We love to reflect on connections between psychology and other realms, such as literature, philosophy, history, sports, religion, politics, and popular culture. We hope to tell psychology’s story in a way that is warmly personal as well as rigorously scientific. (See TABLES 1 and 2.)īelieving with Thoreau that “anything living is easily and naturally expressed in popular language,†we seek to communicate psychology’s scholarship with crisp narrative and vivid storytelling. By the time students complete this guided tour of psychology, they will also, we hope, have a deeper understanding of our moods and memories, about the reach of our unconscious, about how we flourish and struggle, about how we perceive our physical and social worlds, and about how our biology and culture in turn shape us. By studying and applying its tools, ideas, and insights, we can supplement our intuition with critical thinking, restrain our judgmentalism with compassion, and replace our illusions with understanding. Psychological science has the potential to expand our minds and enlarge our hearts. We are enthusiastic about psychology and its applicability to our lives. And we seek to convey the inquisitive spirit with which psychologists do psychology. We aspire to help students understand and appreciate the wonders of their everyday lives. We aim to offer a state-of-the-art introduction to psychological science that speaks to students’ needs and interests. Yet across these three decades of Psychology there has also been a stability of purpose: to merge rigorous science with a broad human perspective that engages both mind and heart. With this edition, I continue as lead author while beginning a gradual, decade-long process of welcoming a successor author, the award-winning teacher-scholar-writer, Nathan DeWall. In the thirty-two years since Worth Publishers invited me (David Myers) to write this book, so much has changed in the world, in psychology, and within the covers of this book across its eleven editions.