Further Reading — Chapter 1: Why Psychology Matters

Annotated resources for deeper exploration. Items marked with ★ are especially recommended as starting points.

Foundational Books

★ Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The accessible, Nobel Prize–winning account of how our minds work — specifically the two-system model introduced in this chapter. Kahneman writes about decades of research with Amos Tversky in prose that is engaging and precise. A landmark of popular science writing, and the best single starting point for understanding why we think and decide the way we do.

Wilson, T. D. (2002). Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious. Harvard University Press. Timothy Wilson's book on the adaptive unconscious — the vast mental processing that occurs outside our awareness. The research on confabulation and introspective limits discussed in this chapter is described here in accessible, engaging detail. A corrective to our overconfidence about self-knowledge, without being nihilistic about introspection's value.

★ Nisbett, R. E. (2015). Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Practical, engaging, and grounded in research. Nisbett covers statistical thinking, scientific reasoning, cognitive bias, and the skills of better judgment. Written for general audiences but substantive and rigorous.

Mischel, W. (2014). The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. Little, Brown and Company. Mischel's account of his famous longitudinal research on self-control, including his reconceptualization of personality as situationally variable behavioral signatures. Better and more nuanced than how his marshmallow research is typically summarized in popular media.

On the Limits of Self-Knowledge

Johansson, P., Hall, L., Sikström, S., & Olsson, A. (2005). Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task. Science, 310(5745), 116–119. The original "choice blindness" study showing that people do not notice when their choices are switched — and confidently confabulate reasons for choices they didn't actually make. A brief empirical paper; the abstract is accessible to non-specialists.

Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84(3), 231–259. The foundational academic paper on introspective limits. Dense but important. Most relevant sections are the review of evidence and the discussion of implications.

On Scientific Method and the Replication Crisis

★ Open Science Collaboration (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349(6251). The landmark study that formalized the replication crisis by attempting to reproduce 100 psychology studies. Only about 36–39% replicated at comparable effect sizes. Available open-access.

Ritchie, S. (2020). Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth. Metropolitan Books. A frank, well-researched account of how scientific error occurs — including in psychology. Not a nihilistic attack on science but a clear-eyed account of how to read and evaluate scientific claims. Essential reading for anyone who wants to engage critically with research.

On the Person-Situation Debate

Mischel, W. (1968). Personality and Assessment. Wiley. The book that launched the person-situation debate by challenging the predictive validity of personality traits. Not easy reading, but historically foundational; the introduction and conclusions are most accessible.

Ross, L., & Nisbett, R. E. (1991). The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology. McGraw-Hill. An accessible account of how situational forces shape behavior — often more than we think. Co-written by the researcher who named the fundamental attribution error (Ross). Clear, substantive, and full of compelling research examples.

On Levels of Analysis

Cacioppo, J. T. (2002). Multilevel analyses and reductionism: Why social psychologists should care about neuroscience and vice versa. In J. T. Cacioppo et al. (Eds.), Foundations in Social Neuroscience (pp. 107–120). MIT Press. A scholarly argument for why psychological phenomena require multilevel analysis. Dense but rewarding for readers who want the theoretical case for the approach taken in this chapter.

Accessible Introductions to Psychology

★ Myers, D. G., & DeWall, C. N. (current edition). Psychology. Worth Publishers. The most widely used introductory psychology textbook. Comprehensive, well-organized, and updated regularly to reflect current research. A reliable reference when you want to understand a concept at greater depth or with more technical precision than this book provides.

Lilienfeld, S. O., Lynn, S. J., Ruscio, J., & Beyerstein, B. L. (2010). 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology. Wiley-Blackwell. An evidence-based debunking of popular misconceptions — we only use 10% of our brains, opposites attract, low self-esteem causes aggression, and 47 others. Excellent for developing the habit of skepticism toward psychological common sense.

Online Resources

Association for Psychological Science (www.psychologicalscience.org) The professional organization for scientific psychology. Their Observer magazine and blog are accessible to non-specialists and cover current research developments.

PsycINFO / Google Scholar For readers who want to find original research papers. Google Scholar is free and comprehensive. Many papers are available in full through institutional libraries or author websites.

Replication Index (R-Index) Blog A blog that tracks the replication status of major psychological findings. Useful for checking whether a widely cited finding has held up under scrutiny.

A Note on Reading Research

When following up on any psychological study cited in this book, a few habits help:

1. Find the actual paper, not just the media coverage. Abstracts are free on PubMed and Google Scholar.
2. Check the sample size. Very small samples (< 50) should be interpreted cautiously.
3. Check if it has been replicated. A single finding, however dramatic, is less reliable than a pattern across multiple independent studies.
4. Note the population. Research conducted on undergraduate students at Western universities may not generalize broadly.
5. Look for conflicts of interest. Industry-funded research and research by advocates of a particular therapy or method deserves additional scrutiny.

These habits are covered in more depth in Appendix D: Research Methods Primer.