Stanovich How To Think Straight About Psychology Summary

Keith E. Stanovich, the author of “How to Think Straight About Psychology,” explains different aspects of psychology to his readers in the first chapter of his book. He starts off by stating how Sigmund Freud is a fraud when it comes to psychology. Although Freud’s work in psychology is so little, he is the reason why many people misunderstand psychology. Then the chapter begins to talk about how psychology is composed of different topics and studies, and when there are many different topics it is difficult to link all of the topics into one. When psychology is often discussed, many people do not consider it a science. What people view as psychological finds are false, and Stanovich wrote this book to inform people about psychology and a lot of misunderstandings that are out in the world. After reading this chapter, my mind was opened. Everything I thought I knew about psychology or even the common clichés that go around are inaccurate. According to Keith E. Stanovich, “Children actually make people less happy” (p. 15). This statement did not surprise me as much as it should have. People always say how having a child is not going to make things easier, it will make them more difficult. I agree …show more content…
People’s perception of science is often a physical thing. When you hear the word science you think of chemicals and experiments with outcomes that are visible to the human eye. Psychology is not like that; it is different experiments with outcomes that are not visible. Some people may thing that the findings in psychology are not as exciting as other scientific findings. Most psychological findings are intellectual and require knowledge or thought to understand them. Due to that, I believe people are afraid of what the mind will tell us; that is why many people find it difficult or intimidating to accept psychology as a science. The unknown is fearful and not everyone can embrace progressing and understanding psychological