How To Think Straight About Psychology

by Stanovich, Keith E.

Edition:

9th

ISBN13:

9780205685905

ISBN10:

0205685900

Format:

Paperback

Pub. Date:

7/29/2009

Publisher(s):

Pearson

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Customer Reviews

Think Smarter about the World April 5, 2011
by Harris

I read this textbook during my research methods class while completing my undergraduate education four years ago. This was one of the most helpful textbooks that I have ever read related to psychology. More specifically, this book reminds us that, as psychologists, we need to remember to take in all information with a grain of salt. In other words, remember to critically evaluate all information presented to you and not believe everything is face valid.

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How To Think Straight About Psychology: 5 out of 5 stars based on 1 user reviews.

Summary

Keith Stanovich's widely used and highly acclaimed book helps students become more discriminating consumers of psychological information, helping them recognize pseudoscience and be able to distinguish it from true psychological research. Stanovich helps instructors teach critical thinking skills within the rich context of psychology. It is the leading text of its kind. How to Think Straight About Psychologysays about the discipline of psychology what many instructors would like to say but haven't found a way to. That is one reason adopters have called it "an instructor's dream text" and often comment "I wish I had written it. It tells my students just what I want them to hear about psychology".

Preface	p. xi
Psychology Is Alive and Well (and Doing Fine Among the Sciences)	p. 1
The Freud Problem	p. 1
The Diversity of Modern Psychology	p. 2
Implications of Diversity	p. 3
Unity in Science	p. 6
What, Then, Is Science?	p. 8
Systematic Empiricism	p. 9
Publicly Verifiable Knowledge: Replication and Peer Review	p. 10
Empirically Solvable Problems: Scientists' Search for Testable Theories	p. 12
Psychology and Folk Wisdom: The Problem with "Common Sense"	p. 13
Psychology as a Young Science	p. 16
Summary	p. 18
Falsifiability: How to Foil Little Green Men in the Head	p. 19
Theories and the Falsifiability Criterion	p. 20
The Theory of Knocking Rhythms	p. 22
Freud and Falsifiability	p. 23
The Little Green Men	p. 25
Not All Confirmations Are Equal	p. 26
Falsifiability and Folk Wisdom	p. 27
The Freedom to Admit a Mistake	p. 28
Thoughts Are Cheap	p. 30
Errors in Science: Getting Closer to the Truth	p. 31
Summary	p. 34
Operationism and Essentialism: "But, Doctor, What Does It Really Mean?"	p. 35
Why Scientists Are Not Essentialists	p. 35
Essentialists Like to Argue About the Meaning of Words	p. 36
Operationists Link Concepts to Observable Events	p. 37
Reliability and Validity	p. 38
Direct and Indirect Operational Definitions	p. 40
Scientific Concepts Evolve	p. 40
Operational Definitions in Psychology	p. 42
Operationism as a Humanizing Force	p. 45
Essentialist Questions and the Misunderstanding of Psychology	p. 47
Operationism and the Phrasing of Psychological Questions	p. 48
Summary	p. 51
Testimonials and Case Study Evidence: Placebo Effects and the Amazing Randi	p. 53
The Place of the Case Study	p. 54
Why Testimonials Are Worthless: Placebo Effects	p. 56
The "Vividness" Problem	p. 59
The Overwhelming Impact of the Single Case	p. 63
The Amazing Randi: Fighting Fire with Fire	p. 65
Testimonials Open the Door to Pseudoscience	p. 67
Summary	p. 71
Correlation and Causation: Birth Control by the Toaster Method	p. 73
The Third-Variable Problem: Goldberger and Pellagra	p. 74
Why Goldberger's Evidence Was Better	p. 75
The Directionality Problem	p. 78
Selection Bias	p. 80
Summary	p. 83
Getting Things Under Control: The Case of Clever Hans	p. 85
Snow and Cholera	p. 86
Comparison, Control, and Manipulation	p. 87
Random Assignment in Conjunction with Manipulation Defines the True Experiment	p. 88
The Importance of Control Groups	p. 91
The Case of Clever Hans, the Wonder Horse	p. 94
Clever Hans in the 1990s	p. 96
Prying Variables Apart: Special Conditions	p. 99
Intuitive Physics	p. 101
Intuitive Psychology	p. 103
Summary	p. 104
"But It's Not Real Life!": The "Artificiality" Criticism and Psychology	p. 105
Why Natural Isn't Always Necessary	p. 105
The "Random Sample" Confusion	p. 107
The Random Assignment Versus Random Sample Distinction	p. 107
Theory-Driven Research Versus Direct Applications	p. 108
Applications of Psychological Theory	p. 113
The "College Sophomore" Problem	p. 115
The Real-Life and College Sophomore Problems in Perspective	p. 119
Summary	p. 120
Avoiding the Einstein Syndrome: The Importance of Converging Evidence	p. 121
The Connectivity Principle	p. 122
A Consumer's Rule: Beware of Violations of Connectivity	p. 123
The "Great-Leap" Model Versus the Gradual-Synthesis Model	p. 125
Converging Evidence: Progress Despite Flaws	p. 126
Converging Evidence in Psychology	p. 129
Scientific Consensus	p. 133
Methods and the Convergence Principle	p. 135
The Progression to More Powerful Methods	p. 136
A Counsel Against Despair	p. 139
Summary	p. 142
The Misguided Search for the "Magic Bullet": The Issue of Multiple Causation	p. 145
The Concept of Interaction	p. 146
The Temptation of the Single-Cause Explanation	p. 149
Summary	p. 152
The Achilles' Heel of Human Cognition: Probabilistic Reasoning	p. 153
"Person-Who" Statistics	p. 155
Probabilistic Reasoning and the Misunderstanding of Psychology	p. 156
Psychological Research on Probabilistic Reasoning	p. 158
Insufficient Use of Probabilistic Information	p. 159
Failure to Use Sample Size Information	p. 161
The Gambler's Fallacy	p. 162
A Further Word About Statistics and Probability	p. 164
Summary	p. 166
The Role of Chance in Psychology	p. 167
The Tendency to Try to Explain Chance Events	p. 167
Explaining Chance: Illusory Correlation and the Illusion of Control	p. 170
Chance and Psychology	p. 172
Coincidence	p. 173
Personal Coincidences	p. 176
Accepting Error in Order to Reduce Error: Clinical versus Actuarial Prediction	p. 177
Summary	p. 184
The Rodney Dangerfield of the Sciences	p. 185
Psychology's Image Problem	p. 185
Psychology and Parapsychology	p. 186
The Self-Help Literature	p. 188
Recipe Knowledge	p. 190
Psychology and Other Disciplines	p. 192
Our Own Worst Enemies	p. 194
Isn't Everyone a Psychologist? Implicit Theories of Behavior	p. 200
The Source of Resistance to Scientific Psychology	p. 201
The Final Word	p. 206
References	p. 207
Name Index	p. 231
Subject Index	p. 238
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