Coping with Reality

Book Review

Wayne Weiten, Dana Dunn & Elizabeth Hammer, "Psychology Applied to Modern Life: Adjustment in the 21st Century", Cengage Learning, 2015 (11th edition).

Today I am reviewing an academic textbook, firstly because it was recommended by Kaj Sotala and Luke Muehlhauser in their booklet "How to Run a Successful Less Wrong Meetup Group", and secondly because I have previously reviewed Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" -- a self-help book, which makes this textbook apropos as it also relates to self-improvement.

Psychology Applied to Modern Life has beautiful cover art for the eleventh edition:

The authors write in the preface that the pop psychology represented by self-help books is often "oversimplified, intellectually dishonest, and opportunistic". Nevertheless, the authors maintain the philosophy that an empirical and critical approach to understanding behavior can offer useful insights, especially when you are willing to actively take charge of your own life.

The textbook is divided into sixteen chapters, plus an appendix on environmentalism, and a "Personal Explorations Workbook" (which includes self-assessment and reflection exercises relating to each of the chapters). Each of the main chapters ends with a review and practice test section. The reference list is absolutely huge, which indicates that this textbook is well-researched. In terms of content, the authors generally take an eclectic theoretical approach, including perspectives from the psychodynamic, behavioral, humanistic, cognitive, biological, cultural and evolutionary schools of thought in psychology.

Below, I try to summarize the contents of the book, highlighting in bold font the parts that I personally found useful, interesting or important.

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Chapter 1: Adjusting to modern life
We live in a world of jet airplanes, radar, computers, and television screens. We often take these marvels for granted.

• The "paradox of progress" is that despite our technological progress, we have new problems like less free time and choice overload. The overabundance of choices can, according to Barry Schwartz, increase post-decision regret and rumination.
• The search for direction and meaning is reflected in the prevalence of religious cults and pop psychology self-help books. Problems with self-help books include the fact that they are often not based on solid scientific research, are dominated by "psychobabble", and do not provide explicit directions for changing behavior.
• The psychology of adjustment is the scientific study of how people adapt to the demands and pressures of everyday life. Adjustment in humans is similar to how animals adapt to changing environments.
• Psychologists use experimental research and correlation research as part of the scientific approach to understanding behavior. In experiments, the investigator manipulates an independent variable (e.g. type of diet) to observe how it changes a dependent variable (e.g. learning performance in school). The advantage of experimental research is that it allows the researcher to draw cause-and-effect conclusions. Other types of research methods include case studies (e.g. talking to a psychopathic killer and people who knew him).
• Empirical analyses of happiness have shown that contrary to popular belief, factors such as money, age, gender, parenthood, intelligence, and attractiveness do not significantly impact subjective well-being. Social activity is moderately correlated with happiness. Love/marriage, work satisfaction, and personality (which is partly heritable) are the only factors strongly correlated to happiness.
• We are actually quite bad at predicting what will make us happy (affective forecasting), and we are able to adapt to both positive and negative events in our lives, leading to a hedonic treadmill effect.
• Academic performance can be improved by study habits, like following a study schedule, removing distractions, using active reading, taking notes in your own words (so that you assimilate the information in a way that makes sense to you), rehearsal, and mnemonic devices.

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Chapter 2: Theories of personality

Each person has a different personality, which is why we have varied ways of coping with the same stressful situations.

• Personality is an individual's disposition to behave consistently over time and situations, and it can predict important life outcomes (e.g. grades, occupational attainment, divorce, health, and mortality).
• Psychodynamic perspectives include Freud's psychoanalytic theory, Jung's analytical psychology and Adler's individual psychology. According to Freud, internal conflicts (which are often unconscious) generate anxiety and unpleasant emotions, which people deal with using defense mechanisms. An example of a defense mechanism is rationalization, which entails plausible yet false excuses for justifying behavior. For instance, you might eat three bowls of ice cream and feel guilty about it, and then tell yourself that it's okay because yesterday you skipped lunch. Jung focused more on the "collective unconscious", and Adler argued that people compensate for feelings of inferiority by striving for superiority. Striving for superiority was seen by Adler as a universal drive to adapt, improve oneself, and master life's challenges.
• Behavioral perspectives treat personality as a collection of response tendencies shaped through learning. People can acquire emotional and behavioral responses through Pavlov's classical conditioning, or Skinner's operant conditioning. Under operant conditioning, behavior is shaped by consequences such as reinforcement, extinction and punishment. Reinforcement can be positive (i.e. presenting a pleasant stimulus to strengthen a response) or negative (i.e. strengthening a response tendency by virtue of the fact that the response leads to the removal of an unpleasant stimulus). People can also learn by observing others, as theorized by Bandura in his social cognitive theory.
• Bandura thought that self-efficacy is an important personality trait. Self-efficacy is one's belief about one's ability to perform behaviors that should lead to expected outcomes.
• Humanistic perspectives emphasize people's conscious, rational ability to choose their own courses of action. Defensive behavior can be seen as the result of incongruence between one's self-concept and reality (Carl Rogers). Psychological health may be attained by fulfilling a hierarchy of needs, at the top of which is self-actualization (Maslow). According to Maslow, characteristics of self-actualizing persons include: an accurate perception of reality, being open and spontaneous, and sensitivity to others' needs.
• Biological perspectives include Eysenck's model of inherited individual differences in physiological functioning, and other recent theories relating to neuroscience and evolutionary psychology.
• Heritability can be studied using twin studies. If identical twins exhibit more personality resemblance than fraternal twins, then it is probably due mostly to their greater genetic overlap.
• Contemporary empirical approaches to personality include the study of certain traits like sensation-seeking and narcissism, and a new theory known as terror management theory (which argues that self-esteem and a cultural worldview shield people from the anxiety induced by knowledge of their mortality).
• Research has found that increased mortality salience leads to increased striving for self-esteem, more stereotypic thinking about minorities, and a preference for charismatic political candidates.
• The "Big Five" personality traits -- extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness -- seem to account for much of the complexity in personality. Behavioral genetics research suggests that these traits are about 50% heritable. These traits also emerge in cross-cultural studies.
• Personality may be assessed using self-report inventories (e.g. the NEO Personality Inventory) or projective tests (e.g. the Rorschach). In any case, such tests need to be reliable and valid, meaning that they should produce consistent results upon retesting and actually measure what they were designed to measure.

