Synopses & Reviews
With a strong applied focus, WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY? ESSENTIALS, 2nd Edition, 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.
About the Author
Ellen E. Pastorino (Ph.D., Florida State University) is a developmental psychologist who established her teaching career at Gainesville State College in Georgia. As a tenured professor, she created and developed the college's Teaching and Learning Center, working with faculty to promote student learning. For the past 16 years, she has been teaching at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. Here, too, she has worked with faculty in designing learning-centered classroom practices. Ellen has won numerous teaching awards, including the University of Georgia Board of Regents Distinguished Professor, the NISOD Excellence in Teaching Award, and Valencia's Teaching and Learning Excellence Award. Ellen has published articles in the Journal of Adolescent Research and Adolescence and actively participates in many regional and national teaching conferences. However, her main passion has always been to get students excited about the field of psychology. Ellen is a member of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and currently serves as the Discipline Coordinator of Psychological Sciences at Valencia's Osceola campus. She has authored test banks, instructor manuals, and student study guides. While working as a consultant for IBM Corporation, she developed numerous educational materials for teachers and students. Her current interests include assessment, inclusion, service learning, and reaching underprepared students. Ellen strives to balance her professional responsibilities with her love of physical fitness and family life. Susann M. Doyle-Portillo (Ph.D., social cognition, University of Oklahoma) is a professor of psychological science at the University of North Georgia. Previously, she taught at Gainesville State College for nearly 19 years. Prior to her doctoral program, Susann earned bachelor's degrees in engineering and psychology. This exposure to both the hard sciences and the social sciences helped to ground her firmly in the experimental tradition of psychology. She has published articles in Social Cognition and Contemporary Social Psychology, but the main focus of her career has been and will always be teaching. Susann has earned a reputation as an excellent but challenging instructor. In 2010, she was awarded the Gainesville State College Best Practices Award for her teaching, and in 2011 she was a recipient of a Gainesville State College Foundation Innovative Teaching Grant Award. In addition, she has three times been listed in Who's Who Among America's Teachers. Susann is also actively engaged in student learning outside the classroom. One of her major goals is to help students learn by getting them involved in conducting original research. Susann and her research team are currently investigating the connection between individual difference variables and online behavior, factors affecting eyewitness testimony, and griefing among gamers.
Table of Contents
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. Health, Stress, 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? Appendix A. How Are Statistics Used in Psychology? Appendix B. How Do We Apply Psychology to the Workplace?