U G15
V G16
W G16
Z G16
References R1
Name index N12
A N12
B N12
C N13
D N13
E N13
F N13
G N14
H N14
I N14
J N15
K N15
L N15
M N15
N N16
O N16
P N16
Q N17
R N17
S N17
T N18
U N18
V N18
W N18
Y N18
Z N18
Subject index SI1
A SI1
B SI2
C SI3
D SI5
E SI6
F SI7
G SI8
H SI9
I SI9
J SI10
K SI10
L SI10
M SI11
N SI12
O SI12
P SI13
Q SI15
R SI15
S SI16
T SI18
U SI19
V SI19
W SI20
X SI20
Y SI20
Z SI20
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