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Chapter 3: Stress and its effects

Being stuck in traffic, having looming deadlines, and being in debt are all circumstances that can cause stress in our lives.

• Stress is common and results from an appraisal that an event is threatening and that you may lack the resources to cope with the challenge. Sources of stress include excessive noise, crowding, urban decay, community violence, and discrimination.
• Stress can be caused by frustration (i.e. when an obstacle prevents you from obtaining a goal), conflict (including internal conflicts like having a goal with both attractive and unattractive aspects), change, and pressure.
• We respond to stress emotionally (feeling angry, afraid or sad), physiologically (e.g. the "fight-or-flight response", which is mediated by the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system, and releases hormones into the bloodstream), and behaviorally (coping in a healthy or maladaptive way).
• There seems to be an optimal level of arousal, which decreases the more complex the task gets.
• Hans Selye found that when lab animals are exposed to various stressors, the patterns of physiological arousal were similar regardless of the type of stress.
• Stress potentially has negative effects, like impaired task performance, disruption of attention, and emotional exhaustion and burnout. Stress can suppress the functioning of the immune system. It can also lead to damaged physical health and even post-traumatic stress disorder. However, stress also has positive effects like providing challenge, personal growth, and preparing us for future stressful events.
• Some people can tolerate more or less stress than others, depending on factors like social support, hardiness (a personal disposition marked by commitment, challenge and control), and optimism.
• Behavior modification techniques can be used to reduce stress via increased self-control. The steps include: (i) specify the overt target behavior to be increased or decreased; (ii) gather baseline data and identify typical antecedents and consequences; (iii) design a program based on reinforcement, punishment, or control of antecedents; and (iv) execute and evaluate the program. Symbolic reinforcers can be provided by a "token economy", which lets you earn tokens for certain responses and exchange them for rewards.

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Chapter 4: Coping processes

When under substantial stress, we may not always know what to do; yet coping effectively with stress is important for our mental and physical health.

• Coping involves behavioral efforts to master, reduce, or tolerate the demands created by stress.
• Some coping patterns have limited value. Giving up, aggression, indulging oneself, and defensive coping (i.e. using self-deceptive defense mechanisms to guard against negative emotions) are examples of common but usually maladaptive and counterproductive strategies.
• Playing violent video games might be related to increased aggression.
• Interestingly, depressed people seem to have more realistic self-images than "normal" people, whose self-images tend to be overly favorable.
• Constructive coping is about dealing with stress in a healthy way, and it involves action, effort, realism and self-control.
• Constructive coping may be appraisal-focused. This means that you alter your appraisal of threatening events, for instance by reducing catastrophic thinking based on irrational assumptions. According to Albert Ellis, people's emotional reactions to life events result mainly from their beliefs about events. Using humor and positive reinterpretation can also help.
• Problem-focused constructive coping entails systematic problem solving (e.g. brainstorming for alternative courses of action), seeking social support, or improving time management.
• Emotion-focused constructive coping is about emotional intelligence -- expressing emotions appropriately, managing feelings of hostility and forgiving others. Physical exercise, relaxing meditation, and spiritual practice may also help. According to James Pennebaker and his colleagues, wellness can be promoted by writing about one's traumatic experiences.
• To use your time more effectively, learn to stick with your priorities, say no, delegate, throw old things away, avoid interruption, and accept imperfection. Allocate time wisely and avoid procrastination, and you will reduce time-related stress and improve the quality of your work.

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Chapter 5: Psychology and physical health

Lifestyle is connected to health and well-being. Research finds support for the biopsychosocial model, which says that health is affected not just by biological factors, but also people's behavioral choices and psychosocial context (including coping tactics and medical care).

