Introduction to Psychology
In the author's preface, he states that the typical length of introductory psychology textbooks serves as a detriment to student learning. Consistent with his concern, his text is not as comprehensive as others I have used to teach introductory psychology. Whereas a typical text in this area might include 16 to 18 chapters, his text has only 14 – specifically, it is missing a separate chapter on Stress, Health, and Coping (stress receives some coverage in Ch. 10 but other topics in that chapter on Emotion and Motivation are not covered as a result). Many of his chapters are also shorter in length and contain less content than the texts I would typically use. Some of the chapters combine topics (e.g., Ch. 9 - Intelligence and Language) that are often treated in separate chapters in other texts. I suspect that this text may have initially been designed for use in an American one-semester introduction to psychology course. In BC, introductory psychology is offered across two semesters, often as two separate courses (e.g., Psych 101 and Psych 102). Some missing topics include an introduction to inferential statistics (Ch. 2), an in-depth discussion of the application of psychological principles to the workforce, achievement motivation (Ch. 10), etc. The text contains a Table of Contents but no Index. Although the author states (in the Preface) that the text contains a marginal glossary of key terms, I could not find such a glossary. However, when I hover my cursor over a key term, a box with the key term's definition pops up.
For the most part, I found the content to be accurate, error-free, and unbiased. However, I took issue with Stangor's initial presentation of the "Science" of psychology (in Chapter 1). I found his use of Dr. Phil as an example of a psychologist to be misleading. Such an example seems to contradict the author's stated pedagogy of emphasizing psychology's empiricism and seems to feed student misconceptions about what psychology is. He also seems to mention Freud a lot (end of section 1.1, Ch. 5) – again, not a good example of the empirical aspect of psychology. Although Stangor presents criticisms of Freud's Psychodynamic theory in Chapter 11, he still overemphasizes this theory's contribution to the field and glosses over the major concern of lack of falsifiability. Also, PTSD seems to be over-represented in terms of problem behaviours (two of 12 chapter openers describe cases related to PTSD; PTSD is discussed in four chapters - 7,10, 12, and 13).
Some of the content of this text is out-of-date. For example, in section 1.2, Stangor refers to APS as the American Psychological Society, as opposed to the Association of Psychological Science. The discussion on the DSM (and associated Figure 12.6, and Table 12.3) needs to be updated to the DSM-V (see also criteria for ADHD in box at beginning of Chapter 13). Also, whenever Stangor discusses the influence of nature and nurture, he tends to pit them against each other – the old "nature versus nurture" jargon (see Chapter 11 on Personality - is personality more nature or nurture?; Chapter 9 on Intelligence – is intelligence nature or nurture? ). A more contemporary viewpoint is "nature through nurture" which would be exemplified by the inclusion of a discussion on epigenetics. The text presents some recent research in the area of neuroscience – but it needs more, otherwise it risks becoming obsolete in the next few years. The text would also benefit from the inclusion of more research on the impact of technology on student behaviour (e.g., how/ why does the use of cell phones impact our driving?; are our personalities evident in our online spaces , like facebook?). If we want to show students why psychology matters, we need to present more research that is personally and contextually relevant to them (e.g., how does stress impact today's students?). Although I appreciated the attempt to insert appropriate videos and images, I found this book's screen display to be very text heavy and not very engaging. I currently use ebooks to teach my hybrid introductory psychology classes and I think the images used in those books are superior to Stangor's – the images occur more frequently throughout the text, and they are more colourful and in many cases, more relevant to the student lifestyle. Also, the ebooks I use tend to be more interactive – students can actually complete an exercise on a particular concept right after they have read about it by clicking on an icon in the ebook.
The text is well-written and easy to understand. Adequate context is provided when introducing new psychological concepts and explaining them. One exception is in the box on emotional intelligence at the end of section 9.1. The terms reliability and construct validity are used without being previously discussed or defined. They are defined later in Chapter 11.
The text is mostly internally consistent. Each chapter (with the exception of Chapters 1 and 2) begins with a "chapter opener" that describes an interesting case study. Learning objectives are presented at the beginning of each section of a chapter (alth
This text could easily be subdivided into smaller reading sections – instructors could assign particular sections within a chapter. Chapters could be assigned in any order to accommodate introductory psychology courses which are typically offered as two courses. However, I think this modularity comes at a price. Psychology is a discipline where there are recurring themes. I find the lack of delineated connection between chapters disconcerting.
The topics are presented in a logical, clear fashion. The one exception is the inclusion of a discussion of social dilemmas at the end of Chapter 7 on Learning. This discussion doesn't really fit with the rest of the chapter; a clear explanation of how/ why it fits into this chapter is missing.
The full reference for each citation in the text seems to be embedded in the body of the text throughout the whole book. I am not sure if this was some glitch in the formatting of the version of the text I downloaded but it was exceedingly disruptive to the flow of reading. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out where the next sentence began after the reference! Also the font in a number of the Figures is too small to read (for example, Fig. 1.5, 2.2, 3.17, 4.29, 5.9, 9.4, 10.4, 10.6, 10.8, 13.7, 14.9, 14.13, 14.15). There is an issue with the formatting of Table 5.1 (the latter part of the table is cut-off).
The text contained few grammatical errors - I think I only found two typos!
The text is fairly ethnocentric. It does not include any introduction to or discussion of the differences between individualistic and collectivist cultures. Although the author provides some research on ethnic and cultural differences (e.g., discussion of stereotype threat and ethnic differences on IQ test performance in Chapter 9, etc.), I think it would benefit from the inclusion of more research findings on cultural diversity, especially given the multicultural composition of our Canadian post-secondary institutions. The following are some examples of where the discussion of cultural differences could be expanded: i) How do cultural perceptions influence the onset and prognosis of psychological disorders? (Chapter 12) ii) In Chapter 9, the author states that "Intelligence is defined by the culture in which it exists," but there is no elaborative discussion on the meaning of intelligence in collectivist cultures. iii) At the end of Section 11.1, the author states that "there is evidence that the Big Five factors are not exactly the same across all cultures" but he doesn't elaborate on these differences. Such a statement seems to contradict an earlier observation that "Big Five dimensions seem to be cross-cultural, because the same five factors have been identified in participants in China, Japan, Italy, Hungary, Turkey, and many other countries." iv) Chapter 10 would benefit from the inclusion of a discussion on cross-cultural differences in the perception and expression of emotion, as well as cross-cultural differences/ similarities in happiness. For example, many argue that happiness is only important in societies that emphasize individualism. v) Likewise, Chapter 13 would benefit from an inclusion of the effect of culture on treatment outcomes. vi) Research presented on causal attributions in Chapter 14 is only true for individuals in individualistic cultures. What type of self-serving attributions do people from collectivist cultures make? What does cross-cultural research reveal about the fundamental attribution error?
This text is very American in content. No Canadian reviewers are listed. All American statistics would need to be replaced with Canadian ones (e.g., Table 12.1, Figure 13.2, etc.). Specifically, the section on ethics in Chapter 1 would need to be revised to be consistent with Canadian policies. The discussion of Bilingualism and Cognitive Development in Chapter 9 needs to be modified to include the Canadian example of French Immersion. The case at the beginning of Chapter 11 could be replaced with a Canadian twin example - there are many to choose from. Also, it would be nice to include some examples from our Aboriginal culture.
This review originated in the BC Open Textbook Collection and is licensed under CC BY-ND.