Psychology

Citation

Gleitman, H., Fridlund, A. J., & Reisberg, D. (2004). Psychology (6th ed.). W. W. Norton.

A newer edition (8th edition, 2011) is available; chapter numbers and some contents may differ.

Chapter Summary

The sixth edition of this general introduction (first published in 1981, about 860 pages) was reorganised and tightened by its authors, who describe the revision as giving more weight to neuroscience and to studies of culture. The Library of Congress record dates the book 2004, while booksellers give an August 2003 release. The chapters are summarised below as far as Chapter 15, Personality; later chapters are not covered here.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Opens the book by showing how different kinds of research in psychology contribute to one topic, emotion, and now includes a full introduction to research methods.

Chapter 2: Biological Bases of Behavior

The biological foundation for the rest of the book. The sixth edition added transcranial magnetic stimulation, the human genome project, nervous-system development, the motor cortex, the difficulty of separating Broca's from Wernicke's aphasia, neurotransmitters and commonly prescribed drugs, and recovery from brain damage.

Chapters 3–4: Motivation; Learning

Motivation adds recent work on sex as a biological motive and strengthens the treatment of eating and hunger, sleep and biological rhythms. Learning now discusses how learning can produce structural changes in neurons.

Chapters 5–6: Sensory Processes; Perception

Sensory processes was reorganised to concentrate on vision and hearing. Perception shifts the emphasis towards the active role of the perceiver.

Chapters 7–9: Memory; Thought and Knowledge; Language

Memory was modernised and streamlined: encoding is described as creating or strengthening connections, and retrieval as depending on those connections as retrieval paths, with added material on mnemonics and eyewitness testimony. Thought and Knowledge expands the neural bases of mental imagery, the selection task (including evolutionary accounts) and the neural correlates of consciousness. The publisher calls the Language chapter unique and says it was rewritten to emphasise how people understand language.

Chapters 10–11: Cognition and Social Behavior; Biology, Emotion, and Social Behavior

The previous edition's three social psychology chapters were condensed into two: Chapter 10 treats social cognition, and Chapter 11 treats the influence of biology and of interpersonal relationships on social behaviour.

Chapters 12–13: Physical and Cognitive Development; Social Development

The first covers post-Piagetian accounts of cognitive development, infants' understanding of support and of their social world, genetic roots, biological and cultural influences, and cognitive development in old age. The second adds material on sexual imprinting and attraction, including the role of smell, and on attachment and the factors shaping a child's early pattern of it.

Chapters 14–15: Intelligence: Its Nature and Measurement; Personality

Intelligence updates the debate over the validity of the IQ test, the definition of g, the genetic roots of IQ (the Colorado Adoption Project) and environmental influences such as stereotype threat. The sixth edition merged the earlier two personality chapters into a single chapter.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–4: foundations, biology, motivation, learning

• Transcranial magnetic stimulation: a brain-stimulation technique introduced among the new material in the biology chapter.
• Neurotransmitters: the chemical messengers of the nervous system, linked in the book to commonly prescribed drugs.
• Biological motives: hunger, eating, sleep and sex treated as motives with a biological basis.
• Learning and neurons: the idea that learning can produce structural change in neurons.

Chapters 5–9: perception and cognition

• Active perceiver: perception as something the perceiver does, not only something received.
• Encoding and retrieval paths: memory formation as building connections that later serve as routes to retrieval.
• Mental imagery and the selection task: topics in the Thought and Knowledge chapter, with neural and evolutionary perspectives.
• Language comprehension: the focus of the rewritten language chapter.

Chapters 10–15: social life, development and individual differences

• Social cognition: the subject of Chapter 10, separated from other social behaviour.
• Attachment and sexual imprinting: developmental topics in Chapter 13.
• g and stereotype threat: concepts in the intelligence chapter, alongside the Colorado Adoption Project.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Long-established, unified survey. The publisher describes the book as a classic since 1981 that gives a cohesive overview of the discipline with links to both the natural sciences and the humanities. Henry Gleitman, according to the authors' biographies, taught introductory psychology for five decades.
• Cognition is treated unusually thoroughly. Daniel Reisberg is the author of a separate cognitive psychology text, and the chapter list reflects it: perception, memory, thought and knowledge, and language each get their own chapter, with Language described by the publisher as a distinctive chapter.
• Biology is built into the structure. The biological bases come second, and later chapters keep returning to neural evidence, from learning to imagery, consciousness and attraction.
• Development and individual differences are given room. Physical and cognitive development, social development, intelligence and personality each have a chapter in the sixth edition.

Limitations

• Dated edition. The sixth edition appeared in 2003–2004, and a seventh edition followed in 2007; research published since then is not reflected, which matters most in the neuroscience-heavy chapters the revision emphasised.
• Length. At about 860 pages, with fifteen or more chapters, the book is more than most one-term courses can cover, so a reader should choose chapters.

Where It Fits in the Course

Among the course's introductory texts, this is a full-length survey that its publisher describes as cohesive, linking the discipline to the natural sciences and the humanities. Myers, DeWall and Gruber's Psychology is the alternative main text, organised into 56 short modules within 16 chapters; Psychology 2e from OpenStax is a free, openly licensed survey that can serve as a lighter companion or a no-cost substitute; and Butler and McManus's Psychology: A Very Short Introduction is a compact tour useful for orientation before or after a longer book.

Two upper-level titles in the same course look at psychology from outside its research areas. Brysbaert and Rastle's Historical and Conceptual Issues in Psychology combines the history of the discipline with the philosophy of science, and Weiskopf and Adams's An Introduction to the Philosophy of Psychology examines psychological explanation and the mind. Both fit best after a broad survey such as this one.

How to Use This Book

The book assumes no prior study of psychology and suits a first-year course or a reader working through the field independently. Because it is long, a practical order is to read Chapter 1 first, for the research methods used throughout, and Chapter 2 next, since the biological material recurs in later chapters.

Treat Chapters 3–9 as one block on how people act, perceive, remember and think: learning, perception and memory come before the thinking and language chapters, which build on them. Chapters 10–11 on social behaviour, Chapters 12–13 on development and Chapters 14–15 on intelligence and personality can be taken in any order after that block, depending on what the course emphasises. If the course assigns a later edition, chapter numbers and some topics will differ, so match the edition before following this plan.