• The greatest threats to health in our society today are chronic diseases. Cynical hostility, transient mental stress, and depression can contribute to coronary heart disease. Stress can also temporarily suppress immune functioning.
• People commonly engage in health-impairing habits and lifestyles, such as smoking, drinking, obesity, poor nutritional habits, lack of exercise, and HIV infection. People act in self-destructive ways because many health-impairing habits creep up on them, involve activities that are quite pleasant at the time, and have risks that tend to lie in the distant future.
• Alcohol consumption in the short term has been linked to hangovers, life-threatening overdoses in combination with other drugs, poor perceptual coordination, driving drunk, increased aggressiveness and argumentativeness.
• Twin studies and other behavioral genetics research suggest that heredity accounts for 60% or more of the variation in weight.
• The AIDS virus cannot be transmitted by sharing food, but it can be spread through sexual contact and the sharing of needles by intravenous drug users.
• People react differently to illness, but a common problem is a tendency to delay needed medical treatment. Other people learn a sick role because it helps them avoid stress and earns them attention from others. Poor communication between patient and health providers, and noncompliance with medical advice (e.g. due to not understanding the instructions) are also major problems.
• Recreational drugs, like narcotics, sedatives, stimulants, hallucinogens, marijuana and MDMA can lead to psychological dependence, physical dependence, risk of overdose, psychosis, and increased chances of accidental injuries (e.g. due to deteriorating motor function) or infectious diseases. However, the effects vary between the different drugs. For example, narcotics use is not typically associated with flashbacks, while hallucinogens are.

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Chapter 6: The self
We constantly reflect on ourselves when trying to understand our own behavior and when deciding how to act.

• One's self-concept consists of a number of beliefs about the self, and is shaped by perceptions of one's own behavior, feedback from others, and cultural guidelines. The self-concept is relatively stable over time and influences present as well as future behavior. When there is a discrepancy between one's actual self and one's ideal self or ought self, negative emotions and lowered self-esteem can result. For example, a mismatch between one's actual self and ought self leads to agitation-related feelings. People cope with this either by changing their behavior (to be more in line with their ideal selves) or by blunting their awareness of the discrepancies.
• Members of individualistic cultures tend to have an independent view of the self, whereas members of collectivistic cultures usually have an interdependent view of the self.
• Self-esteem is a person's global evaluation of their worth, and is usually stable but can fluctuate in response to daily ups and downs. Low self-esteem is associated with self-concept confusion (not knowing oneself well enough). People with low self-esteem are more likely to be depressed and unhappy and to give up after failure. On the other hand, narcissistic individuals are prone to aggression when their self-esteem is threatened.
• Psychological adjustment is influenced by self-perception. For example, people may attribute their behavior to external and unstable causes (e.g. not getting a job due to bad luck) or to internal and stable factors (e.g. not getting a job due to lack of ability). People can use an optimistic or pessimistic explanatory style. Motives for self-perception include accurate self-assessment, self-verification (receiving information that is consistent with one's self-view), and self-enhancement (i.e. maintaining a positive view of the self, for example by making downward comparisons to people who are worse off, having a self-serving bias, basking in the reflected glory of successful others, and self-handicapping to provide an excuse for possible failure).
• Setting goals and trying to meet them involves self-regulation (i.e. self-control). It appears that self-control is a limited resource that can be temporarily depleted; however, a person's self-efficacy (their belief about being able to achieve a goal) is important for adjustment, and can be learned through mastery experiences (persevering through failure until one achieves success), vicarious experiences, persuasion by others, and positive interpretations of emotional arousal.
• People sometimes do things that are bad for them, known as self-defeating actions. This includes deliberate self-destruction, tradeoffs, and counterproductive strategies.
• We project our public selves to others, and we try to manage the impressions we make through ingratiation (trying to make others like you, e.g. by giving compliments or doing favors), self-promotion, exemplification, intimidation, supplication, or negative acknowledgement.
• Higher self-esteem can be built by recognizing that you have control over your self-image, learning more about yourself, not letting others set your goals, recognizing unrealistic goals, modifying negative self-talk, emphasizing your strengths, and approaching others with a positive outlook. Do not compare yourself with those who are the best in a given area!

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Chapter 7: Social thinking and social influence
We are constantly forming impressions of people around us, as we try to understand them and predict how they will behave.

• Inferences that we draw about the causes of events and behaviors, whether our own or others', are called attributions. Our impressions of others are based on five sources: their appearance, verbal behavior, actions, nonverbal messages, and situational cues. These impressions may be biased, because we often try to confirm our expectations about what others are like (which can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies), we make snap judgments, and we categorize people into in-groups and out-groups, which contributes to stereotypes, the fundamental attribution error (i.e. discounting situational factors), and defensive attribution (i.e. victim-blaming).
• Person perception is characterized by three themes: efficiency (making judgments quickly), selectivity (seeing what we expect to see), and consistency (a tendency to stick to our initial impressions).
• Inaccurate perceptions of others can lead to prejudice, which can manifest as blatant discrimination, or more subtle "modern discrimination" or "aversive racism". Prejudice is caused by right-wing authoritarianism, a strong social dominance orientation, cognitive distortions (e.g. stereotypes and attributional errors), competition between groups, and threats to one's social identity -- meanwhile, prejudice can be reduced by collaborative intergroup contact.
• Persuasion is more likely to be successful when the source of the persuasive effort is credible (e.g. a trustworthy expert) and likable (e.g. a physically attractive person who is also similar to the receiver). Using two-sided arguments, fear arousal, and positive feelings in messages can often be effective. Persuasion is less likely to be successful when the receiver has beliefs that are incompatible with the position being advocated, or when they are forewarned of the persuasive attempt.
• Persuasion is more likely to have an enduring effect on attitudes when it takes place through the central route (i.e. the receiver is able and motivated to process the message carefully) rather than the peripheral route (i.e. simple cues like catchy music).
• People tend to conform to a group even when the group expresses inaccurate judgments, as revealed by Asch's experiments. When people yield to social pressure in their public behavior without changing their private beliefs, this is called compliance. Milgram's experiments found that situational pressures, like receiving orders from an authority figure, can have a remarkable influence on behavior. Social support from others who have similar views as you can help resist conformity pressures and disobey authority.
• Compliance tactics try to get people to agree to requests. They exploit principles like the fact that people prefer to be consistent in behavior, to reciprocate, and to value scarce things. Thus, salespersons may use tactics like the foot-in-the-door technique, the lowball technique, the door-in-the-face technique, and artificially creating scarcity (e.g. "limited supply" in advertisements).
• For example, a charity may manipulate the reciprocity principle by sending prospective donors free address labels and the like.

