Psychobabble and Biobunk Using Psychological Science to Think Critically About Popular Psychology

by Tavris, Carol

• ISBN13: 9780205015917
• ISBN10: 0205015913
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-10-22
• Publisher: Pearson

Summary

This revised and updated handbook features a selection of essay-style book reviews byCarol Tavris, written for theTimes Literary Supplement, The Chronicle of Higher Education, American Scientist,andThe New York Times Book Review.These reviews apply psychological research and principles of scientific thinking. They aim to show how critical thinking can help people assess arguments promoted in the popular culture, and how to separate those that are scientifically sound from those based on "psychobabble"-pop-psych notions dressed up in fancy, sciency-sounding language.

Author Biography

Carol Tavris earned her Ph.D. in the interdisciplinary program in social psychology at the University of Michigan, and as a writer and lecturer she has sought to educate the public about the importance of critical and scientific thinking in psychology. In addition to this text, she and Carole Wade have written Psychology; Psychology in Perspective; and The Longest War: Sex Differences in Perspective. Dr. Tavris is also coauthor, with Elliot Aronson, of Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts; and author of The Mismeasure of Woman and Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion. She has written on psychological topics for a wide variety of magazines, journals, edited books, and newspapers, some of which have been collected in Psychobabble and Biobunk: Using psychological science to think critically about popular psychology. Dr. Tavris lectures widely on topics involving science vs. pseudoscience in psychology and psychiatry, on writing about science for the public, and many other subjects of contemporary interest. She has taught in the psychology department at UCLA and at the Human Relations Center of the New School for Social Research in New York. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and a charter Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science; a member of the editorial board of the APS journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest; and a member of the international advisory board of the Institute for Science and Human Values.

Table of Contents

A Note to the Reader	p. vii
About the Author	p. x
Thinking Critically-And Why We Often Don't
"Why Won't They Admit They're Wrong?" and Other Skeptics' Mysteries	p. 3
Personality, Motivation, and Development
Outliers: The story of success	p. 9
Men to Boys: The making of Modern immaturity	p. 13
Understanding Attachment: Parenting, child care, and emotional development	p. 17
Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the science of affection	p. 22
Happiness: Lessons from a new science	p. 26
Making Happy People: The nature of happiness and its origins in childhood
Going Sane	p. 26
Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of positive thinking has undermined America	p. 31
The Nurture Assumption: Why children turn out the way they do	p. 35
Personality: What makes you the way you are	p. 40
"Are Girls As Mean As They Say They Are?" (review essay)	p. 44
Psychotherapy and the Scientist-Practitioner Gap
The Body Never Lies: The lingering effects of hurtful parenting	p. 55
Into the Minds of Madmen: How the FBI's behavioral science unit revolutionized crime investigation	p. 58
Remembering Trauma
Out of the Dark	p. 63
In Therapy We Trust: America's obsession with self-fulfillment	p. 68
Prisoners of Hate: The cognitive basis of anger, hostility, and violence	p. 71
Making Us Crazy: DSM: The psychiatric bible and the creation of mental disorders	p. 75
Of Two Minds: The growing disorder in American psychiatry	p. 79
Research Methods and Social Issues
The Hungry Gene: The science of fat and the future of thin	p. 87
The Genius Factory: Unravelling the mysteries of the Nobel Prize sperm bank	p. 90
Rape: A history from 1860 to the present	p. 94
Sex and the Psyche	p. 99
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.