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How to Think Straight About Psychology [Textbook Binding]

Keith E. Stanovich (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)


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Textbook Binding --  

Book Description

0321012461 978-0321012463 August 1997 5 Sub
Keith Stanovich's 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 haven't found a way to. That is one reason adopters have called it "an instructor's dream text" and often comment "I wish I had written it. It tells my students just what I want them to hear about psychology".
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Keith Stanovich's widely used and highly acclaimed book helps instructors teach critical-thinking skills within the rich context of psychology.  It can be used as a stand-alone text or as a supplement in introductory psychology, critical-thinking, as well as research methods and statistics courses.  It is the premier text of its kind.

 

Stanovich helps students become more discriminating consumers of psychological information by helping them recognize pseudoscience and be able to distinguish it from true psychological research.  Psychological topics such as falsifiability, operationalism, experimental control, converging evidence, correlational vs. experimental studies, and statistics are presented as tools for critical evaluation, giving students a set of practical consumer skills to independently evaluate psychological claims.  Students also are given a set of “consumer rules” for dealing with psychology in the media. 

 

How to Think Straight About Psychology says what many instructors would like to say about the discipline of psychology but haven't found a way to.  That is one reason adopters have called it “an instructor's dream text” and often comment “I wish I had written it.  It tells my students just what I want them to hear about psychology.”

New to the eighth edition are expanded discussions of reliability and validity, meta-analysis, and the differences between random sampling versus random assignment.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

  • Textbook Binding: 234 pages
  • Publisher: Longman Pub Group; 5 Sub edition (August 1997)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0321012461
  • ISBN-13: 978-0321012463
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #358,363 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Keith E. Stanovich is currently Professor of Human Development and Applied Psychology at the University of Toronto. His book, What Intelligence Tests Miss, won the 2010 Grawemeyer Award in Education.

Stanovich is the author of over 200 scientific articles. In a three-year survey of citation rates during the mid-1990s (see Byrnes, J. P. (1997). Explaining citation counts of senior developmental psychologists. Developmental Review, 17, 62-77), Stanovich was listed as one of the 50 most-cited developmental psychologists, and one of the 25 most productive educational psychologists (see Smith, M. C., et al., Productivity of educational psychologists in educational psychology journals, 1997-2001. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 28, 422-430). In a citation survey of the period 1982-1992, he was designated the most cited reading disability researcher in the world (Nicolson, R. I. Developmental dyslexia: Past, present and future. Dyslexia, 1996, 2, 190-207).

Stanovich is the only two-time winner of the Albert J. Harris Award from the International Reading Association for influential articles on reading. In 1995 he was elected to the Reading Hall of Fame as the youngest member of that honorary society. In 1997 he was given the Sylvia Scribner Award from the American Educational Research Association, and in 2000 he received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading. Stanovich is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (Divisions 3, 7, 8, & 15), the American Psychological Society, the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities, and is a Charter Member of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading. He was a member of the Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children of National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences.

From 1986-2000 Stanovich was the Associate Editor of Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, a leading journal of human development. His introductory textbook, How to Think Straight About Psychology, published by Allyn & Bacon, is in its Ninth Edition and has been adopted by over 300 institutions of higher education. He is the author of five other books, including What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought (Yale University Press), The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin (University of Chicago Press), Decision Making and Rationality in the Modern World (Oxford University Press), and Progress in Understanding Reading (Guilford Press).


 

Customer Reviews

18 Reviews
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4 star:
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3 star:
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2 star:
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Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (18 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars More about "thinking straight" than just "psychology", October 3, 1997
This is a wise, thoughtful book about the scientific method, and how we use these techniques to arrive at an understanding of the world. It talks about the nature of knowledge, what scientific truth is, and how common misconceptions can lead us astray. In short, the phrase "about psychology" is superfluous; this is a book about thinking straight.
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26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars I Wish I'd read this sooner!, August 14, 2003
By 
Dr. A. Sahal (Sheffield, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I was forced to read this book upon taking up my role as Lecturer In Neuroscience in Sheffield Uni Dept of Psychology. I run the course that uses this text as its examinable material.

Like many practioners of 'hard science' I'd always view psychology as a bit of a light-weight subject with its over-reliance on statistical methods, questionaires, touchy-feely-types etc and the many TV psychologists one can see almost daily, further dragging down their subject into the depths of pseudoscience. However, on reading this book I realised that there IS some merit in psychology. This text explains many concepts that turn observation into SCIENCE. It explains why science is so powerful in getting at the truth of the matter by constantly trying to refute itself! Which other disipline would have the courage to try and disprove itself and, if successful, rethink its hypotheses in light of the new findings to forge a new and more robust hypothesis? Stanovich explains how the scientific process does just this and he does it in an entertaining and light way without dumbing down in any way. Stanovich could make this text more appealing to a wider audience by expanding its scope and perhaps not concentrating quite so much on psychology, but on science in general. He'd have to change the title then, of course!

I wish I'd read this book when I was an under-/post-graduate studying Physiology/Neurophysiology-it would have given me a greater understanding of what I was trying to do. Its other great gift to me is when I'm confronted with a New Ager expounding the virtues of crystals,chakaras,angels,faith healing etc and trying to bring modern science into disrepute. The information in this book helps me to show them why they're barking up the wrong tree and I'm not! I often end such a conversation with, "...science isn't all bad, but there's nothing you can show me that I can say is at all good"

Buy this book! My students, buy this book, read it and learn from it! I'm setting the exam questions right now!

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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Methodology Primer for Everyone, May 23, 2003
By A Customer
Stanovich was assigned reading in my psych class years ago (this review is of the 4th edition). It's the best introduction to sound methodology in the behavioral sciences I've ever read. As previous reviewers have pointed out, the critical thinking skills you learn from this book can (and OUGHT to) be applied) to many, many other facets of our daily life. It's not just for psych majors, but for everyone who reads a newspaper, buys consumer products, votes in elections, etc. And you don't need a background in statistics to benefit from it. A worthy companion to Darrell Huff's classic "How to Lie with Statistics" and John Allen Paulos's "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper".
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