THEMES AND VARIATIONS, 10th Edition, helps you experience the excitement of this fascinating field, while helping you study and retain what you learn. Filled with practical ways that you can apply psychology to your everyday life, this best-selling textbook is an experience in learning that you'll remember long after you complete your introductory psychology course. Critical Thinking Applications in every chapter give you specific critical thinking strategies you can apply in all of your courses and in your personal life. Reality Checks, many of which may surprise you, address common misconceptions about psychology. Every chapter of this book offers tools -- such as Concept Charts that provide colorful visual snapshots of key points -- to help you focus on what's important, showing you how to study in ways that help you retain information and do your best on exams.
Wayne Weiten is a graduate of Bradley University and received his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Illinois, Chicago, in 1981. He currently teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He has received distinguished teaching awards from Division Two of the American Psychological Association (APA) and from the College of DuPage, where he taught until 1991. He is a Fellow of Divisions 1 and 2 of the American Psychological Association. In 1991, he helped chair the APA National Conference on Enhancing the Quality of Undergraduate Education in Psychology and in 1996-1997 he served as President of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology. Wayne Weiten has conducted research on a wide range of topics, including educational measurement, jury decision making, attribution theory, stress, and cerebral specialization. His recent interests have included pressure as a form of stress and the technology of textbooks. He is also the co-author of Psychology Applied to Modern Life (Wadsworth, 2006) and the creator of an educational CD-ROM titled PsykTrek: A Multimedia Introduction to Psychology.
Wayne Weiten's psychology textbook is a wonderful book, and it is my favorite textbook this semester. Weiten explains the various psychological research in the subfields of psychology well, and he goes to great lengths to demonstrate the real world implications of the data. This text goes a long way in explaining human nature, and it does it empirically, all the while being sensitive to the different theoretical perspectives regarding the data.
This is an extremely well-written textbook. It's filled with a plethora of highly useful material that will surely, with or without added instruction, be enough (and probably more) to fulfill the requirements of a foundational knowledge in psychology. Overall, I'd one hundred percent recommend this book to anyone interested in psychology; it is easy enough to read, enjoyable, well-illustrated, and a breeze to comprehend.
Normally I wouldn't bother putting down a textbook as something I've read, however this particular book is terrible. Instead of using the space to teach me what I need to know, it will constantly tell me "by reading this chapter this is what you will learn"--obviously if it is in the chapter I'm going to figure it out without being told. Also the book itself switches from third person, to first person, and then into second person, before moving back into third person once again--and there is no excuse for doing something like that in any way, shape, or form. Mostly if you want to learn psychology this is the last book a person should pick up. It doesn't even deserve the one required star rating.
i was prescribed this textbook for my psychology module, and I hated every second of it, I have also minus points for the emotional and psychological trauma I've been put through during the module.
Don't know how to rate a textbook but I'm going to anyways. I'm rating on readability as well as the content's ability to be understood. The text was dull in some spots but overall read smoothly and had humor to it as well.
I remember this textbook had some interesting titbits of information but it never really inspired me much nor interested me. To each their own style I suppose.