Psychology: Modules for Active Learning 12th Edition

Book Preface

To the Student—
An Invitation to Learn Psychology Greetings from your authors! We look forward to being your guides as you explore the exciting fi eld of psychology and our ever-evolving understanding of human behavior. In a very real sense we wrote this book about you, for you, and to you. We sincerely hope you will fi nd, as we do, that what you learn is at once familiar, exotic, surprising, and challenging.

Reading Psychology

In Psychology: Modules for Active Learning, we have done all that we could to make it enjoyable for you to read this book. We trust you will fi nd your fi rst journey through psychology to be quite interesting and useful to you in your everyday life. Each chapter of this book will take you into a diff erent realm of psychology, such as personality, abnormal behavior, memory, consciousness, or human development. Each realm is complex and fascinating in its own right, with many pathways, landmarks, and interesting detours to discover. Like any journey of discovery, your exploration of psychology will help you to better understand yourself, others, and the world around you. It’s defi nitely a trip worth taking.

Studying Psychology

None of us likes to start a new adventure by reading a manual. We just want to step off the airplane and begin our vacation, get right into that new computer game, or just start using our new camera or cell phone. You might be similarly tempted to just start reading this textbook. Please be patient. Successfully learning psychology depends on how you study this book, as well as how you read it.

Psychology is about each of us. It asks us to adopt a refl ective attitude as we inquire, “How can we step outside of ourselves to look objectively at how we live, think, feel, and act?” Psychologists believe the answer is through careful thought, observation, and inquiry. As simple as that may seem, thoughtful refl ection takes practice to develop. It is the guiding light for all that follows.

Psychology: Modules for Active Learning, then, is your passport to an adventure in active learning, not just passive reading. To help you get off to a good start, we strongly encourage you to read our short “manual,” Introduction: Th e Psychology of Studying, which precedes Chapter 1. Th is introduction describes a variety of study skills, including the refl ective SQ4R method, which you can use to get the most out of this text and your psychology course. It also tells how you can explore psychology through digital media such as the Internet, electronic databases, and interactive CDs.