Psychology

by Carol Tavris

This edition integrates critical thinking, gender, age and culture into the study of psychology, drawing upon recent research and featuring two new chapters on evolutionary psychology and socio-cultural psychology.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Textbooks, Reference, Science, School, Read For School

717 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Carol Tavris earned her Ph.D. in the interdisciplinary program in social psychology at the University of Michigan, and ever since has sought to bring research from the many fields of psychology to the public. She is author of The Mismeasure of Woman, which won the Distinguished Media Contribution Award from the American Association from Applied and Preventive Psychology, and the Heritage Publications Award from Division 35 of the APA. Dr. Tavris is also the author of Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion and coauthor with Carole Wade of Invitation to Psychology; Psychology in Perspective; Critical and Creative Thinking: The case of love and war; and The Longest War: Sex Differences in Perspective. She has written on psychological topics for many different magazines, journals, edited books, and newspapers, notably the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. She has given keynote addresses and workshops on, among other topics, critical thinking, pseudoscience in psychology, anger, gender, and psychology and the media. 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. Dr. Tavris is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and a charter Fellow of the American Psychological Society; and, for fun, a Fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. When she isn't writing or lecturing, she can be found walking the trails of the Santa Monica mountains with her border collie, Sophie.

Reviews

[Kevin]

Prepare yourself for what my friend Candi terms a “Non-Review.” That is to say, this is more about me than it is about this textbook…

Unlike some of you, I didn’t attend college straight after high school. [My Canadian friends say “attend university,” instead of “attend college” - for some reason Americans don’t necessarily make a distinction between colleges and universities. I did indeed attend a university—but I digress…] It was roughly eleven years after high school before I applied—and was accepted—to a “college.” By that time I was a veteran with a wife, two kids and a full-time job. I had no dormitory/fraternity house, flirty co-ed college experience. I had 3-5 hour night classes (we had no “online classes” back then) wedged between little league practices and Cub Scout meetings. Looking back now, I don’t know how I ever managed to get any sleep. (Maybe I slept at work?)

For my first semester I enrolled in only three classes: college algebra, english 101 and psychology 101. If you’ve ever attended night classes at an American university you may already be familiar with the demographics. Night classes are frequently populated with adults (people with day jobs) and are frequently taught by adjunct professors (people with day jobs). My psychology class was taught by a practicing psychologist who had previously worked as a “primate behaviorist” for NASA. In fact, he claimed to have been on the team that trained ‘Ham’ - the chimpanzee that NASA rocketed into space in 1961.

What does any of this have to do with a psychology textbook? Nothing at all - except to say I have nothing but fond memories of this class—and I got an “A”!

[Laura]

This book was actually fairly interesting. Sure, there were always some concepts that I wasn't quite sure that I got, but after reading the chapter and their examples, I felt like I was starting to get a hang of things. I also thought that a second reading over the vocabulary helped as well. Some of the pictures were a little weird/disturbing/sad/totally random, but I appreciated how they threw in humor along with the lesson. There were various comic strips littered throughout the chapters to illuminate a point or example. I enjoyed reading this book and would recommend even if you didn't have to take a general psych class, but just wanted to do some independent studying.

*Taken from my book reviews blog: http://reviewsatmse.blogspot.com/2009...

[Wendy]

This is an exceptional textbook. It is clearly written, well laid out and with excellent examples for clearer understanding. There is a tremendous amount of information but it reads so well that I actually found myself enjoying (and looking forward) to reading it! The only drawback is that my classes move so fast that I don't get a chance to really read and think about everything the way I would like to but then again, I can always do that once the class is finished. I highly recommend this book for those taking their first psychology class or just want a clearer understand of psychology in general.

[Matthew]

I adopted this text the last time I taught General Psychology. It was wonderful, as expected, and Tavris's voice shined through with her customary focus on the importance of applying critical thinking and empirical findings to all topics discussed. For anyone out there that missed out on a college level psychology course, or wants a refresher, I'd recommend this one.

[Jacquelyn Smith]

I needed it for school, work and my 3 kids that thinking ahead of me .

[Mesh]

I didn't read the whole book as this is a textbook not a book for pleasure. If you're interested in psychology you should give this a try or at least do what I did.. skim through :)

[Katherine]

not my favorite

[Tammy Earl]

as far as textbooks go, I thought this was a great one. This isn't the edition that I had, but it was pretty great.

[Kaitlyn]

I get that this textbook wanted to be funny... but I never laughed once while reading it. It had interesting stuff... but so much information. Also super expensive so maybe that's why I'm a wee bit salty about it.

[Bumbles]

I had the best lecture experience of my life with the professor who taught this course. Screw 8 A.M.s, I I'd be happy to crawl to the lecture room at 4 in the morning just to hear him teach and learn the material. Also great textbook.

[Shannon]

KSKS

[Shélah]

Woah, where is the data for this book? Can't recall what this is... only that I used it in first year university. I suspect it is the Intro Psych textbook by Carol Wade and Carol Tavris, with Canadian content by Deborah Saucier and Lorin Elias, as that seems to be missing from my shelf. I think this was the first or second edition.

[Pam]

As far as textbooks go this one had some interesting tidbits in it. Pretty well laid out & the online stuff was helpful.

Loooooong chapters though, they just seemed to take forever.