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Chapter 8: Interpersonal communication
In dealing with people, communication skills are very important.

• The interpersonal communication process involves a sender who transmits a message through a medium to a receiver, either verbally or nonverbally. Effective communication contributes to adjustment in school, in relationships and at work.
• Nonverbal communication is often more spontaneous and ambiguous than verbal communication. Channels of nonverbal communication include: personal space, facial expressions, eye contact, body postures, touch, and paralanguage (i.e. how something is said rather than what is said). Certain nonverbal cues are associated with deception (e.g. discrepancies between facial expressions and other nonverbal signals; speaking with a higher-than-normal pitch), although these cues are very subtle and not even polygraphs ("lie detection machines") are fully accurate.
• Research shows that individuals from a variety of cultures agree on the facial expressions that correspond with six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise).
• Effective communication requires knowing how to make small talk, as well as opening up to others (self-disclosure). Emotional-evaluative self-disclosures lead to feelings of closeness, and is associated with good mental health, happiness, and satisfying relationships. With regard to self-disclosure, it is best to gradually share information about yourself. Another important aspect of interpersonal communication is effective listening. Active listening includes paraphrasing.
• Communication problems may be caused by communication apprehension (becoming overly anxious when one talks with others). Other barriers include defensiveness, ambushing, motivational distortion (e.g. when people hear what they want to hear instead of what is actually said), and self-preoccupation. 
• Interpersonal conflict is generally viewed negatively, although direct confrontations are avoided less in individualistic cultures. There are five different styles used by people to deal with conflict: avoiding/withdrawing, accommodating, competing/forcing, compromising, or collaborating. The last style is most effective in managing interpersonal conflict constructively.
• An assertive communication style allows individuals to stand up for themselves while respecting the rights of others. To become more assertive, you need to understand what assertive communication is (which is expressing your thoughts directly and honestly without trampling on other people), monitor your assertive communication, observe a model's assertive communication, practice being assertive, and adopt an assertive attitude.

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Chapter 9: Friendship and love
Social connectedness, as through friendship and love, plays a major role in psychological adjustment, and affects happiness, mental health, physical health, and antisocial behavior.

• Close relationships (including friendships and work, family and romantic relationships) are those that are important, interdependent, and long-lasting. They can elicit both positive and negative emotions.
• We are drawn to people who are nearby, who we see often, and are physically attractive. We often match up on looks -- this is called the matching hypothesis (although sometimes men prefer more physical attractiveness in women while women prefer more status in men). We also prefer people who like us, and are similar to us in various ways (e.g. age, race, religion, education, and attitudes). Established relationships are maintained using social exchange principles (i.e. reinforcement). Someone's personal standard of what constitutes an acceptable balance of rewards and costs in a relationship is termed their comparison level.
• The increase in positive feelings that results from seeing someone often is known as the mere exposure effect.
• Friendship entails social support. There is some difference in women's and men's same-gender friendships; for instance, women's friendships are often characterized by self-disclosure and intimacy, and men's friendships typically involve doing things together.
• In romantic love, men are more romantic in some ways than women, whereas women tend to be more selective than men (perhaps because they have less economic power than men). Sternberg's triangular theory of love posits that there are 8 kinds of love, based on the presence or absence of three factors: passion, intimacy, and commitment. Alternatively, Hazan and Shaver have proposed the theory that love relationships follow the form of attachment styles developed in infancy -- secure, preoccupied, avoidant-dismissing, and avoidant-fearful.
• Relationship failure may be caused by premature commitments, ineffective conflict management skills, boredom, and the availability of a more attractive relationship.
• According to Steve Duck, relationship dissolution involves six processes: (i) breakdown, (ii) intrapsychic processes, (iii) dyadic processes, (iv) social processes, (v) grave-dressing, and (vi) resurrection.
• Research indicates that the experience of romantic love is similar for heterosexual and homosexual individuals. However, researchers may sometimes fail to determine the sexual orientation of the research participants and report the findings without any mention of homosexuals, which is known as heterosexism.
• The internet offers many new vehicles for meeting others and developing relationships. Virtual relationships can be just as intimate as face-to-face ones, but people often misrepresent themselves online. Because online communication is anonymous, people take fewer risks in online self-disclosure.
• Loneliness is a discontentment with the extent and quality of one's interpersonal network. Chronic loneliness may originate from early negative behavior that triggers rejection by peers and teachers, as well as social trends (e.g. technology replacing face-to-face interaction). Loneliness is also associated with shyness, poor social skills, and self-defeating attributions (e.g. attributing loneliness to internal, stable factors). Improving social skills, avoiding self-defeating attributions and resisting the temptation to withdraw from social situations can help overcome loneliness.

