Customer Reviews

Introduction to Psychology

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I took a Intro. to Psychology course as a Prerequisite for Nursing school. Kalat explains everything clearly with great pictures,charts,examples, graphs, etc. I got an A in the course and I give the book an A as well. I also highly recommend the study guide that goes along with this book, it came in very handy and is complete with practice tests for each chapter.

Kalat knows how to write so that this information is memorable and interesting. Funny anecdotes, concept checks, interesting additional facts are all included. A fine textbook for an intro to psychology. Makes you want to continue learning more.

Kalat's book is the textbook for my Introduction to Psychology course. I think the book contains all the items important to the course, as well as some interesting, more in-depth information. Its strong point is the amusing text, as well as the frequent proof that UFO's don't exsist. His concept checks make it real easy to decide whether you know the material well enough to pass the test or not. Its also great to see he is not particularly long winded on any one subject, although the book ends up being pretty long. The examples also help a lot. Overall a very good book.

I teach an IB Psychology course and this is by far the best introduction to psychology text I have read and used in my course. Kalat does a fantastic job integrating current research into each major topic and even provides summaries of key studies providing their hypotheses, methods, results, and key points from their discussions. What's more, Kalat offers questions that stretch across Bloom's levels of questioning. Perhaps most importantly, my students love this book and read it with pleasure! And these are high school students!

Finally, unlike other detailed psychology texts, this text is very digestible! It is very well organized and structured. It includes clear diagrams and visuals that really help my students. Kalat's style of writing is not only enjoyable to me, but my students really enjoy it! It is very intelligent, but warm and friendly.

I HIGHLY recommend this book for any advanced psychology high school course or introduction to psychology course in college.

I must say, this Psychology textbook is very helpful and actually interesting. It isn't chock full of hard to understand definitions. Rather, the author explains all the concepts using simple ideas and relative examples, and incorporating many pictures and tables/graphs. The loose-leaf edition also makes life so much easier.

I use this text in the Intro to Psychology course I teach. Kalat has an easy, narrative way of conveying information and uses humor, without being excessive, to provide some levity for the content. He also provides numerous examples of how concepts apply to scenarios. While his text is thorough, I've often thinned out the content and highlighted what I think is most important as his chapters are packed with information, to the extent of being overload for the average undergrad. Considering the breadth of psychology, however, he's done a nice job of getting it all in there.

Don't get me wrong; Introduction to Psychology is full of information. The only problem I have with it is that it attempts to speak directly to the reader. This informal approach is fine for textbooks aimed at younger readers, but as this was for my college class, I found it a bit off-setting.

Ordering from them is not a good experience. It takes forever to get your book, and when you try to get in contact with them, they take forever to respond to you. If you are thinking about ordering a college text from them I would suggest going to someone else.

Very poorly and unprofessionally written. Several comments throughout the book are inappropriate and irrelevant (an attempt to keep the reader's interest i assume, but it just turned me off to this book). Too often, the author give personal opinions rather than an unbiased approach to the subject. Several graphs are labeled incorrectly depending on the edition (switches back and forth labeling confidence interval for 2 standard deviations as 95% and 96%). Later chapters seem less biased than early chapters. Correlation coefficient is poorly explained, and not quite correct. If you absolutely need this book for class, save yourself some money and buy an older edition. Chapters don't seem to be too different among editions.

AMAZING BOOK. I had an intro to psychology class in BYU-Provo and we used this book. It is amazing how well structured this is. The information is very extensive but not wordy. It goes into a lot of different things regarding to psychology, but it is understandable for a intro-student. I was very happy with the book. I actually kept it, because it really is that interesting (rather than selling it back.) It goes into a lot of behavior studies, anatomy, statistics, and a lot more. Highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know what psychology is all about.