Revisiting Psychology: A Student's Guide to Critical Thought

1. Introduction to Critical Thinking.- 2. John Watson and the 'Little Albert' Study: how to create a phobia?.- 3. The Nurture Assumption: Does Parental Influence during childhood offer the greatest impact on personality development?.- 4.The Obedience Studies: Ordinary People and Extraordinary Evil?.- 5.On Being Sane in Insane Places: Pseudopatients or Pseudoscience?.- 6. The Stanford Prison Study: Are Ordinary People Capable of Extraordinary Cruelty?.- 7. Media Research: Is Violent Media Making Us More Aggressive?.- 8. Recovered Memories: Do We Dare Trust Them?.- 9. The psi Studies: Psychological Science versus Pseudoscience.- 10. The Ethics of Caring about Human Beings.- 11.Benjamin Libet: Do Human Beings Really Have Free Will?.- 12. The Placebo Effect: How Do Antidepressants Work?.- 13. The Enriched Environment Studies: A Neuroscientific Case for Early Learning?.

Jared M. Bartels received his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Memphis in 2008 and did postdoctoral work in the Center for Learning Innovation at the University of Minnesota Rochester. He is currently assistant professor of psychology at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. His research interests include achievement motivation and self-regulated learning, history of psychology, and clinical neuropsychological assessment. His scholarly work includes a social psychology textbook, chapters, book reviews and research published in numerous academic journals including Learning and Individual Differences, Aging, Neuropsychology and Cognition, the Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, Personality and Individual Differences and Teaching of Psychology. He resides in Blue Springs, Missouri with his wife and two sons.



William E. Herman is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the State University of New York College at Potsdam and earned his doctorate in educational psychology at the University of Michigan in 1987. His research and scholarly interests lie in the areas of test and performance anxiety, achievement motivation theory, values development, moral development, human memory, learning theory, excellence in teaching, and translating the teacher education knowledge base into professional practice. He has received several teaching honors and has accumulated nearly fifty published scholarly works including research studies, book chapters, book reviews, and conference presentations found in searchable databases such as PsycINFO, ERIC, Education Index, Historical Abstracts, etc. During his 40 years of full-time college teaching, he has accumulated considerable international education experience. He has earned two Fulbright Scholar Awards (Russia in 1993 and Thailand in 2011), taught graduate courses for five summers in Taiwan (1989-1993), taught education and psychology courses at the University of Potsdam in