前言 Preface Teaching introductory psychology is one of the greatest challengesfacing any academic psychologist. Indeed, because of the range of our subject matter,it is probably the most difficult course to teach effectively in all ofacademia. We must cover both the micro-level analyses of nerve cell processesand the macro-level analyses of cultural systems: both the vitality of healthpsychology and the tragedy of lives blighted by mental illness. Our challengein writing this text—like your challenge in teaching— is to give form andsubstance to all this information, to bring it to life for our students. More often than not, students come into our course filled withmisconceptions about psychology that they have picked up from the infusion of“pop psychology” into our society. They also bring with them high expectationsabout what they want to get out of a course in psychology—they want to learn muchthat will be personally valuable, that will help them improve their everydaylives. Indeed, that is a tall order for any teacher to fill. But we believethat Psychology and Life can help you to fill it. Our goal has been to design a text that students will enjoy readingas they learn what is so exciting and special about the many fields ofpsychology. In every chapter, in every sentence, we have tried to make surethat students will want to go on reading. At the same time, we have focused onhow our text will work within the syllabi of instructors who value aresearchcentered,applications-relevant approach topsychology. This 19th edition of Psychology and Life is the fifth collaboration betweenRichard Gerrig and Philip Zimbardo. Our partnership was forged because weshared a commitment to teaching psychology as a science relevant to humanwelfare. We both could bring our teaching experience to bear on a text thatbalances scientific rigor with psychology’s relevance to contemporary lifeconcerns. Furthermore, Richard’s expertise in cognitive psychology provided animportant complement to Phil’s expertise in social psychology. With Richard aslead author, Psychology and Life has been able to keep pace with rapid changesin psychology, particularly in areas such as cognitive and affectiveneuroscience. Even so, Psychology and Life remains a collaboration of likeminds: Together, we celebrate both an ongoing tradition and a continued visionof bringing the most important psychological insights to bear on your students’lives. The 19th edition is a product of this fine collaboration. Text Theme: The Science of Psychology The aim of Psychology and Life is to use solid scientific research tocombat psychological misconceptions. In our experience as teachers, one of themost reliable occurrences on the first day of introductory psychology is thethrong of students who push forward at the end of class to ask, in essence,“Will this class teach me what I need to know?”: My mother is takingProzac:Will we learn what it does? Are you going to teach us how to studybetter? I need to put my son in day care to come back to school. Is that goingto be all right for him? What should I do if I have a friend talking aboutsuicide? We take comfort that each of these questions has been addressed byrigorous empirical research. Psychology and Life is devoted to providing studentswith scientific analyses of their foremost concerns. As a result, the featuresof Psychology and Life support a central theme: psychology as a science, with afocus on applying that science to your students’ lives. CRITICAL THINKING IN YOUR LIFE An important goal of Psychology and Life is to teach the scientific basisof psychological reasoning. When our students ask us questions—what they needto know—they quite often have acquired partial answers based on the types ofinformation that are available in the popular media. Some of that informationis accurate, but often students do not know how to make sense of it. How dothey learn to interpret and evaluate what they hear in the media? How can theybecome wiser consumers of the overabundance of research studies and surveyscited? How can they judge the credibility of these sources? To counteract this infusionof so-called reliable research, we provide students with the scientific toolsto think critically about the information with which they are surrounded and todraw generalizations appropriate to the goals and methods of research. With a feature we call Critical Thinking in Your Life, we seek toconfront students directly with the experimental basis of critical conclusions.Our intention is not to maintain that each of these boxes has the definitiveanswer to a particular research area, but to invite critical thinking and openthe door for further questions. PSYCHOLOGY IN YOUR LIFE The questions we cited earlier are real questions from real students,and your students will find the answers throughout the book. These questionsrepresent data we collected from students over the years. We told them, “Tellus what you need to know about psychology,” and we have placed those questions—your students’ own voices—directly into the text in the form of the popularPsychology in Your Life sections. Our hope is that your students will see, ineach instance, exactly why psychological knowledge is directly relevant to thedecisions they make every day of their lives. RESEARCH STUDIES These major studies showcase the how and why behind keypsychological research. These studies have been integrated into the textitself, allowing students to understand their full impact within the context oftheir reading. Example topics include plasticity in the visual cortex of adultrats, the impact of meditation on brain structure, the impact of culture onjudgments of which category members are typical, the impact of mood on people’sgullibility, individual differences in intimacy goals, family therapy forchildren’s anxiety disorders, cross-cultural differences in cognitivedissonance, and genetic influences on physical and social aggression. Many ofthe nearly 140 research studies throughout the text are new or have been revisedfor this edition. PEDAGOGICAL FEATURES Psychology and Life has maintained a reputation for presenting thescience of psychology in a way that is challenging, yet accessible, to a broadrange of students, and the 19th edition is no exception. To enhance students’experience with the book, we include several pedagogical features: • Stop and Review. This feature appears at the end of every majorsection and provides students with thought provoking questions to test theirmastery of material before moving on. Answers to these questions can be foundin the Answer Appendix at the back of the book. For this edition, we’ve alsoincluded a list of valuable video clips, audio files, and simulations fromMyPsychLab at the end of each Stop and Review.• Recapping Main Points. Each chapter concludes with a chaptersummary, Recapping Main Points, which summarizes the chapter content and isorganized according to major section headings.• Key Terms. Key terms are boldfaced in the text as they appear withtheir definitions at the bottom of each page and are listed, with pagereferences, at the end of each chapter for quick review.• Practice Test. Each chapter concludes with a practice test with 15multiple choice questions based on the material in both the main text and theboxes. In addition, we’ve provided sample essay questions that allow studentsto think more broadly about the content of each chapter. Multiple choiceanswers can be found in the Answer Appendix, and suggested answers for theessay questions can be found in the Instructor’s Manual.
占位居中
直播中，去观看