Personality, Individual Differences and Intelligance with APS, Current Directions in Personality Psychology Reader

by John Maltby, Ann Macaskill, Nina Mikkelson

"This is an excellent introduction to Personality, Intelligence and Individual Differences and will be invaluable for students undertaking a BPS accredited Psychology Degree course. It is by far the most comprehensive, accessible and thought provoking text that I have read on the subject." Val Tuck NewcastleUniversity "An outstanding work that in my opinion succeeds in being both a first class textbook for courses in Individual Differences and a fascinating read." Steve Fisher, Strathclyde University Highly engaging and lively in presentation, this thought-provoking text introduces students to the major theories, methods, research findings and debates in Personality, Individual Differences and Intelligence. The book offers a comprehensive, yet rigourous coverage, and actively encourages students to develop skills in critical analysis. Personality, Individual Differences and Intelligence is packed with examples and richly-illustrated with photos and includes a range of pedagogical features designed to stimulate interest and support learning.These include *Each chapter opens with learning outcomes, a list of key themes and a real world example to engage students and help them manage their study. *Stop and Think boxes encourage students to reflect on what they have just read. *Profile boxes ensure students are informed of key figures and thinkers. *Critical Thinking boxes encourage students to question theories and arguments and develop skills in critical thinking. *Discussion questions, essay questions and an annotated guide to further reading encourage students to consolidate and develop their understanding to a higher level. * Connecting up' draws attention to links between different areas of psychology and topics covered in the book. The book also includes separate chapters on Academic Argument, Statistical Analysis, Psychometric Testing and ethics to provide a framework for the academic and technical terms that are used commonly in the field. A website accompanying the book features weblinks, dissertation suggestions and a range of questions to allow you to consolidate and further your understanding. This can be found at www.pearsoned.co.uk/maltby.Dr John Maltby is a lecturer in psychology at the University of Leicester. He has over 100 publications in the literature of Personality, Individual Differences and Social Psychology. Specific areas of interest include Social Attitudes, Positive Psychology, Personality and Psychometric testing. Dr Liz Day is a lecturer in psychology at Sheffield Hallam University. She has over 30 publications in the area of Individual Differences and Positive Psychology. She has also trained as a Clinical Hypnotherapist. Professor Ann Macaskill has lectured on Personality and Individual Differences for many years. She is also trained in Counselling and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Textbooks

Paperback

First published June 30, 2006

Reviews

[Jurij Fedorov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Psychology textbooks are always a blast to read! If you want to understand psychology this is basically what you need to do. Academic papers are nice if you write papers and need to understand a very miniscule part of psychology, but they are largely irrelevant for 99% of people. You need to read 25 papers to get as much info as you do from 1 single chapter in such a book. It's just worth your time.

One thing that worries me is how many psychology textbooks are just terrible and unscientific. This one is not. It honestly surprised me a lot. Social science textbooks are on average terrible pseudoscience which made me want to give this one a positive rating. Now, it does not mean this book is just spot on all the way. There is still quite a bit unscientific history in there presented as history. Imagine a math book where 20% of the book was wrong math that used to be widely practiced. It's a way to go about a field, but it's not an ideal way. Another thing that bothered me about this textbook is the huge focus on single scientists. They even have factoids with scientists where their life stories are presented. Why? Why does a scientist make or break a scientific theory here? A whole chapter may be about 2 scientists battling it out in the intellectual arena. I'm wondering what will happen if one scientist in such a chapter will be discovered to have faked data. Will they have to delete a whole chapter then? Seems like it. Again, not really the ideal way to present science as they largely depend on single people in a specific field ignoring about 10.000 other people in that field for some weird reason.

There is also a weird focus on presenting very long logical arguments. It's stuff that any intellectual person can think up by himself with very little to guide him. So for me it was overdone. Whole pages may be about some author who stated something philosophical about a small scientific field. And very little of it has a citation. So whole pages may have very little actual scientific info in them. That's not ideal at all in a textbook. I want to get a lot of info as fast as possible. Not wade through semi-intellectual ideas from single people.

