Psychology Applied to Modern Life: Adjustment in the 21st Century, 10th Edition

738 Pages·2011·52.57 MB·English

by  Wayne Weiten

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T E N T H E D I T I O N
Psychology Applied
to Modern Life
A D J U S T M E N T I N T H E 2 1 S T C E N T U R Y
WAYNE WEITEN
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
DANA S. DUNN
Moravian College
ELIZABETH YOST HAMMER
Xavier University of Louisiana
Australia • Brazil • Japan • Korea • Mexico • Singapore • Spain • United Kingdom • United States
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Psychology Applied to Modern Life: © 2012, 2009 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning
Adjustment in the 21st Century, Tenth E dition
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the copyright herein
Wayne Weiten, Dana S. Dunn, and
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Elizabeth Yost Hammer
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To two pillars of stability in this era
of turmoil—my parents
W.W.
For Sarah
D.S.D.
To Pete, Lonnie, and Bill—
for giving me my start
E.Y.H.
Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
About the Authors
WAYNE WEITEN is a graduate of Bradley University and received his Ph.D. in social
psychology from the University of Illinois, Chicago in 1981. He currently teaches
at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He has received distinguished teaching
awards from Division Two of the American Psychological Association (APA) and
from the College of DuPage, where he taught until 1991. He is a Fellow of Divisions
1 and 2 of the American Psychological Association. In 1991, he helped chair the
APA National Conference on Enhancing the Quality of Undergraduate Education in
Psychology and in 1996–1997 he served as President of the Society for the Teaching
of Psychology. Weiten has conducted research on a wide range of topics, including
educational measurement, jury decision-making, attribution theory, stress, and cere-
bral specialization. His recent interests have included pressure as a form of stress and
the technology of textbooks. He is also the author of Psychology: Themes & Varia-
tions (Wadsworth, 2010) and the creator of an educational CD-ROM titled PsykTrek:
A Multimedia Introduction to Psychology.
DANA S. DUNN earned his B.A. in psychology from Carnegie Mellon and received
his PhD in social psychology from the University of Virginia. He is currently profes-
sor of psychology and Director of the Learning in Common Curriculum at Moravian
College in Bethlehem, PA. He chaired the Psychology Department at Moravian
for six years. A Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and
the Association for Psychological Science (APS), Dunn served as President of the
Society for the Teaching of Psychology in 2010. A frequent speaker at national and
regional disciplinary conferences, Dunn has written numerous articles, chapters,
and book reviews concerning his areas of research interest: the teaching of psychol-
ogy, social psychology, rehabilitation psychology, and educational assessment. He
is the author or editor of 13 books, including the The Practical Researcher (2010),
Research Methods for Social Psychology (2009), and A Short Guide to Writing about
Psychology (2011).
ELIZABETH YOST HAMMER earned her B.S. in psychology from Troy State Univer-
sity and received her Ph.D. in social psychology from the Tulane University. She is
currently Kellogg Professor in Teaching in the Psychology Department and director
of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching at Xavier University of Louisiana
in New Orleans. She is a Fellow of Division Two of the American Psychological
Association (APA) and is a past President of Psi Chi, the National Honor Society
in Psychology. Recently, she was elected as treasurer for the Society for the Teach-
ing of Psychology. She is passionate about teaching and has published on collabora-
tive learning, service learning, the application of social psychological theories to the
classroom, and mentoring students. After her experience with Hurricane Katrina, she
developed a Psychology of Disasters course.
iv
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Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
To the Instructor
Many students enter adjustment courses with great ex- In summary, we have tried to make this book both
pectations. They’ve ambled through their local book- challenging and applied. We hope that our approach
stores, and in the “Psychology” section they’ve seen will help students better appreciate the value of scien-
numerous self-help books that offer highly touted reci- tifi c psychology.
pes for achieving happiness for a mere $12.95. After
paying far more money to enroll in a college course that
Philosophy
deals with the same issues as the self-help books, many
students expect a revelatory experience. However, the A certain philosophy is inherent in any systematic treat-
majority of us with professional training in psychology ment of the topic of adjustment. Our philosophy can be
or counseling take a rather dim view of self-help books summarized as follows:
and the pop psychology they represent. Psychologists
tend to see this literature as oversimplifi ed, intellectu- We believe that an adjustment text should be a re-
ally dishonest, and opportunistic and often summarily source book for students. We have tried to design this
dismiss the pop psychology that so many students have book so that it encourages and facilitates the pursuit of
embraced. Instructors try to supplant pop psychology additional information on adjustment-related topics. It
with more sophisticated academic psychology, which is should serve as a point of departure for more learning.
more complex and less accessible. We believe in theoretical eclecticism. This book
In this textbook, we have tried to come to grips with will not indoctrinate your students along the lines of
this problem of differing expectations between student any single theoretical orientation. The psychodynamic,
and teacher. Our goal has been to produce a comprehen- behavioral, and humanistic schools of thought are all
sive, serious, research-oriented treatment of the topic treated with respect, as are cognitive, biological, evolu-
of adjustment that also acknowledges the existence of tionary, and other perspectives.
popular psychology and looks critically at its contribu- We believe that effective adjustment requires tak-
tions. Our approach involves the following: ing charge of one’s own life. Throughout the book we
try to promote the notion that active coping efforts are
In Chapter 1 we confront the phenomenon of pop- generally superior to passivity and complacency.
ular self-help books. We try to take the student beneath
the seductive surface of such books and analyze some
Changes in the Tenth Edition
of their typical fl aws. Our goal is to make the student a
more critical consumer of this type of literature. One of the exciting things about psychology is that it
While encouraging a more critical attitude toward is not a stagnant discipline. It continues to progress at
self-help books, we do not suggest that they should all be what seems a faster and faster pace. A good textbook