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Chapter 10: Marriage and intimate relationships
Intimate relationships are so important in people's lives that break-ups can lead to feeling anxiety, remorse, depression, loneliness and emotional distress.

• The traditional model of marriage, although still popular, is being challenged by the increasing popularity and acceptability of singlehood, cohabitation, voluntary childlessness, changes in gender roles, a reduced premium on permanence and the decline of the traditional nuclear family.
• Individuals decide to marry based on culture (e.g. monogamy vs. polygamy), endogamy (the tendency for people to marry within their own social group), homogamy (the tendency for people to marry others who have similar personal characteristics), and gender. Women place more emphasis on partners' ambition and financial prospects, whereas men emphasize youthfulness and physical attractiveness.
• Marital success and stability is somewhat predicted by family background, age, length of courtship (longer is better), and personality, but better predicted by the nature of a couple's premarital communication.
• The family life cycle is how families tend to progress, including the arrival of children. Parents should have realistic expectations about the difficulties inherent in raising a family. They should expect more conflict when their children reach adolescence, and they must learn to relate to their children as adults.
• Marital stress can result from gaps in expectations about marital roles, including gender roles, the distribution of housework, work concerns, lack of money, and inadequate communication.
• Research shows that when mothers work outside the home, there is generally no negative effect on children's development, and in some cases there may be positive effects (e.g. increased prosocial behavior at age 4).
• Even for couples with plenty of financial resources, arguments about money may be common.
• Divorce rates have increased dramatically in recent decades, but they appear to be stabilizing. Deciding on a divorce tends to be a gradual process rather than a single event. Divorce tends to have negative effects on children, although most children recover after a few years. The evidence suggests that the negative effects of divorce on former spouses' psychological adjustment are about the same for men and women. A majority of divorced people remarry.
• Alternative relationship lifestyles include gay relationships, cohabitation, and remaining single. Research finds that gay and lesbian couples want the same things out of intimate relationships that heterosexuals want. Most cohabitants would eventually like to marry. Singles tend to be somewhat less happy and healthy than married couples.
• Intimate partner violence includes psychological/emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Perpetrators tend to be jealous, anger easily, and have unrealistic expectations of their partner. The majority of rapes are committed by someone the victim knows. Alcohol abuse, drug use, and gender-based sexual standards all contribute to date rape, as does miscommunication involving token resistance. Partners stay in abusive relationships for a variety of practical reasons, including economic realities. To reduce the likelihood of being victimized by date rape, one should beware of excessive alcohol and drug use.

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Chapter 11: Gender and behavior
Could innate gender difference explain gender disparities?

• There are many gender stereotypes, which typically favor males.
• The gender similarity hypothesis states that males and females are more similar than different on most psychological variables. However, there are gender differences: for example, women generally have better verbal abilities and men generally have better mathematical and spatial abilities; males have somewhat higher self-esteem, are more physically aggressive, and have more permissive attitudes about casual sex; and females are more likely to outwardly display emotions. Nevertheless, these differences are quite small and apply to groups, not individuals.
• Gender differences may have biological origins, such as evolution, brain organization (e.g. males exhibit more cerebral specialization than females), and hormones.
• Gender differences may also have environmental origins, such as the socialization of gender roles through reinforcement, punishment, observational learning (e.g. a girl pays particular attention to what her mother and older sister do and imitates them), and self-socialization.
• Parents tend to respond negatively to gender inappropriate behavior, especially in boys.
• Regarding peer socialization, girls tend to play in smaller groups and boys in larger groups.
• The traditional male role entails achievement, aggression, autonomy, sexuality, and stoicism. Problems with this include excessive pressure to succeed, difficulty in dealing with emotions, sexual problems and homophobia. The traditional female role entails the marriage mandate, the motherhood mandate, and nowadays also working outside the home. Problems with this include diminished career aspirations, juggling of multiple roles, ambivalence about sexuality, and sexism in the economic domain.
• Gender roles in the past have represented a division of labor, but they have changed (and will likely continue to change) as they no longer mesh with economic reality. Moving beyond traditional gender roles, we may take the approach of androgyny (exhibiting both masculine and feminine personality traits) or the approach of gender-role transcendence.
• Males and females are socialized to use different communication styles: men typically use an instrumental style, while women typically use an expressive style of communication. Women appear to be better at nonverbal language. Of course, individuals can alter their communication styles to fit the situation.

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Chapter 12: Development and expression of sexuality
Sexuality raises a lot of issues in peoples lives, like sexually transmitted infections or pregnancy.

