Look Inside Look Inside Cover: Critical Thinking in Psychology and Everyday Life, 1st Edition by D. Alan Bensley
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Critical Thinking in Psychology and Everyday Life

First Edition ©2018 D. Alan Bensley

Critical Thinking in Psychology and Everyday Life shows how a scientific, critical thinking approach can be effective in addressing psychological questions, and discusses other questions that straddle the boundary between science and non-science. While scientific, critical thinking can b...

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ISBN:9781319190989

ISBN:9781319063146

Look Inside Look Inside Cover: Critical Thinking in Psychology and Everyday Life, 1st Edition by D. Alan Bensley

Critical thinking is more important today than ever before!

Critical Thinking in Psychology and Everyday Life shows how a scientific, critical thinking approach can be effective in addressing psychological questions, and discusses other questions that straddle the boundary between science and non-science. While scientific, critical thinking can be effective in addressing psychological questions, this textbook is a guide for how to separate fact from speculation and true claims from misconceptions and misinformation. Covering a wide range of topics, this book seeks to engage students in a serious search for answers, using what psychologists and other scientists know about how to think effectively. What does science have to say about whether some people have special psychic abilities, such as being able to “see” the future? Can people use their minds to move objects without any physical aid? Does the mind actually leave the body during an out-of-body experience? You may be surprised to learn that we are tantalizingly close to a scientific answer to this last question (see Chapter 7).

Features

  • Direct infusion is the approach and guiding theory of critical thinking instruction used throughout the book. The direct infusion approach combines elements of direct instruction and the infusion of CT skill instruction into regular subject matter instruction within a course or as part of topical coverage in a subject.
  • “Practice Thinking: What Do You Think?” exercises are a list of questions designed to engage students in thinking about the psychological ideas noted therein and to reflect on their beliefs.
  • “Practice Thinking: What Do You think NOW?” sections repeat the initial questions, this time designed to engage students in reflecting on how their ideas and beliefs have changed after thinking critically about the questions.
  • Incorporated into the activities and exercises are many every day, real-world examples of thinking errors and fallacies.
  • The exercises and formative assessments encourage metacognitive awareness for improving future performance.
  • Review Questions end each chapter, allowing students to check their comprehension of the material discussed.
  • Assessment: There are 3 sets of assessment materials. One, the “Practice Thinking” in-chapter are designed for student self-assessment as they read through the chapter. The second is a formative assessment test bank that can be used to create tests and quizzes for all chapters. The third is an independent battery of other tests and measures called the Critical Thinking in Psychology Assessment Battery (CTPAB) which can be used for summative assessment of both a critical thinking course and psychology programs at large. This third set of materials is currently in development, and those interested in reviewing it should contact Matt Wright at matt.wright@macmillan.com.
  • The chapter learning outcomes have been written in the form recommended by research on writing learning objectives (Osborn, 1973) to help students target the important skills they should develop.
  • To scaffold and make more explicit the information that is important for critical thinking, the book contains additional tables that summarize how to execute different thinking skills, how to understand the strengths and weaknesses of different kinds of evidence, and how to recognize and correct different kinds of thinking errors.
  • The book illustrates CT concepts and skills using basic diagrams of arguments, figures that depict important examples and ideas, and pictures that engage students in the important ideas.
  • Important terms are highlighted and defined the first time they are used, and each chapter concludes with a summary of the important concepts, critical thinking skills, misconceptions, and thinking errors.

New to This Edition

“It is truly a critical thinking book, not just a book which points out fallacies and thinking errors. Bensley explains the underlying logic of critical thinking.”
—Arno Kols, Manhattan College

“[The book] tackles pseudoscience writ large rather than a specific subset of psychology-relevant myths. … Solid. Bensley nails it.”
—Lawton Swan, University of Florida

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction to Critical Thinking in Psychology and Everyday Life
2. Deductive Reasoning, Prediction, and Making Assumptions
3. Inductive Reasoning in Psychology and Everyday Life
4. Critical Thinking and Scientific Reasoning
5. Pseudoscience, Science, and Evidence-Based Practice
6. Errors in Attention, Perception, and Memory That Affect Thinking
7. Can the Mind Leave the Body? The Mind–Brain Problem
8. Critical Thinking and the Internet
9. Emotion, Motivated Reasoning, and Critical Thinking
10. Critically Analyzing a Psychological Question: Are People Basically Selfish?
11. Judgment, Decision Making, and Types of Thinking
12. Superstition, Magic, Science, and Critical Thinking
13. Critical Thinking in Clinical Reasoning and Diagnosis 
14. Language, Writing, and Critical Thinking
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D. Alan Bensley

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D. Alan Bensley | First Edition | ©2018 | ISBN:9781319137625

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