College Psychology=Skepticism

[Mercutio]

As for the OP... I have taught using Wade & Tavris. I'd use it again if I were teaching intro (depending on a few other factors--there are a couple other excellent intro texts, and some fairly lame ones).

I reviewed one a few years ago, and ripped the Learning chapter a new orifice. There is tremendous danger in having a Cognitive Psychologist write about Behaviorism. Pest, of course, excepted--I know he knows better.

 

[Jeff Corey]

We use Weiten for our lecture Intro 1,2 class and Kalat for the section that has a lab (3,4).
They both do a good job on the hard science topics - biopsych, sensation and perception, conditioning, learning and memory. The softer stuff is in the second semester and I never teach that.

 

[Dancing David]

Woo is prevalent in people who are involved in psychology, usually it is of the less detrimental sort. I had an instructor who wanted to insist that in language humans have a preference for SVO sentences, somewhat of a bias on his part. More dangerously in 1977 I had an instructor who questioned if schizophrenia existed as a medical condition.

 

[Jeff Corey]

What about all the false memory syndrome cases? I know, they weren't all initiated by certified clinical psychologists. Some were.
One other problem is that many people are identified as a psychologist when they aren't.
Take Dr. Phil, please.
Yet another problem is that the hard-assed empirical approach is being overwhelmed by a soft-headed cognitive Kuhnian reverse paradigm shift back to mentalism.

 

[Normal Dude]

At my campus there is a class that specifically focuses on skepticism, pseudoscience, and magical thinking. Can't wait to take it.

 

[Jeff Corey]

That sounds like my Critical Thinking course that I teach each year. Buy Gilovich's "How we know what isn't so" for ten bucks on Amazon and read it beforehand for a head start.