• One's sexual identity consists of one's sexual orientation, sexual values and ethics, and erotic preferences; these are shaped by one's family, peers, schools, religion, and the media. Psychosocial factors seem to have more impact on sexual activity than do physiological factors like hormones. However, it is not clear what determines sexual orientation. Sexual orientation is complex and malleable. Homosexuals are at a greater risk for depression and suicide attempts, perhaps due to being part of a stigmatized group.
• Sexual values can be hedonistic ("anything goes"), relativistic ("the type of relationship should determine what sexual activities are appropriate"), or absolute ("no sexual activity outside of marriage").
• Motives for sex relate to personal and relationship well-being. Men tend to be motivated more by physical gratification whereas women are more likely to have emotional motives.
• According to William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the human sexual response cycle follows four phases: excitement (muscles are tense and heart rate and blood pressure are elevated), plateau, orgasm, and resolution. Women reach orgasm less consistently than men, possibly due to gender differences in sexual socialization and because foreplay and intercourse are often too brief.
• Sexual fantasies, kissing and touching, masturbation, oral-genital sex, and anal sex are ways of sexual expression.
• Sexual fantasies (which often include having sex with someone other than your partner) are quite normal, and enjoying sexual fantasies is important for a good sexual relationship.
• Patterns in sexual behavior include hooking up, friends-with-benefits arrangements, sex in committed relationships, frequency of sexual intimacy (which declines with age), and extramarital sex/infidelity. Research shows that there is a strong relationship between sexual satisfaction and overall marital satisfaction. Gay male couples are more likely than other groups to have an "open relationship". Women are more distressed by emotional infidelity, while men are more distressed by sexual infidelity.
• Two practical issues that concern many sexually active individuals are contraception, and sexually transmitted diseases. There are many different contraceptive methods, but people don't always use these procedures effectively. STDs are increasing in prevalence, especially among those under age 25 and those with more sexual partners. Using condoms decreases the risk of contracting STDs (but latex condoms are damaged by oil-based lubricants, so use water-based lube).
• To enhance sexual relationships, individuals need to have adequate sex education and positive values about sex; they also need to be able to communicate with their partners, and avoid focusing on sexual performance. Common sexual dysfunctions include erectile difficulties, premature ejaculation, orgasmic difficulties, and hypoactive sexual desire -- although sex therapy and other treatments can be useful.

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Chapter 13: Careers and work
Work is a defining characteristic in the lives of many people, whether they get a sense of identity from their job or just work to earn a living. The study of human behavior in the workplace is called industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology.

• People choose a career based on their personal characteristics (i.e. personality, interests and abilities), and the characteristics of the job (i.e. working conditions, entry requirements, potential earnings, potential status, opportunities for advancement, intrinsic satisfaction, and future job outlook).
• Individuals' career choices are often similar to those of their parents.
• Occupational interest inventories are designed to predict how satisfied a person is likely to be in a job, so they might help people who have trouble making career decisions.
• According to John Holland, people select careers based on their own personality characteristics, of which there are six personal orientations and matching work environments in his theory. Donald Super argues that the occupational life cycle follows five stages, during which the self-concept develops: growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and decline. Since women often juggle multiple roles (including childrearing) their career paths are less orderly and predictable than men's.
• A number of contemporary trends are changing the nature of work (for example, technological development, the necessity of lifelong learning and new work attitudes). In the future, more women and minorities will join the labor force. In general, it is still true that the higher someone's level of education, the higher their salary will be. (However, at all levels of education men earn more than women.)
• When there is only one woman or minority person in a workplace setting, that person becomes a symbol of his or her group and is referred to as a token. Increasing diversity in the workforce presents challenges to both organizations and workers.
• Major occupational hazards include job stress, sexual harassment, and unemployment. Job stress can lead to burnout, high blood pressure, and anxiety. Sexual harassment and job loss are also highly stressful. Sexual harassment may be quid pro quo (making submission to unwanted sexual advances a condition for hiring, advancement or not being fired), or environmental (unwelcome sexual behavior that creates a hostile work situation). There are interventions that can help one cope with these hazards.
• It is a challenge to balance work, family, and leisure activities in ways that are personally satisfying -- and workaholism can create work-family conflict. American workers receive much less paid vacation time compared to European workers. Multiple roles are also a challenge in dual-earner families (although multiple roles can be beneficial to mental, physical and relationship health).
• To get ahead in the job game, you should determine the type of organization that will best suit your needs, construct an effective résumé, obtain a job interview, and develop an effective interview technique. Résumés should be short/brief and project a positive yet conservative image. Nonverbal communication skills (like appearing confident and enthusiastic) are crucial in job interviews. Try to avoid salary discussion until you've been offered a position.

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Chapter 14: Psychological disorders
Some people engage in abnormal behavior, like washing their hands over and over again due to a fear of germs.

• The medical model views abnormal behavior as a disease, which is a flawed but useful analogy. People are judged to suffer from a psychological disorder when they display (i) deviance, (ii) personal distress, or (iii) maladaptive behavior. Someone who always feels high levels of dread, worry and anxiety can still be considered abnormal even if he or she meets daily responsibilities, because the person feels great personal distress. Psychological disorders have a lifetime prevalence of roughly 44% and are associated with stigma.
• The term diagnosis refers to distinguishing one illness from another, while a prognosis is a forecast about the probable course of an illness.
• The most common types of psychological disorders according to recent epidemiological studies, are substance use disorders and anxiety disorders.
• Anxiety disorders (including generalized anxiety disorder, phobic disorder, and panic disorder) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) may be caused and maintained by conditioning principles, by stress or by seeing threats everywhere. People with OCD repeatedly perform senseless rituals to overcome their anxiety.
• Dissociative disorders include dissociative amnesia and dissociative identity disorder (DID, which involves multiple personalities) and are rare. They are also controversial, and some theorists believe that people with DID are engaging in intentional role playing as an excuse for their failings. This relates to the dramatic increase in diagnoses of DID starting in the 1970s.
• Mood disorders include major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is characterized by episodes of gloomy dejection followed by periods of energetic elation. Genetic vulnerability and neurochemical activity in the brain contribute to a person's risk for both. Negative thinking (e.g. rumination and a pessimistic explanatory style) contribute to depression.
• We can study genetic vulnerability to mood disorders through twin studies, and comparing concordance rates, which indicate the percentage of twin pairs or other relatives who exhibit the same disorder.
• Schizophrenic disorders are characterized by distorted perception and irrational thoughts (positive symptoms), flattened emotions, and having virtually no friendships (negative symptoms). Only 20% of patients achieve full recovery. Schizophrenia might be caused by disruptions to the normal brain maturation process before or during birth, and stress in early childhood. Research suggests there is an associated between schizophrenia and enlarged brain ventricles.
• Autism spectrum disorder involves an impairment of social interaction and communication, and is usually apparent by age 3. The increase in autism diagnoses since the mid 1990s is probably due to broader diagnostic criteria and greater awareness of the syndrome; but the etiology (cause) of autism is still unknown.
• Eating disorders include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder. These disorders are associated with a modern, affluent Western culture -- including cultural pressures on young women (which could be why 90-95% of people with eating disorders are female). Family dynamics, heritable personality traits and disturbed thinking can contribute to the development of eating disorders.

