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Presentation Introduction to psychology (PSYCH101)
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Introduction to psychology is includes the fundamental principles of psychology and the major subjects of psychological inquiry
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This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License without
attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee.
Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
1
, Preface
When I first started teaching Introduction to Psychology, I found it difficult—much harder than
teaching classes in statistics or research methods. I was able to give a lecture on the sympathetic
nervous system, a lecture on Piaget, and a lecture on social cognition, but how could I link these
topics together for the student? I felt a bit like I was presenting a laundry list of research findings
rather than an integrated set of principles and knowledge. Of course, what was difficult for me
was harder still for my students. How could they be expected to remember and understand all the
many phenomena of psychology? How could they tell what was most important? And why,
given the abundance of information that was freely available to them on the web, should they
care about my approach? My pedagogy needed something to structure, integrate, and motivate
their learning.
Eventually, I found some techniques to help my students understand and appreciate what I found
to be important. First, I realized that psychology actually did matter to my students, but that I
needed to make it clear to them why it did. I therefore created a more consistent focus on the
theme of behavior. One of the most fundamental integrating principles of the discipline of
psychology is its focus on behavior, and yet that is often not made clear to students. Affect,
cognition, and motivation are critical and essential, and yet are frequently best understood and
made relevant through their links with behavior. Once I figured this out, I began tying all the
material to this concept: The sympathetic nervous system matters because it has specific and
predictable influences on our behavior. Piaget’s findings matter because they help us understand
the child’s behavior (not just his or her thinking). And social cognition matters because our
social thinking helps us better relate to the other people in our everyday social lives. This
integrating theme allows me to organize my lectures, my writing assignments, and my testing.
Second was the issue of empiricism: I emphasized that what seems true might not be true, and
we need to try to determine whether it is. The idea of empirical research testing falsifiable
hypotheses and explaining much (but never all) behavior—the idea of psychology as a science—
was critical, and it helped me differentiate psychology from other disciplines. Another reason for
emphasizing empiricism is that the Introduction to Psychology course represents many students’
best opportunity to learn about the fundamentals of scientific research.
Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
2
,The length of existing textbooks was creating a real and unnecessary impediment to student
learning. I was condensing and abridging my coverage, but often without a clear rationale for
choosing to cover one topic and omit another. My focus on behavior, coupled with a consistent
focus on empiricism, helped in this regard—focusing on these themes helped me identify the
underlying principles of psychology and separate more essential topics from less essential ones.
Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
3
, Approach and Pedagogy
I wrote this book to help students organize their thinking about psychology at a conceptual level.
Five or ten years from now, I do not expect my students to remember the details of most of what
I teach them. However, I do hope that they will remember that psychology matters because it
helps us understand behavior and that our knowledge of psychology is based on empirical study.
This book is designed to facilitate these learning outcomes. I have used three techniques to help
focus students on behavior:
1. Chapter openers. I begin my focus on behavior by opening each chapter with a chapter
opener showcasing an interesting real-world example of people who are dealing with
behavioral questions and who can use psychology to help them answer those questions.
The opener is designed to draw the student into the chapter and create an interest in
learning about the topic.
2. Psychology in everyday life. Each chapter contains one or two features designed to link
the principles from the chapter to real-world applications in business, environment,
health, law, learning, and other relevant domains. For instance, the application in Chapter
6 "Growing and Developing"—“What Makes a Good Parent?”—applies the concepts of
parenting styles in a mini handbook about parenting, and the application in Chapter 3
"Brains, Bodies, and Behavior" is about the difficulties that left-handed people face
performing everyday tasks in a right-handed world.
3. Research focus. I have also emphasized empiricism throughout, but without making it a
distraction from the main story line. Each chapter presents two close-ups on research—
well-articulated and specific examples of research within the content area, each including
a summary of the hypotheses, methods, results, and interpretations. This feature provides
a continuous thread that reminds students of the importance of empirical research. The
research foci also emphasize the fact that findings are not always predictable ahead of
time (dispelling the myth of hindsight bias) and help students understand how research
really works.
Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
4
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