Psychology

387 Pages·2014·5.279 MB·English

by  Johnston, Joni E

No one likes a know-it-all. Most of us realize there’s no such thing—
how could there be? The world is far too complicated for someone
to understand everything there is to know. So when you come across
a know-it-all, you smile to yourself as they ramble on because you
know better.
You understand that the quest for knowledge is a never-ending one,
and you’re okay with that. You have no desire to know everything, just
the next thing. You know what you don’t know, you’re confident enough
to admit it, and you’re motivated to do something about it.
At Idiot’s Guides, we, too, know what we don’t know, and we make
it our business to find out. We find really smart people who are
experts in their fields and then we roll up our sleeves and get to work,
asking lots of questions and thinking long and hard about how best
to pass along their knowledge to you in the easiest, most-accessible
way possible.
After all, that’s our promise—to make whatever you want to learn “As
Easy as It Gets.” That means giving you a well-organized design that
seamlessly and effortlessly guides you from page to page, topic to topic.
It means controlling the pace you’re asked to absorb new information—
not too much at once but just what you need to know right now. It
means giving you a clear progression from easy to more difficult. It
means giving you more instructional steps wherever necessary to really
explain the details. And it means giving you fewer words and more
illustrations wherever it’s better to show rather than tell.
So here you are, at the start of something new. The next chapter in
your quest. It can be an intimidating place to be, but you’ve been here
before and so have we. Clear your mind and turn the page. By the end
of this book, you won’t be a know-it-all, but your world will be a little
less complicated than it was before. And we’ll be sure your journey is
as easy as it gets.
Mike Sanders
Publisher, Idiot’s Guides
Psychology
Fifth Edition
by Joni E. Johnston, PsyD
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Contents
Part 1 Putting It in Perspective ............................................1
1 A Little Psychological Insight ....................................3
What Is Psychology?............................................................................................................4
Telling It Like It Is .............................................................................................................4
Why, Oh Why? .....................................................................................................................5
The Exception to the Rule ................................................................................................5
Becoming the New, Improved Model ............................................................................6
They’re Everywhere ...........................................................................................................6
How They Used to Do It ..................................................................................................7
Psychology Today ...............................................................................................................8
Methods for Studying Madness ...................................................................................9
Delving into the Descriptive ...........................................................................................9
Is There a Relationship? .................................................................................................10
The Experimental Experience .....................................................................................11
Keeping Junk Science Out ............................................................................................12
2 Multiple Perspectives of Psychology .....................15
The Seven Main Perspectives ....................................................................................16
I Was Born This Way ....................................................................................................16
It’s Only the Tip of the Iceberg .....................................................................................17
We’re Just Rats in a Maze ...........................................................................................18
I Think, Therefore I Am ................................................................................................19
It’s a Dog-Eat-Dog World .............................................................................................20
No Man Is an Island.......................................................................................................21
Looking on the Bright Side ............................................................................................21
Psychology in Action ........................................................................................................22
3 Bio Psycho What?.......................................................25
It’s Evolutionary ..................................................................................................................26
Adapting to Changes ........................................................................................................26
The Headquarters of Human Behavior ................................................................27
A Living Record of Time Travel .................................................................................27
Hello Central! .....................................................................................................................27
Getting Your Brain Organized ..................................................................................28
Left Brain, Right Brain ...................................................................................................29
A Leftward or Rightward Slant? .................................................................................29
Partners for Life ................................................................................................................30
iv Idiot’s Guides: Psychology, Fifth Edition
Meet the Mother Lobes .................................................................................................30
Front and Center ...............................................................................................................30
Temporally Speaking .......................................................................................................31
Parietals Rule .....................................................................................................................31
An Occipital Complex? ....................................................................................................31
The Plastic Brain .................................................................................................................32
Working with Half a Brain ............................................................................................33
You’ve Got Nerve ..............................................................................................................34
Speedy Delivery ..................................................................................................................35
Doing the Neuron Dance ..............................................................................................35
Synaptically Speaking .....................................................................................................36
White Matter Matters! ..................................................................................................36
Blame It on Your Hormones .........................................................................................37
Adrenaline Alert ................................................................................................................37
Brain Booboos ......................................................................................................................38
4 The Chicken or the Egg? ..........................................41
Living with Wolves ............................................................................................................42
Taming the Wild Child ..................................................................................................42
Looking Beneath the Surface ........................................................................................42
Nature or Nurture? ...........................................................................................................42
The Great Debate, Philosophically Speaking ..........................................................43
G + E = Me .......................................................................................................................43
Asking the Right Questions ........................................................................................44
What Twins Tell Us ..........................................................................................................45
Flip That Switch! .................................................................................................................45
Give Your Genes a Little Culture ...........................................................................46
Family Genes and Other Heirlooms ......................................................................47
Dominating Genes .............................................................................................................47
You Can’t Get Lost with This Map ..........................................................................48
