I usually don't read psychology books for fun. Part of this tendency is recent. I now tend to read non-fiction in short bursts and graphic novels and mysteries for longer periods of time. I have noticed a sharp decline in the intellectual caliber of my leisure reading that oddly starts with the birth of my son (much as I have noticed a drop in the pretentiousness of my movie and television choices - everything looks good after Elmo). But I also generally don't like to relax by reading about what I think about all day (it's the same reason I haven't seen any of the movies or documentaries that people assume I've seen that focus on a creative person).
There have been three recent psychology books, however, that I've actually enjoyed. I often have two quite disparate pet peeves about psychology books. Peeve # 1: The author is a journalist who doesn't fully understand the nuances of psychology research, or misinterprets or generalizes, or hyperbolizes (not all journalists do this, of course!). Peeve #2: The author is a fellow psychologist and I end up getting distracted by wondering whether I could write my own pop book (I am fully aware that this smacks of narcissism). Sometimes, however, there are books that are so good (and, usually, a little out of my own expertise) that I can put aside my own pettiness and just enjoy them. The recent revision of Movies and Mental Illness (by Danny Wedding, Mary Ann Boyd, and Ryan Niemiec), for example, is on an area I do some thinking/writing about, but it is so much better than anything I could have done that I am happy to just enjoy. The three I am going to briefly discuss are aimed for a more general audience (I do highly recommend the Movies book, also), and each is quite different.
Psychology and the Real World (Morton Ann Gernsbacher, Richard Pew, Laetta Hough, and James Pomerantz, Eds.) is a great starter book for undergrads. It's a series of brief essays by superstars in their respective fields (such as Paul Sackett, Henry Roedigger, Paul Ekman, Elizabeth Loftus, Howard Gardner, Peter Salovey, and Robert Sternberg).
Most essays are addressed at addressing what I call the WGASA Problem, which is named after the (now defunct) WGASA Bush Line at the Wild Animal Park in San Diego. To paraphrase from my discussion of this in my Creativity 101 book, the park was trying to figure out what to call the monorail, which took visitors on a tour of most of the animals. After a long time of debating and getting nowhere, one zoo executive wrote down in frustration, "WGASA." If you ask workers at the park today, they will either say they don't know what it stands for, or that it's an African word that means something like "happiness," or that it's for "World's Greatest Animal Show Anywhere." In fact, the acronym stands for something quite different: "Who gives a spit anyhow?" (the actual word is a little coarser). I have often felt that a lot of psychology - a lot of life, really - can suffer from the WGASA sentiment. It is easy to do research on any topic and lose sight of the purpose or the point; I can't be the only professor to be stumped by a student asking me why a particular article is important. The essays in this book are about the life's work of people who study interesting stuff that impacts our lives - why do people volunteer? Why can rumination be hazardous to your health? Why should you be skeptical of eyewitnesses? I think that many of the essays may be too technical for your average layperson, and not all of the essays address the WGASA Problem as much as others. But it's worth checking out.
50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology is another fun read. Written by Scott Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, John Ruscio, and Barry Beyerstein, it aims to "debunk" most of the false beliefs many of us still hold about psychology. When I was a Teaching Assistant for the great Peter Salovey's Intro to Psychology class, he opened the first day of class with a multiple choice quiz to test our belief in seemingly obvious statements (i.e., "We only 10% of our brain). I secretly took the test along with the undergrads, and stopped grading it after I got the first six wrong. I would do a little better now, although having the book as a cheat sheet helps. The book addresses the 10% usage of our brain myth, along with other misconceptions such as The Mozart Effect, subliminal messages, the efficiency of lie detectors, and the power of handwriting analysis.
My biggest caveat about this book is that for the chapter that I know a bit about (Myths on Intelligence and Learning), I felt the evidence was a bit loaded. Are intelligence tests biased against certain groups of people? They argue no. That's debatable; their claim that "Today, most experts agree that the question of IQ test bias has been settled about as conclusively as any scientific controversy can be" is ludicrous. Maybe THEIR cited group of experts (including two very strong "g" proponents) agree. A lot of intelligence experts - including people who have a different view of intelligence -disagree. Regardless of where the truth lies (and I make no claim for either side), I consider this issue to still be quite debated. The fact that the authors present it as obvious makes me question their other assumptions. I still enjoyed the rest of the book after I read that part...but my grain of salt got a bit bigger.
In my next blog, I will discuss my unabashed favorite of the three books.
My last blog can be found here.
My next blog can be found here.
The blog where I actually discussed my unabashed favorite can be found here.
