本书是一本应用广泛，并受到高度赞誉的教材。通过帮助学生识别伪科学，并将其从真正的心理学研究中区分出来，本书有助于学生更明智地运用心理学知识。可被验证性、操作主义、实验控制以及实验研究和统计方法，给学生提供了独立判断心理学论述的有效工具。与上一版相比，这个最新版本扩展了信度、效度、元分析、随机取样与随机分配之间差异等问题的讨论。

本书可作为我国高等院校心理学专业双语教学的教材。

本书是一本应用广泛，并受到高度赞誉的教材，作者撰写此书的目的是帮助教师在教授心理学知识的同时提高学生的批判性思考能力。它既可以作为一本独立的教材，也可以作为心理学导论、批判性思维、研究方法或统计学课程的学习参考书。

通过帮助学生识别伪科学，并将其从真正的心理学研究中区分出来，本书有助于学生更明智地运用心理学知识。可被验证性、操作主义、实验控制以及实验研究和统计方法，给学生提供了独立判断心理学论述的有效工具。与上一版相比，这个最新版本扩展了信度、效度、元分析、随机取样与随机分配之间差异等问题的讨论。

本书可作为我国高等院校心理学专业双语教学的教材，以及专业研究人员的参考书。

Preface

1 Psychology Is Alive and Well (and Doing Fine Among the Sciences)

 The Freud Problem

 The Diversity of Modern Psychology

 Implications of Diversity

 Unity in Science

 What, Then, Is Science?

 Systematic Empiricism

 Publicly Verifiable Knowledge: Replication and Peer Review

 Empirically Solvable Problems: Scientists' Search for Testable Theories

 Psychology and Folk Wisdom: The Problem with Common Sense

 Psychology as a Young Science

 Summary

2 Falsifiability: How to Foil Little Green Men in the Head

 Theories and the Falsifiability Criterion

 The Theory of Knocking Rhythms

 Freud and Falsifiability

 The Little Green Men

 Not All Confirmations Are Equal

 Falsifiability and Folk Wisdom

 The Freedom to Admit a Mistake

 Thoughts Are Cheap

 Errors in Science: Getting Closer to the Truth

 Summary

3 Operationism and Essentialism: But, Doctor,What Does It Really Mean?

 Why Scientists Are Not Essentialists

 Essentialists Like to Argue About the Meaning of Words

 Operationists Link Concepts to Observable Events

 Reliability and Validity

 Direct and Indirect Operational Definitions Scientific Concepts Evolve

 Operational De nitions in Psychology

 Operationism as a Humanizing Force

 Essentialist Questions and the Misunderstanding of Psychology

 Operationism and the Phrasing of Psychological

 Questions

 Summary

4 Testimonials and Case Study Evidence:

 Placebo Effects and the Amazing Randi

 The Place of the Case Study

 Why Testimonials Are Worthless: Placebo Effects

 The Vividness Problem

 The Overwhelming Impact of the. Single Case

 The Amazing Randi: Fighting Fire with Fire

 Testimonials Open the Door to Pseudoscience

 Summary

5 Correlation and Causation: Birth Control by the Toaster Method 

 The Third-Variable Problem: Goldberger and Pellagra

 Why Goldberger's Evidence Was Better

 The Directionality Problem

 Selection Bias

 Summary

6 Getting Things Under Control: The Case of Clever Hans

 Snow and Cholera

 Comparison, Control, and Manipulation

 Random Assigment in Conjunction with Manipulation

 Defines the True Experiment

 The Importance of Control Groups

 The Case of Clever Hans, the Wonder Horse

 Clever Hans in the 1990s

 Prying Variables Apart: Special Conditions

 Intuitive Physics

 Intuitive Psychology

 Summary

7 But It's Not Real Life!: The Artificiality

 Criticism and Psychology

 Why Natural Isn't Always Necessary

 The Random Sample Confusion

 The Random Assignment Versu:Random Sample

 Distinction

 Theory-Driven Research Versus Direct

 Applications

 Applications of Psychological Theory

 The College Sophomore Problem

 The Real-Life and College Sophomore Problems in Perspective

 Summary

8 Avoiding the Einstein Syndrome:

 The Importance of Converging Evidence

 The Connectivity Principle

 A Consumer's Rule: Beware of Violations of Connectivity

 The Great-Leap Model Versus the Gradual-

 Synthesis Model

 Converging Evidence: Progress Despite Flaws

 Converging Evidence in Psychology

 Scientific Consensus

 Methods and the Convergence Principle

 The Progression to More Powerful Methods

 A Counsel Against Despair

 Summary

9 The Misguided Searchfor the Magic Bullet:

 The Issue of Multiple Causation

 The Concept of Interaction

 The Temptation of the Single-Cause Explanation

 Summary

10 The Achilles Heel of Human Cognition:

 Probabilistic Reasoning

 Person-Who Statistics

 Probabilistic Reasoning and the Misunderstanding of Psychology

 Psychological Research on Probabilistic Reasonin 

 Insufficient Use of Probabilistic Information

 Failure to Use Sample Size Information

 The Gambler's Fallacy

 A Further Word About Statistics and Probability

 Summary

11 The Role of Chance in Psychology

 The Tendency to Try to Explain Chance Events

 Explaining Chance: Illusory Ccrrelation and the Illusion of Control

 Chance and Psychology

 Coincidence

 Personal Coincidences

 Accepting Error in Order to Reduce Error

 Clinical Versus Actuarial Prediction

 Summary

12 The Rodney Dangerfield of the Sciences

 Psychology s Image Problem

 Psychology and Parapsycholoy

 The Self-Help Literature

 Recipe Knowledge

 Psychology and Other Disciplines

 Our Own Worst Enemies

 Isn't Everyone a Psychologist? Implicit Theories of Behavior

 The Source of Resistance to Scientific Psychology

 The Final Word

 References

 Author Index

 Subject Index