The writing also is very dry at times. I keep zoning out when arguments continue for what seems to be an eternity. But as I was once told at university "American textbooks tend to run long. They are paid by the word." Yes, seems like it, but this is not an American textbook. It seems like the authors maybe just have a long-winded way to present an argument. Maybe because they are writing for college freshmen. Unfortunately, it also makes some chapters feel a bit rushed in important parts. The evolutionary psychology chapter is a good and fair intro, but evolutionary psychology gets just a bit more space than evolutionary theory itself. So basically the thing the chapter is about is not really presented in-depth and I don't see anyone really get a feel for any grand scientific theory when it's rushed this much. The scientist-vs.-scientist argument on the other hand takes up several pages in that chapter. Why? Why not make place for more science and less shallow talk?

This leads me to another thing. While flipping through the book I found the illustrations and charts to be very conservative and dry. A bit like the writing style. Initially this lead me to assume that this was a very high-brow book for big psychology geeks. It's not though. Looks deceive. I think that the presentation vs. the text is what really takes me aback. Because while the text is clearly aimed at people who are new to the whole logical thinking thing the design of the book is aimed at old men in dusty rooms. It does have plenty of photos and illustrations, but instead of using a typical bubbly and fun style it's all square and drab color-wise when it could have spiced things up. Some jokes or cartoons create great salience in other good textbooks like in "Personality Psychology: Domains of Knowledge About Human Nature". Here it's all so serious.

This is just something moviemakers know "Know your audience". I don't expect all writers to understand this concept. But it's a good thing to study and understand in-depth. Because knowing exactly who this book is for would have made it so much better. Right now it's for beginners who like serious presentations. I guess it's for "the serious grade-focused psychology-chick", but I'm just not that person. I'm neither a layman nor a person who despises fun.

Example:

Let's go into the intelligence and race chapter as an example. In reality we would want them to clearly present all race differences and then discuss what they mean. What we get is a very short intro to the idea that there may be inborn race differences in intelligence. And then we are introduced to a lot of pages of critique. The race intelligence theory is presented clearly and directly with a ton of evidence to support it. The critique, on the other hand, is a ton of assumptions. It's actually nice to read critique that tries to disprove common assumptions, but such critique is overblown unless the case itself is presented in full detail. It's not. We don't get into what races score high on IQ. And in reality few should be convinced by critique without data, but for college students new to the topic you cannot assume much at all.

In the job chapter we also get a short intro to the science itself. They are very eager to say that IQ does in fact predict job performance.. and then they write about small unproven theories for pages on end. Again, interesting stuff, but for someone who doesn't know much about g factor it would probably not be that educational as unproven theories get as much space as anything else. I'm not convinced that their main argument doesn't drown out. I do think they understand the basic science, but sometimes I wish they didn't criticize it this much as the theories without data to support them are left standing.

It brings with it a holistic female-type intuition to the science. It's nice to read as I just think in facts or lies. Here there is an extra layer, but it's too thick for a book that is supposedly supposed to be science.

Conclusion:

It obviously gets a plus from me for not being pseudoscience. Believe it or not, but that actually did surprise me positively here. I know how much crap is out there. This textbook can easily work for college students and it presents big topics in very simple ways. It goes to the top for me as textbooks go. Burn 95% of them. Keep books like this.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is probably a good introduction to an important field, but I was disappointed by the lack of robust findings (obviously this is not the authors' fault). Besides that, the writing is not great (Strunk and White would cringe) and typos abound.

[Luccia Haughton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pearson's textbooks are some of the best, in my opinion. Easy to understand with excellent examples, several interesting essay questions to further understanding, and clear summaries.

[Sarah Wise · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can now say I am able to use Cronbach’s coefficient alpha to measure a scales reliability. This book in this regard is excellent, as it is very well organized and the succession is well thought out, building to the finality of mind bending statistics.

[Aneta Jackowska-Musiol · Rating 4 out of 5]

textbook - new and revised

[Kimberly Monroe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tedious

[Tuukka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read chapters 1-16. The subject is very interesting but I didn't feel that the textbook was very engaging.