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Chapter 15: Psychotherapy

There are many stereotypes about psychotherapy, but it is basically just a term that refers to a diverse array of approaches to the treatment of psychological problems.

• Three categories of psychotherapy are insight therapies, behavior therapies, and biomedical therapies. A variety of professionals provide therapeutic services, including clinical psychologists, counseling psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, counselors, and marriage & family therapists.
• Insight therapies involve verbal interactions between clients and therapists intended to enhance self-knowledge. Psychodynamic therapies (based on the theories of Sigmund Freud and his followers) explore the unconscious using free association and dream analysis. For example, a psychoanalytic therapist may ask her client to let their mind ramble and say whatever comes up, regardless of how trivial or irrelevant it may seem. Carl Rogers's client-centered therapy provides a supportive climate wherein the client's feelings are clarified. Positive psychotherapy emphasizes clients' strengths and blessings. These approaches can also be used with groups. Insight therapies can be effective (at least compared to placebo or no treatment), but repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse may be recovered (some inauthentic).
• In psychodynamic therapies, the transference relationship can be used to overcome resistance; for example, a client with an unconscious sexual attraction to her father (a sensitive area) may behave seductively toward her therapist.
• Behavior therapies use principles of learning and conditioning to change specific pathological behaviors, like systematic desensitization (exposure therapy) for phobias, aversion therapy (i.e. pairing a stimulus that elicits an undesirable response with a noxious stimulus), social skills training, and Aaron Beck's cognitive therapy (changing the way clients think about events in their lives).
• Biomedical therapies include drug therapy (e.g. antianxiety drugs, antipsychotic drugs, antidepressant drugs, and mood stabilizers) and electroconvulsive therapy. Someone diagnosed with bipolar disorder, for example, might be prescribed both an antidepressant and lithium. Drug therapies can be effective, but they often produce negative side-effects, and are overprescribed. They temporarily relieve symptoms but may not address the real problem. Some people are concerned that pharmaceutical companies have too much influence over drug testing research. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is used to induce cortical seizures to treat depression, but there is contradictory evidence and heated debate about its effectiveness and safety.
• Modern therapists often use an eclectic approach, combining insight, behavioral and biomedical therapies. Many people who need therapy do not receive it, and this problem is especially prevalent among ethnic minorities in America (due to cultural, language and access barriers). Technology (like videoconferencing and the Internet) can help deliver low-cost therapy.
• When looking for a therapist, you should place more weight on the therapist's personal skills than their professional degree. The overall effectiveness of different theoretical approaches to treatment appear to be similar, although for certain types of problems, some approaches are more effective than others. Therapy takes time, hard work and courage.

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Chapter 16: Positive psychology

Some events touch us deeply in a way that makes us feel a sense of transcendence, and change us for the better. The area of psychology that explores such phenomena is positive psychology.

• Positive psychology studies human strengths and how people can flourish in daily life. This new subfield emerged as a reaction to the larger discipline's predominant focus on psychological problems. Both older and newer concepts related to well-being and the good life are included in the three lines of research in positive psychology: positive subjective experiences, positive individual traits, and positive institutions.
• Positive subjective experiences (e.g. good moods and emotions) are reactions to events that promote particular thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Barbara Fredrickson argues that positive emotions lead to new and beneficial ways of thinking and acting, like widening one's perspective (the broaden-and-build model). Being in a positive mood has been shown to make people more creative. The state of flow occurs when your skills are balanced by manageable challenges, leading to engagement with intrinsically rewarding activities. Mindful behavior is marked by attention and response to novel features of daily experience.
• Positive individual traits may be inherited or learned. These include hope (anticipation that one's desired goals can be met in the future), resilience (faster recovery from traumatic experiences and appreciation of things that truly matter, related to postraumatic growth), grit (perseverance in long-term goals), gratitude (thankfulness for the good things in one's life), and spirituality (believing that life has affirming transcendent qualities and meaning).
• Positive institutions, like beneficial work environments, good schools and solid families, can promote civic virtues and good citizenship. These organizations promote purpose, fairness, humility, safety, and dignity.
• According to critics and skeptics, positive psychology is a fad and simply a repackaging of old ideas. However, its defenders argue that the larger discipline is still not balanced where positive and negative psychological processes are concerned.
• You can boost your own happiness by counting the good things in your life, expressing sincere gratitude to people who have helped you, and sharing stories illustrating your own good actions that benefited other people. Sharing good news with others (known as capitalization), listening to positive information that they share, and spending money on others (rather than yourself) can also be psychologically beneficial. Furthermore, spend money on experiences (not material goods) and spend it to obtain lots of small (not a few large) pleasures.