dismissed. Instead, we acknowledge that some of them must evolve with the discipline. Although the profes-
offer authentic insights. With this in mind, we highlight sors and students who used the earlier editions of this
some of the better books in Recommended Reading book did not clamor for change, we have made countless
boxes sprinkled throughout the text. These recommended content changes to keep up with new developments in
books tie in with the adjacent topical coverage and show psychology—adding and deleting some topics, condens-
the student the interface between academic and popular ing and reorganizing others, and updating everything
psychology. Additional Recommended Reading boxes (there are about 1,400 new references). A brief overview
can be found in the Weiten Psychology CourseMate of some of these changes, listed chapter-by-chapter, can
(www.cengagebrain.com/shop/ISBN/1111186634). be found on pages viii–xii following this preface.
We try to provide the student with a better appre- The most signifi cant change in this edition is the
ciation of the merits of the empirical approach. This ef- addition of an entirely new chapter devoted to the topic
fort to clarify the role of research, which is rare for an of positive psychology. Although we have had cover-
adjustment text, appears in the fi rst chapter. age of positive psychology sprinkled throughout the
Recognizing that adjustment students want to text since this movement surfaced around the turn of
leave the course with concrete, personally useful infor- the 21st century (most of which remains throughout the
mation, we end each chapter with an application sec- book), we feel that the area of positive psychology has
tion. The Applications are “how to” discussions that matured to the point where it merits a full chapter of
address everyday problems. While they focus on issues its own (Chapter 16). The focus and themes of positive
that are relevant to the content of the particular chapter, psychology seem highly relevant to the issues discussed
they contain more explicit advice than the text proper. in the Adjustment course. We are confident that our
v
Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
greatly expanded coverage of positive psychology will Reading boxes, Web Links, Practice Tests, a didactic
resonate with today’s students. illustration program, and cartoons.
The addition of the new chapter on positive psy-
chology prompted us to reexamine the overall orga- Applications
nization of Psychology Applied to Modern Life. After The Applications should be of special interest to most
some refl ection, we decided to shuffl e the order of the students. They are tied to chapter content in a way that
chapters a bit. We moved the chapter on health psychol- should show students how practical applications emerge
ogy (formerly Chapter 14) to follow on the heels of the out of theory and research. Although some of the ma-
chapters on stress and coping, so it is now Chapter 5. terial covered in these sections shows up frequently
Similarly, we moved the chapter on sexuality (formerly in adjustment texts, much of it is unique. Some of the
Chapter 13) so that it follows related chapters on love Applications include the following:
and intimate relationships, making it Chapter 12. In
light of this juggling, 11 of the 15 previously existing Understanding Intimate Violence
chapters have new chapter numbers. We think this re- Improving Academic Performance
organization groups related chapters together more ef- Understanding Eating Disorders
fectively. That said, we write our chapters to be largely Getting Ahead in the Job Game
self-contained so that you can assign them in virtually Building Self-Esteem
any order you like. Enhancing Sexual Relationships
Yet another signifi cant change is that we have taken Understanding Mixed-Sex Communication
the Personal Explorations Workbook that has accom-
panied many previous editions of this text as a separate Recommended Reading Boxes
ancillary and incorporated the vast majority of it into the Recognizing students’ interest in self-help books, we
text itself. You will fi nd the workbook at the very back have sifted through hundreds of them to identify some
of this text, after the references and the indexes. Putting that may be especially useful. These books are featured
it at the end allowed us to print it on special, perforated in boxes that briefl y review some of the higher-quality
paper, so you will have the option of having students books. These Recommended Reading boxes are placed
complete workbook exercises and tear them out for where they are germane to the material being covered
submission as homework. We think the inclusion of the in the text. Some of the recommended books are well
workbook in the text will make it easier to use. known, while others are obscure. Although we make
We have also added a new appendix that focuses it clear that we don’t endorse every idea in every
on the timely issue of sustainability. It explains how book, we think they all have something worthwhile
sustainability depends on changes in individuals’ be- to offer. This feature replaces the conventional sug-
havior more than any other single factor. It focuses gested readings lists that usually appear at the ends of
on the cognitive and behavioral processes that tend chapters, where they are almost universally ignored by
to impede environmentally responsible behavior, as students.
well as the alterations in behavior that will be neces-
sary to sustain the world’s natural resources for future Web Links
generations. The Internet is rapidly altering the landscape of mod-
ern life, and students clearly need help dealing with the
information explosion in cyberspace. To assist them,
Writing Style
we recruited web expert Vincent Hevern (Le Moyne
This book has been written with the student in mind. College) to evaluate hundreds of psychology- and ad-
We have tried to integrate the technical jargon of our justment-related sites and to come up with some recom-
discipline into a relatively informal and down-to-earth mendations that appear to provide reasonably accurate,
writing style. We use concrete examples extensively balanced, and empirically sound information. Short de-
to clarify complex concepts and to help maintain stu- scriptions of these recommended websites are dispersed
dent interest. Although we now have three authors, the throughout the chapters, adjacent to related topical cov-
original author of this book (Wayne Weiten) continues erage. Because URLs change frequently, we have not
to do the fi nal rewrite of all 16 chapters to ensure sty- included the URLs for the Web Links in the book. If
listic consistency. your students are interested in visiting these sites, we
recommend that they do so through the Weiten Psy-
chology CourseMate at www.cengagebrain.com/shop/
Features
ISBN/1111186634. Links to all the recommended web-
This text contains a number of features intended to sites are maintained there. Of course, students can also
stimulate interest and enhance students’ learning. These use search engines such as Google to locate the recom-
special features include Applications, Recommended mended websites.
vi TO THE INSTRUCTOR
Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.