For introductory psychology courses at two year or four year institutions. Also for specialty classes throughout the discipline that focus on critical thinking, science vs. pseudoscience, and discrimating valid research in the field. Keith Stanovichs 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 Psychology says about the discipline of psychology what many instructors would like to say but havent found a way to. That is one reason adopters have called it "an instructors dream text" and often comment "I wish I had written it. It tells my students just what I want them to hear about psychology".
1. Psychology Is Alive and Well (and Doing Fine Among the Sciences) The Freud Problem The Diversity of Modern Psychology Implications of Diversity Unity in Science What, Then, Is Science? Systematic Empiricism Publicly Verifiable Knowledge: Replication and Peer Review Empirically Solvable Problems: Scientists Search for Testable Theories Psychology and Folk Wisdom: The Problem with "Common Sense" Psychology as a Young Science Summary 2. Falsifiability: How to Foil Little Green Men in the Head Theories and the Falsifiability Criterion The Theory of Knocking Rhythms Freud and Falsifiability The Little Green Men Not All Confirmations Are Equal Falsifiability and Folk Wisdom The Freedom to Admit a Mistake Thoughts Are Cheap Errors in Science: Getting Closer to the Truth Summary 3. Operationism and Essentialism: "But, Doctor, What Does It Really Mean?" Why Scientists Are Not Essentialists Essentialists Like to Argue About the Meaning of Words Operationists Link Concepts to Observable Events Reliability and Validity Direct and Indirect Operational Definitions Scientific Concepts Evolve Operational Definitions in Psychology Operationism as a Humanizing Force Essentialist Questions and the Misunderstanding of Psychology Operationism and the Phrasing of Psychological Questions Summary 4. Testimonials and Case Study Evidence: Placebo Effects and the Amazing Randi The Place of the Case Study Why Testimonials Are Worthless: Placebo Effects The "Vividness" Problem The Overwhelming Impact of the Single Case The Amazing Randi: Fighting Fire with Fire Testimonials Open the Door to Pseudoscience Summary 5. Correlation and Causation: Birth Control by the Toaster Method The Third-Variable Problem: Goldberger and Pellagra Why Goldbergers Evidence Was Better The Directionality Problem Selection Bias Summary 6. Getting Things Under Control: The Case of Clever Hans Snow and Cholera Comparison, Control, and Manipulation Random Assignment in Conjunction with Manipulation Defines the True Experiment The Importance of Control Groups The Case of Clever Hans, the Wonder Horse Clever Hans in the 1990s Prying Variables Apart: Special Conditions Intuitive Physics Intuitive Psychology Summary 7. "But Its Not Real Life!": The "Artificiality" Criticism and Psychology Why Natural Isnt Always Necessary The "Random Sample" Confusion The Random Assignment Versus Random Sample Distinction Theory-Driven Research Versus Direct Applications Applications of Psychological Theory The "College Sophomore" Problem The Real-Life and College Sophomore Problems in Perspective Summary 8. Avoiding the Einstein Syndrome: The Importance of Converging Evidence The Connectivity Principle A Consumers Rule: Beware of Violations of Connectivity The "Great-Leap" Model Versus the Gradual-Synthesis Model Converging Evidence: Progress Despite Flaws Converging Evidence in Psychology Scientific Consensus Methods and the Convergence Principle The Progression to More Powerful Methods A Counsel Against Despair Summary 9. The Misguided Search for the "Magic Bullet": The Issue of Multiple Causation The Concept of Interaction The Temptation of the Single-Cause Explanation Summary 10. The Role of Chance in Psychology The Tendency to Try to Explain Chance Events Explaining Chance: Illusory Correlation and the Illusion of Control Chance and Psychology Coincidence Personal Coincidences Accepting Error in Order to Reduce Error: Clinical Versus Actuarial Prediction Summary 11. The Achilles Heel of Human Cognition: Probabilistic Reasoning "Person-Who" Statistics Probabilistic Reasoning and the Misunderstanding of Psychology Psychological Research on Probabilistic Reasoning Insufficient Use of Probabilistic Information Failure to Use Sample Size Information The Gamblers Fallacy A Further Word About Statistics and Probability Summary References Author Index Subject Index