What Is Psychology? Essentials

With a strong applied focus, WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY? ESSENTIALS captures and holds students' attention from the first page to the last. Ellen Pastorino and Susann Doyle-Portillo, award-winning psychology professors with an infectious enthusiasm for teaching, have found that students who are curious are motivated to explore and truly learn how psychological concepts are connected. This text incorporates the authors' successful and engaging teaching approach, unlocking students' curiosity with compelling, chapter-opening stories of real people that show students how psychology affects their everyday lives. Embedded critical-thinking questions motivate students to continue making connections between personal stories, applications to their own lives, and psychological concepts they will use outside of the classroom. Diversity is addressed in every chapter through integration of issues of gender, race, culture, ethnicity, and sexuality. A comprehensive media package features videos, the PowerLecture? CD with readymade lecture slides, eAudio downloads for students, and an online student tutorial featuring personalized study plans and automatic grading.

1. What Is Psychology? 2. How Does Biology Influence Our Behavior? 3. How Do We Sense and Perceive Our World? 4. Consciousness: Wide Awake, in a Daze, or Dreaming? 5. How Do We Learn? 6. How Does Memory Function? 7. Cognition, Language, and Intelligence: How Do We Think? 8. Motivation and Emotion: What Guides Behavior? 9. How Do People Grow, Change, and Develop? 10. Social Psychology: How Do We Understand and Interact with Others? 11. Stress, Health, and Coping, How Can You Create a Healthy Life? 12. What Is Personality, and How Do We Measure It? 13. What Are Psychological Disorders, and How Can We Understand Them? 14. What Therapies Are Used to Treat Psychological Problems?