eBook Psychology: The Essential Science download

This introductory manual succeeds at giving us a friendly overview of the subject.

Pros: -Easy to read, you can take it to the beach and still learn from it. It states the theory, then has the concepts explained with basically the same words on the sides, and finally a tight but readable review make it a good book for cramming.

-It's true it has scores of personal anecdotes but as Amazon reviewer "Squigglove" (USA) writes, this makes it stand out from the crowd by making the topics apply to your life. Like when he speaks about his personal encounter with a pathology (ch.14), treatment of a member of his own family (next chapter) or how attributions can give people a wrong impression (the "cocktail anecdote" on chapter 16), or his own pictures showing aging (chapter 9).

-The "In your own life" tips for instance on "love an relationships" (on page 656) or "how to choose a therapist" (p.612) are worth the price of the book!

*By the way, now it's available only used at a discount price makes this a great buy.
-The book has an "oldish" feeling for it was written on 2001', so we hear of Clinton, Madonna and bulky whitish PCs, instead of I don't know, Lady Gaga and Ipods :), but this, again, only gives this book a tinge of healthy nostalgia.

-The CD with videos, links and audio! is fun, informative and comprehensive.

-Index, glossary and bibliography are comprehensive and NOT as chatty as the book.
* The type/ font could be bigger for the bibliography, thou.
-The appendix on statistics makes it even interesting :).

Cons: -The explanations are sometimes circular and wordy. Or they just don't explain (ELM and heuristic-systematic models differ only by one word ... p. 630).
-It doesn't cover much of the experiments or classical research, focusing instead of only two approaches to the topic at hand. Good simplification, but if you have an exam coming, it may not be enough.

-A certain tendency towards "industrial/ business" psychology (the author's field), in detriment to the more experimental/ clinical approach.

-The author doesn't like or give much credence to psychoanalysis. This may put off some, specially in the few countries where this school still reigns supreme, like France-Argentina, and some of Lat Am I guess.

While acknowledging its historic and even "pop culture" importance, it clearly states whenever it can that it has no scientific background and that other approaches, like basically the cognitive-behavioural one, is clearly more effective.

Buy this book, if only to complement your dull regular classroom textbook. Great for independent reading, as another Amazon user states.

For the price this textbook was in great shape. I received my package in a timely manner.

As for the contents of the textbook, I easily followed along and my attention was kept. Very educational and fun early level psychology book.

Excellent information contained in the textbook; however, haven't used it as often as I thought I would because our teacher mainly gives us notes to study. If psychology were a part of my major I would definitely keep this textbook, but since it's not, I will pass it on to someone else taking this class.

It was good just a tear at the top

needed the book for class and it was in great condition

The book was as i thought it would be, informative and the infotrac helped me to prepare for tests very effeciently!

The book arrived in the promised time and to my surprise even though its an older edition it look like it had been used once. Very happy with this purchase, will buy more from this source.

I am very pleased with the textbook and the time frame to have it delivered.