Psychology

Citation

Myers, D. G., DeWall, C. N., & Gruber, J. (2024). Psychology (14th ed.). Worth Publishers (Macmillan Learning).

Chapter Summary

The fourteenth edition has sixteen chapters divided into 56 short numbered modules, so each chapter is a set of two to six self-contained readings. June Gruber joins David Myers and Nathan DeWall as a coauthor in this edition. The publisher marks seven modules as new: 13, 16, 35, 38, 40, 48 and 50.

Chapter 1: Thinking Critically With Psychological Science

Three modules: the history and scope of psychology, research strategies (how psychologists ask and answer questions), and statistical reasoning in everyday life. This is the book's only dedicated treatment of methods and statistics.

Chapter 2: The Biology of Mind

Four modules on neural and hormonal systems, the tools used to study the brain, brain regions and structures, and the brain's responses to damage together with the two hemispheres.

Chapter 3: Consciousness and the Two-Track Mind

Basic consciousness concepts, sleep and dreams, and drugs and consciousness.

Chapter 4: Nature, Nurture, and Human Diversity

Behavior genetics, evolutionary psychology, and a new module on cultural and gender diversity as it bears on nature and nurture.

Chapter 5: Developing Through the Life Span

Four modules: developmental issues, prenatal development and the newborn; infancy and childhood; a new module on adolescence and emerging adulthood; and adulthood.

Chapters 6–8: Sensation and Perception; Learning; Memory

Sensation and perception moves from basic concepts through vision to hearing, skin, chemical and body senses. Learning covers classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and the roles of biology and cognition. Memory covers studying and encoding, storing and retrieving, and forgetting, memory construction and improving memory.

Chapters 9–10: Thinking and Language; Intelligence

Thinking and language has two modules, one on thinking and one on language and thought. Intelligence asks what intelligence is, how it is assessed, and what genetic and environmental influences shape it.

Chapters 11–12: What Drives Us: Hunger, Sex, Belongingness, and Achievement; Emotions, Stress, and Health

Motivation covers basic concepts, hunger, sexual motivation and a new module on affiliation and achievement. The emotions chapter has five modules: introduction to emotion, expressing emotion, a new module on experiencing emotion, stress and illness, and a new module on health and coping.

Chapters 13–14: Social Psychology; Personality

Social psychology is arranged as social thinking, social influence, antisocial relations and prosocial relations. Personality moves from psychodynamic theories through humanistic and trait theories to social-cognitive theories and the self.

Chapters 15–16: Psychological Disorders; Therapy

Disorders opens with a new introductory module, then covers anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, trauma-related and somatic symptom disorders; depressive and bipolar disorders (new); schizophrenia; dissociative, personality and eating disorders; and neurodevelopmental disorders. Therapy covers the psychological therapies, their evaluation, and biomedical therapies with prevention.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–5: methods, biology, consciousness, diversity and development

• Statistical reasoning: a module in Chapter 1 on using statistics in everyday life.
• Hormonal and neural systems: the biological opening of the book.
• Sleep, dreams and drugs: the topics of the other two consciousness modules, alongside basic consciousness concepts.
• Behavior genetics and evolutionary psychology: the two explanations of nature and nurture.

Chapters 6–10: perception, learning, memory, thinking and intelligence

• Classical and operant conditioning: the two learning modules.
• Encoding, storage and retrieval: the sequence organising the memory chapter.
• Intelligence assessment and its genetic and environmental influences: the focus of Chapter 10.

Chapters 11–16: motivation, social life, personality and clinical psychology

• Affiliation and achievement: added to the motivation chapter in this edition.
• Stress, illness, health and coping: the second half of Chapter 12.
• Prosocial and antisocial relations: the two halves of the social relations modules in Chapter 13.
• Psychological therapies and biomedical therapies: the split in the therapy chapter.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Breadth in a usable format. Sixteen chapters run from methods and the brain to development, cognition, social life, personality, disorders and therapy, so one book can serve as a first-year survey. The short numbered modules let instructors and readers assign or revisit small units.
• Clear signalling of change. The contents list marks the seven modules that are new in this edition, which helps anyone comparing it with an earlier printing.
• Diversity and health are structural, not add-ons. The publisher's contents give culture and gender their own module in the nature-and-nurture chapter, and stress and coping their own modules in Chapter 12.
• Substantial coverage of clinical topics. Disorders (six modules) and therapy (three modules) take up nine modules, and the disorder modules are grouped by diagnostic family.

Limitations

• Breadth over depth in each area. Thinking and language share two modules, memory three, and social psychology four, so a course that wants real depth in cognition or social behaviour will need a specialised text.
• Methods are confined to Chapter 1. Research strategies and statistics are three modules at the start of the book; the later chapters are organised by topic, not by method.
• Length. With 56 modules, the book is more than most one-term courses can assign in full.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is a full-length introductory survey that can serve as the main text. It overlaps in scope with Gleitman, Fridlund and Reisberg's Psychology, an older general survey whose sixth edition is about 860 pages and which treats development, intelligence and personality in separate chapters. Myers is the far more recent of the two, so it is the one to choose if current coverage matters most; Gleitman is the one to compare if a second overview of the same ground is wanted.

Psychology 2e from OpenStax is an openly licensed introductory text that is free to read online and can stand in for or supplement a print book, and Butler and McManus's Psychology: A Very Short Introduction is a compact tour of the field. Brysbaert and Rastle's Historical and Conceptual Issues in Psychology and Weiskopf and Adams's An Introduction to the Philosophy of Psychology are upper-level books for readers who have finished a survey like this and want to examine the discipline's history and concepts.

How to Use This Book

No previous study of psychology is assumed, so the book suits a first-year course or a student from another discipline who wants an overview of the whole field. Read Chapter 1 first, because the research strategies and statistics modules supply vocabulary for every later chapter, and Chapter 2 next, since the biology of mind recurs in sensation, memory, emotion and disorders.

After that the chapters can follow the course syllabus. A sensible grouping is Chapters 3–5 (consciousness, nature and nurture, development), 6–10 (perception, learning, memory, thinking, intelligence), 11–12 (motivation, emotion, stress and health) and 13–16 (social psychology, personality, disorders and therapy). Because each chapter is divided into short modules, a student can read one module at a time and review it shortly after the related lecture. Check the edition before using the module numbers above, since earlier editions number and group the modules differently.