Key Themes and Applications in Psychological Science

Preface

To the reader:

This is not your typical academic resource! It is written with and for the early college or high school student, and we want to hear your feedback for improvements. Tell us what you like and don’t like – what speaks to you, needs more explanation, has an impact, and what other topics or research stories we should include. Much of the content has already been previewed by over a thousand Introductory Psychology students and their feedback has already been incorporated.

Our goal is to bring psychological science to life within the framework of the Key Integrative Themes. In this preface, we introduce those themes and provide a general outline for the ebook. We also provide some basic information about the field of psychology, including a critical look at the history of psychology.

Intro to Modules

This book includes aspects of each of the domains and subfields that would typically be found as chapters in an Introductory Psychology Textbook. You might be reading this as a supplement to one of those books or to another course. This book is not a comprehensive introduction to the field of psychology. The first module includes a story about the field, and the others walk through the major themes in an integrated way, with an assumption that you either have prior knowledge about the major domains, or are learning about them alongside the themes.

Psychology as a field is tasked with explaining the most complex beings on earth. The framework of the integrative themes take into account many perspectives and possibilities. Each chapter represents one of the Key Integrative Themes of psychology, which taken together provide a comprehensive understanding of what we know about how humans think, feel, and behave. The chapters move from the perspective of psychology as a field of study, to psychology as a science, then to applying this science to your life and the world around you.

The seven Key integrative Themes were identified by the American Psychological Association Introductory Psychology Initiative, and are integral to the established learning outcomes for the Introductory Psychology course as well as the overall psychology major. Below are brief descriptions of each module along with the Key Integrative Themes that are the focus of this book. Within each chapter, we provide examples of how they are at work in the field of psychology and our lives.The aim of this resource is to support students in psychology courses in gaining a full understanding of these themes.

Key: The most important, enduring knowledge that you can take away from the course and the major. The field will change, the science will adapt, our understanding of human behavior will grow – yet the themes will still apply.

Integrative: Each one weaves threads of understanding from many different areas into one overarching idea.

Themes: A lens through which we can see patterns of knowledge across the entire field, an entire subfield or domain, or demonstrated throughout the introductory psychology course.

Outline of this ebook

Module I: The field of Psychology

Chapter 1: Studying Psychology

What will I learn about in psychology?

Chapter 2: Becoming Us

Key Theme: Psychological, biological, social, and cultural factors influence behavior and mental processes

Module II: Research Methods and Empiricism

Chapter 3: The Ethical Psychologist

Key Theme: Ethical principles guide psychology research and practice.

Chapter 4: The Psychological Scientist

Key Theme: Psychological science relies on empirical evidence and adapts as new data develop.

Module III: Psychology in Our Lives

Chapter 5: Our Imperfect Lens

Our perceptions and biases filter our experiences of the world through an imperfect personal lens.

Chapter 6: Changing our Lives

Applying psychological principles can change our lives, organizations, and communities in positive ways.

Module IV: Psychology in our World

Chapter 7: Individual Differences and Similarities

Psychology explains general principles that govern behavior while recognizing individual differences.

Chapter 8: Just Societies

Psychology values diversity, promotes equity and fosters inclusion in the pursuit of a more just society.

Final Note on this Book:

At first glance, the research conducted by psychologists appears to be highly objective. Throughout this book you will learn about the scientific method that psychologists frequently employ using statistics to test their predictions. Psychologists typically publish their findings in scientific journals after review by other experts in the field, a process known as peer review. This is done to try and ensure quality control. However, Western Psychology has also tended to make universal claims about all humans based on studies of a very small percentage of the world population – often referred to as WEIRD participants, i.e., mostly White undergraduates from educated, industrialized, rich democracies, such as the United States and Europe^[2]. This is said not to place blame or point fingers, but to bring awareness that psychologists are human, and thus come with human biases in our thinking – specifically, the tendency to believe that our worldview is the “right” worldview.

This means that if groups of people from cultures outside of the US and Europe behaved, thought, or felt differently from the published “norms,” Western psychologists have often considered them atypical or deficient. Relatedly, more recent attempts to reproduce many of the original research studies, with more diverse samples, have not always succeeded – leading to what has been termed the replication crisis in psychology (and in science more broadly).^[3]

When you read about the many different ways that contemporary psychologists carry out research in the upcoming chapters, you will see there are many reasons for this lack of replication. All of these issues call into question the validity of some “foundational” studies in traditional Western Psychology. However, the field of psychology is becoming more critical of its roots. As more women and people of color have broken through barriers and become psychologists, priorities have shifted and the diversity of the human experience has become increasingly important to the field. Many psychologists are now acknowledging that the field of psychology has been highly ethnocentric, that is, evaluating people from the context of one’s own culture, and not necessarily relevant to the global majority.

All of this sounds confusing and maybe even worrying to a new student of psychology, but we encourage you to think of yourself as standing at an exciting crossroad in the discipline. Psychologists and students of psychology are becoming increasingly aware and critical of shortcomings in the field, including the role that psychology has played in oppressing people who are historically considered to be at the margins of society. We have the chance to reimagine the discipline, to move away from outdated theories that fail to capture the breadth of the human experience, and instead embrace research that offers a more contextualized, nuanced, and representative view of people’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Therefore, in this book, we have tried to broaden our coverage beyond traditional textbooks, to include and uplift perspectives from Black, Latinx, and Asian-American psychology, and to highlight the importance of critical race, intersectionality, feminist, and queer theories in understanding humankind. In short, we have tried hard to introduce you to the good, bad, and the ugly in the field of psychology in the hope that you will think deeply about how to use this knowledge to improve your life and the lives of other people.^[4] Finally, we acknowledge that despite our lofty goals, this book (and its associated materials) are a work in progress and we welcome your feedback and any suggestions for improvements. Please email us at amelley@gmu.edu.