Psychology

This book arrived immediately & it was in GREAT condition. This seller provided excellent service and I would purchase again & again from this seller.

This is an excellent book which I find very difficult to fault. It is clearly explained and well presented and the online materials accompanying the book are very useful. The way in which the subject is presented is exciting and, despite being introductory material, the book invites the reader to take their skills to a higher level by deliberate application of critical thinking. However, my only minor criticism is that sometimes the authours do not follow their own advice - sometimes they make statements which I find doubtful and arise where they failed to apply sufficient critical thinking! (Of course we are all guilty of this error sometimes). However, these statements are few and far between, as most of the time the authours examine more than one side to every controversial issue. It is interesting how psychology texts reflect the psychology of the authours, and this book contains some curious 'Westernisms' - this is not a criticism, just an amusing observation which reinforces a major theme of the book regarding how social psychology affects our own perception. For example, I am not entirely convinced by the way the book compares western capitalist cultures to eastern socialist cultures. I must re-read this section. Clearly not even psychologists are immune to social influences! This book is absolutely one of my favourites and it was a pleasure and an enlightenment to read it. I think the authours would actually be delighted by students who questions their interpretation, since this is the over-riding theme of the book - look at the evidence and then decide objectively for oneself, and that is great advice to anyone in any walk of life.

The text is the same. However, when compared to the student's edition, the instructor's edition is missing a lot of extras (sample tests, study hints, etc.) Those can be found on the website, but not in the book. In the student's edition, the extras take up about 200 pages. If you want more material--Instructor's edition has less than student.

I don't know if this is going to reflect on the quality of the psychology book, or the caliber of books I have read and reviewed, but I must say, this introductory psychology book is one of the best I've ever seen. The examples capture the reader and are used in an intelligent way to demonstrate the major points of each chapter. And I was never bored once with this book, which is a big plus. A great book for an intro to psych class!