vPreface
As this book goes to print, the UK government has just announced plans
to start measuring the happiness of the country’s citizens. Together
with frequent brain-based science breakthroughs and endless media
comment on mental health, work stress and celebrity breakdowns, it’s
yet another sign of how psychological issues are higher up the public
agenda than ever before.
Psychology is about turning the objective scientific approach inwards
to study ourselves and why we behave the way we do. Conjecture and
intuition are put to one side and potential explanations are tested with
experiments, just as they are in more traditional sciences.
Psychology isn’t perfect. Most of its experiments are conducted with
participants from the industrialized West, often with small sample sizes
and findings too rarely followed up over time. That doesn’t mean we
should reject it as a pseudoscience. On the contrary, by recognizing the
value of quality psychological research and providing the discipline with
adequate funding and resources, we all gain – whether through reducing
prejudice or improving treatments for mental health, or by finding more
effective ways to combat global problems such as climate change.
How this book works
The Rough Guide to Psychology brings you up to speed with the very latest
findings from hundreds of psychology experiments. It tells you about the
discipline’s history as well as the latest interpretations of classic experi-
ments, such as Stanley Milgram’s controversial research into obedience,
and famous case studies, like that of Phineas Gage, the nineteenth-century
railway worker who survived an iron rod passing through his brain.
This is not a textbook and the material isn’t always arranged by
sub-discipline, the way psychology tends to be studied in schools and
universities. Instead, it starts with you, the reader, working outwards
to your personal relationships and then on to society at large. Later
sections deal with the way psychology is applied to the real world,
for example in politics, business and education. Finally, the focus
shifts to psychological problems, including depression, anxiety and
schizophrenia, and to therapeutic approaches, from psychoanalysis to
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.