Sources: Notable Selections in Psychology

Rating:
Summary: good choice of sources; too much left out of each one
Review: A word to the editor: putting web site addresses in a book is a sure way to outdate your book quickly.

Can't argue with the choice of articles. Here are *excerpts from* 50 fundamental articles in psychology -- from Freud a century ago to researchers working a decade ago. Any beginning psychology student at the high school or undergraduate level would do well to read them. For that matter, any graduate student would do well to read the ones that he or she isn't already familiar with -- the book covers the gamut of specialties in psychology, pretty much following the topics that are found in a standard intro psych textbook, and in the same order. The trouble is that too much editing -- that is, leaving out of things -- took place here. I realize this was done to make things accessible to first-time readers who would be put off by statistics, methodological discussions, or technical debates in journal articles. Still I think these excerpts could give students a false sense, or no sense, of what actual research reports are like. Better to give them the entire article and tell them which sections to ignore. Then they can see what (and how much) they're missing. They can handle it.