Too Much Information? ..................................................................................................48
Don’t Blame Your Genes ...............................................................................................49
Growing Up on the Wild Side ......................................................................................49
Typical Human Behavior ..............................................................................................50
Vive la Différence! ............................................................................................................50
Evolutionary Theory Gone Awry ............................................................................51
Mother Nature’s Morality .............................................................................................51
I Just Couldn’t Help Myself! ........................................................................................51
Baby Builds on Blueprints .............................................................................................51
Is There Such a Thing as Normal? ..........................................................................52
Oh, Grow Up! .....................................................................................................................53
Contents v
The Parental Part of the Equation ...........................................................................53
Growing Up Emotionally ...............................................................................................53
Nature? Nurture? It’s Both! .........................................................................................54
5 It’s Only a Stage ..........................................................57
Studying Bored Babies .....................................................................................................58
Fast Learners and Good Teachers ...........................................................................59
I Second That Emotion ...................................................................................................59
Learning Baby Talk ...........................................................................................................59
LADs and LASSes .............................................................................................................60
Listen and Learn ................................................................................................................62
The Child Psychologist..................................................................................................62
Psych School for Kids .......................................................................................................63
The Curious Child ...........................................................................................................63
Coping with Curveballs ..................................................................................................64
Performing on Stage ..........................................................................................................65
Sensorimotor Stage ...........................................................................................................65
Preoperational Stage ........................................................................................................66
Concrete Operations .........................................................................................................66
Formal Operations ............................................................................................................67
Speak Before You Think—or Vice Versa ............................................................67
The Moral of the Story ..................................................................................................68
Empathetically Yours.......................................................................................................70
Midlife Isn’t the First Crisis .........................................................................................70
Part 2 Wake Up and Smell the Coffee ..............................73
6 Come to Your Senses .................................................75
Creating a Sensation .........................................................................................................76
On the Threshold of Discovery .................................................................................76
Star Light, Star Bright ...................................................................................................77
Crossing the Threshold ...................................................................................................77
Get Your Signals Straight .............................................................................................78
Common Senses ..................................................................................................................78
What Stimulates You? .....................................................................................................79
The Big Five ..........................................................................................................................80
Vision ....................................................................................................................................80
Hearing.................................................................................................................................81
Smell ......................................................................................................................................82
Taste ......................................................................................................................................83
vi Idiot’s Guides: Psychology, Fifth Edition
Touch .....................................................................................................................................83
The Sixth Sense? ...............................................................................................................83
Pain in the What? ...............................................................................................................84
The Placebo Effect ............................................................................................................85
Starting from the Top Down and the Bottom Up ..........................................85
Bottom Up and Top Down ............................................................................................86
Watch Out! Reality Under Construction ..................................................................86
Life Is an Illusion ...............................................................................................................87
Meet Ponzo the Western Illusion ............................................................................88
Pay Attention When I’m Talking to You ............................................................88
Working Smarter, Not Harder ...................................................................................89
Don’t Take It Out of Context .....................................................................................90
Context? Which Context? ................................................................................................91
7 Consciousness-Raising Time ....................................93
Are You Self-Conscious? ...............................................................................................94
On the Wings of Fantasy ...............................................................................................94
You Are What You Think .............................................................................................94
Unconscious, Highly Conscious, and Everything in Between ...............95
Automatic Pilot ..................................................................................................................95
The File Cabinet ...............................................................................................................96
The Secret Service ............................................................................................................96
The Clearinghouse ............................................................................................................96
Alpha, Beta, Delta—the Sleep Fraternity ..........................................................97
All the World’s a Stage ....................................................................................................97
Doc, I Just Can’t Sleep ....................................................................................................98
This Is Your Brain on No Sleep .............................................................................100
I’m So-o-o Sleepy ............................................................................................................101
I Must Be Dreaming.......................................................................................................101
The Ticking of Your Internal Clock ....................................................................102
Altered Consciousness ..................................................................................................103
Look Deeply into My Eyes ........................................................................................104
You’re Getting Very, Very Sleepy .............................................................................105
