Invitation to Psychology

Key differences between 6th and 5th editions

• Period between current and previous publications: 3 years (2014 vs 2011).
• Wade & Tavris' Invitation to Psychology was first published in 1981.
• Chapter 1:
• New "Psychology in the News": Boston’s weight-loss campaign, Lance Armstrong's doping admission, and the Israeli-Hamas conflict.
• New section "Using Psychology to Study Psychology".
• Section "Critical and Scientific Thinking" presents research on the uncritical acceptance of material turned up by Internet searches.

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Chapter 2:
• Changed the opening story from Madonna to Steve Jobs.
• Discussion of 2012 study suggesting that homophobia may arise from a person's own hidden homosexuality.
• Updated the research on the Big Five personality traits. Added a study about age differences in personality traits from 10 to 65.
• Discussion of cross-cultural research designed to separate universal (global) from culture-specific (local) aspects of personality: a study of Chinese and South Africans, in which researchers administered Western personality inventories but also developed indigenous measures to capture cultural variations.
Chapter 3:
• Added the prenatal risks of pollution, maternal stress, and antidepressants.
• Section "Language Development" has been reorganized and starts with the debate over the origins of language -- "Language: Built In or Learned?".
• Updated material on Piaget's theory of cognitive development.
• New discussion of "orchid" and "dandelion" children.
• Discussion of Walter Mischel's research work on delayed gratification, the Stanford marshmallow experiment, which elucidated the long-term results of a person's ability to delay gratification.
• Zucker's longitudinal research on transgender children.
• Section on adolescence includes term adrenarche, the maturational increase in adrenal androgen production, which occurs at ages 6 to 12.
• New research on brain development in adolescence.
• New study showing that older adults are often able to compensate for age-related declines by recruiting parts of the brain that are not commonly activated when young people do the same tasks.
Chapter 4:
• The chapter opens with a news story on chronic traumatic encephalopathy in football players.
• Changed section title "Neurons in the News" to "“Neurogenesis: The Birth of Neurons". New 2012 study in which paralyzed mice regained the ability to walk after being injected with stem cells from human wisdom teeth.
• New section on neuromodulators. List of neurotransmitters has been divided into those that have regional effects and those that are distributed throughout the brain.
• Section "Mapping the Brain" includes the study in which an fMRI of a dead salmon revealed that the dead fish was thinking.
• New examples of how the two hemispheres cooperate in visual and speech perception.
• New section "The Flexible Brain" includes the discussion of male-female brain differences.
Chapter 5:
• The chapter opens with a news story about the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington State.
• New finding about teenagers' night owl tendencies.
• Added the finding that brain activity during night dreaming is similar to that during daydreaming. hypnosis, clarified the approach taken by dissociation theories and how it differs from the sociocognitive approach.
• New research findings that tablet display suppress the body's sleep chemicals
Chapter 6:
• The chapter begins with a news story about a UFO conference and recent reports of UFO sightings.
• New study of inattentional blindness while walking and talking on a cell phone.
• New research on how expectations can reduce reactions to stimuli that would normally be unpleasant.
Chapter 7:
• New section "Problem Solving and Decision Making" covers algorithms and heuristics.
• New material on crystallized and fluid intelligence.
• New section "Elements of Intelligence", which covers working memory, the triarchic theory and emotional intelligence.
• Results of recent meta-analyses that have established four interventions to boost IQ scores.
Chapter 8:
• Added the important finding that remembering previously stored information destabilizes consolidation and can start a new round of consolidation, resulting in the remolding of the memory as new information is integrated into what was previously stored.
Chapter 9:
• Added a review of studies on spanking, showing that although it may stop an undesirable behavior in the short term, it backfires in the long-term, and is associated with later mental health problems and slower cognitive development.
• Added real-life research on offering students cash rewards for achievement; positive results may be limited to situations in which teachers and students are already motivated.
Chapter 10:
• New opening story features case of the Tsarnaev brothers, the bombers at the Boston marathon.
• Findings from new meta-analysis, that in truly dangerous emergencies, people in groups are more likely to help - some because other people are around to add support and also because certain emergencies require a group response.
• Updated statistics on the rise of inter-ethnic marriage.
Chapter 11:
• New diagnoses: PMDD has been moved from the appendix of the DSM-4 to the main DSM-5, under depressive disorders. The DSM-5 gives hoarding disorder its own label. There are also new DSM-5 labels for everyday problems, including "parent-child relational problem", "disruptive mood dysregulation disorder", and binge-eating disorder. The new edition also includes "antidepressant discontinuation syndrome".
• New data on bipolar disorder, which the DSM-5 now places between schizophrenic spectrum disorders and depressive disorders.
Chapter 12:
• New discussion of physical dependence on antidepressants and withdrawal problems.
• Introduced the term cybertherapy, as used in virtual reality versions of systematic desensitization.
• Information about Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS), is a form of neurostimulation which uses constant, low current delivered directly to the brain area of interest via small electrodes.
Chapter 13:
• Made a major change in identifying the components of emotion.
• New story of how Botox affects women's ability to detect sadness and anger in others.
• Discussion of cross-cultural research showing that the Japanese are more likely to blame themselves when something goes wrong and experience shame, whereas Americans are more likely to blame others and experience anger.
• New research on how status influences the ability to read emotions.
• Section "The Nature of Stress" presents work on children's vulnerability to stressors in their early years, as the effects can snowball into adolescence and adulthood, affecting cognitive abilities and immune function.
• Section "Stress and the Mind" reflects a growing criticism of the oversimplification of positive psychology.
• New study on the "dark side" of Facebook.
Chapter 14:
• New opening stories.
• Latest research on the production of energy-burning brown fat, and on the Ghrelin, a hormone that increases appetite.
• New 2013 study showing that for secluded lovers, anxiety is physiological as much as psychological -- their cortisol levels spike when they feel a relationship is threatened.
• Latest scientific review of research on online dating.
• Discussion of a study showing that many girls and women do not realize that the more sexualized their clothing, the more likely they are to be seen as incompetent and ignorant.
• Results from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation on life outcomes of children with differing attachment styles, and an updated discussion of the motives for love and marriage over the centuries.
• Updated the statistics on women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) occupations and added the growing problem of low motivation among men.