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Appendix: Psychology and environmental sustainability: What's good for the earth is good for us
Pollution, deforestation, the extinction of species, and climate change are all caused by maladaptive human behavior, and conservation psychology is the field that studies the interactive relationship between humans and the rest of nature, with a focus on the conservation of natural resources.

• Humanity is currently confronted with an escalating environmental crisis: carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is at the highest level in 650,000 years, and the years between 2001 and 2012 were twelve of the fourteen warmest since 1880. Rising sea levels are threatening coastal cities. Hurricanes and typhoons will likely become more intense. However, people are not responding by decreasing their ecological footprint.
• Social psychology can help explain why people fail to engage in environmentally responsible behaviors: it is a descriptive (non-injunctive) social norm to engage in anti-environmental behavior like conspicuous consumption. Furthermore, individuals often act in ways that benefit themselves at a delayed cost to the population (known as social dilemmas).
• Theories of personality include Freudian defense mechanisms -- like rationalization, identification, denial, and projection -- and can help explain why people "know" about environmental problems yet don't change their behaviors. Contemporary researchers have identified individual traits that correlate with caring about animals and nature, such as sensitivity, imaginativeness, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
• The behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner pointed out that environmental activists who inspire guilt, fear and shame are actually inconsistent with operant learning principles, because they should instead reinforce consequences of sustainable lifestyles. Financial rewards, social reinforcers, and modeling environmentally-friendly behavior can be used to reinforce pro-environmental behavior.
• Cognitive psychology highlights the role of cognitive heuristics and biases in environmentally destructive behavior. For example, we tend to make judgments based on affect (emotion), mental availability, comparative optimism, false consensus, and false polarization. Therefore we maintain positive self-esteem and a sense of security.
• Developmental psychology suggests that children's experience with animals (and outdoor experiences) is associated with a moral concern for nature (i.e. a biocentric perspective rather than an anthropocentric perspective).
• Health and clinical psychology shows how contemporary environments (like urban noise, traffic, crowding, pollution, and living near toxic industries or waste sites) contribute to symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression, anger, aggression, and even posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Additionally, tens of thousands of industrial and household chemicals may be contributing to increased rates of cancer, birth defects, immune system dysfunction, neurological impairments and developmental disabilities. On the positive side, spending time in natural environments has been shown to be therapeutic.
• There are things you can personally do to become more environmentally responsible. These include: reduce your meat consumption, travel using a bicycle, mass transit or walking, replace your lightbulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, run dishwashers and clothes-washers only with full loads, refuse to buy things you don't really need, reuse as many items as possible, and avoid using pesticides and chemical cleansers.

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As you may gather, this textbook covers a lot of ground, and therefore serves as an introduction not only to the psychology of adjustment in particular but also the field of psychology in general. Chapter 2 is especially helpful for getting an overview of the major theoretical paradigms in psychology, and chapters 14 & 15 relate those theories to the practice of psychotherapy. Of course, there is much more to psychology that is not covered in the book -- for example developmental psychology, personality disorders, criminal psychology, political psychology and so on.

What did I like about this textbook? Firstly, the style of writing is clear and accessible. Secondly, the "Application" sections toward the end of each chapter give useful advice to the reader. And thirdly, the book is simply a goldmine of interesting information about nearly all aspects of daily life, ranging from stress, exercise, drugs, sexual activity, friendship, communication, careers, self-esteem, prejudice, personality and happiness to psychological disorders and therapy.

However, there were points where I had to question the objectivity of the authors. This was mainly the case when they talk about gender. For example in chapter 7, they label opposition to policies intended to help women and minorities (e.g. affirmative action) as "modern discrimination". But people can be opposed to particular policies for various reasons that have nothing to do with being racist or sexist. The authors also talk about stereotype threat without discussing the criticism of the research. The idea of stereotype threat is that negative stereotypes about a group can become a self-fulfilling prophecy because awareness of being stereotyped creates anxiety which impairs performance. However, critics say that the effect sizes are small and the topic suffers from publication bias; and in any case would not fully explain achievement gaps. In chapter 11, Weiten et al. acknowledge differences between men and women in terms of psychological variables (and even give lip service to biological explanations), but downplay the differences as small and not useful for making inferences about individuals. Even if this is true, could we still argue that small differences in group averages for a trait may translate into differences in group outcomes, and that if the cause is biological, that the outcome may be hard to change? I feel like this is somewhat plausible, but the textbook does not discuss it, perhaps because it would be politically controversial.

Nevertheless, the pictures and cartoons throughout the book make it engaging, and the authors give book recommendations for further reading. Overall, I would say that it is a decent quality textbook, albeit with a couple of flaws -- like the points I mentioned above, plus a general lack of depth due to the variety of topics covered. On Goodreads I gave it 4/5 stars, to indicate "good but imperfect".

In terms of educational value, it's better than "How to Win Friends and Influence People".