Don’t Bother Me, I’m Meditating ..........................................................................105
I Must Be Hallucinating ..............................................................................................106
We’re Not Talking Beads and Lava Lamps Here ..............................................106
Operating Under the Influence ...............................................................................106
Some Pills Make You Larger ....................................................................................107
Risking Addiction ...........................................................................................................108
Lethal Weapons ..............................................................................................................108
Contents vii
The Monkey on Your Back ........................................................................................109
It All Sneaks Up on You ..............................................................................................109
The Addictive Mind .....................................................................................................109
8 Get That Through Your Thick Skull! .......................111
Helpless ..................................................................................................................................112
Learning About Learning ...........................................................................................112
Does the Name Pavlov Ring a Bell? ....................................................................113
Learning the Classics ....................................................................................................114
Coming In on Cue ...........................................................................................................114
Where There’s Smoke ....................................................................................................115
Classical Learning Isn’t Always Fun ....................................................................116
Learning About Meaningful Relationships .....................................................118
Developing Discrimination .........................................................................................118
Think of the Consequences.......................................................................................119
A Cat in a Box ................................................................................................................120
Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks ...............................................................................120
Skinner and Reinforcing Behavior ........................................................................122
Calling in Reinforcements ...........................................................................................122
The Terminators ..............................................................................................................122
Nipping Bad Behaviors in the Bud .........................................................................123
Of Carrots and Sticks ..................................................................................................123
The Mind-Body Learning Connection ..................................................................124
The Behavior Police......................................................................................................124
The Cognitivist View ....................................................................................................125
Attitudes and Expectations .........................................................................................125
Experience and Interpretation ..................................................................................126
Attention, Please! ............................................................................................................126
Modeling Behavior ..........................................................................................................126
Don’t Be Scared .................................................................................................................127
Getting Rid of Bad Habits ..........................................................................................128
9 Coming to Terms with Your Memory ....................131
Kidnapped?...........................................................................................................................132
The Memory as Court Jester....................................................................................132
Learning About Remembering from Forgetting ..........................................133
Memory Tests ....................................................................................................................134
The Long and Short of It ............................................................................................134
Photographer at Work ..................................................................................................135
The Organic Data Processor .....................................................................................135
The Curious Curator ....................................................................................................136
viii Idiot’s Guides: Psychology, Fifth Edition
Visiting the Memory Museum ................................................................................136
I Was Only Following Procedure .............................................................................137
Well, I Declare! ...............................................................................................................137
Now, Where Did I Put That Thought?..............................................................138
Will You Gain Wisdom or Grow Senile? .........................................................138
A Method for Remembering .....................................................................................139
Hooked on Mnemonics ................................................................................................140
Mnemonics Boosters ......................................................................................................141
Warning: Under Construction .................................................................................142
Sleep: Memory’s Silent Partner ................................................................................142
The 90-Minute Power Snooze ................................................................................142
The Truth About False Memories ........................................................................143
Sorting the True from the False ................................................................................144
From the Mouths of Babes .........................................................................................145
Flashbulb Repressed Memories ..............................................................................146
Memory Under Fire .......................................................................................................146
Part 3 The Forces Are with You .......................................149
10 What’s Your Motive? .................................................151
It’s a Jungle in Here ........................................................................................................152
Let’s Get Motivated ......................................................................................................152
What Drives Your Body? .............................................................................................153
The Brain’s Motivation Station ...............................................................................153
The Hunger Center ........................................................................................................154
We’re All Picky Eaters ..................................................................................................155
Hunger Games ...................................................................................................................156
Mmmmmm, It’s So Appetizing! .................................................................................156
I’ll Take Just One! ............................................................................................................157
My Genes Made Me Do It!........................................................................................157
Ready, Set, Go....................................................................................................................158
Driving the Sex Machine ............................................................................................158
Those Sexy Hormones! .................................................................................................158
Tanking Up on Testosterone ......................................................................................159
I Love You for Your Mind .........................................................................................160
Dealing with Dysfunction ..........................................................................................160
The Fragile Sex .................................................................................................................160
Oriented Toward Sex ....................................................................................................161
It’s Just the Way It Is ...................................................................................................162