Discovering Psychology

Highlighting major new developments in the field, Discovering Psychology: Updated Edition offers a current overview of new areas of inquiry by the field's leading researchers. This new edition continues to challenge and motivate students, helping them to develop an understanding of the variety of approaches to the study of human nature, while encouraging curiosity and critical thinking.

Discovering Psychology: Updated Edition enables students, as well as general viewers, to learn psychology's history, observe psychology in action, and better understand its relevance to their own lives. Beginning with the foundations and progressing to more complex extensions and applications, this course integrates historical and current perspectives with emerging theories, paradigms, and significant new research methodologies. Hosted by Philip G. Zimbardo, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, the programs include demonstrations, classic experiments and simulations, current research, documentary footage, and computer animation-all based on extensive investigation and superior scholarship.

WAYS TO USE

The twenty-six video programs in Discovering Psychology-Updated Edition can be used to:

• Explore the major psychological approaches to the study of behavior, including their history, contributors, methods, research findings, terminology, and current directions
• Promote the development of scientific values and skills, a recognition of individual bias in experimentation, and the ability to evaluate generalizations
• Encourage personal development through increased understanding and tolerance of the behavior of others and curiosity about the forces that make us behave as we do
• Integrate new developments with classic research findings
• Challenge some traditional perspectives in light of new knowledge
• Illuminate the decision-making process used by researchers
• Interweave the themes of psychology as a scientific enterprise with psychology as a course of knowledge and practice that can improve the quality of life

PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS

101) Past, Present, and Promise **updated**
Introduces psychology as a science that spans many fields of knowledge, from philosophy and anthropology to biochemistry and artificial intelligence, and asks, "What is the nature of human nature?"

102) Understanding Research  **updated**
An examination of the scientific method of collecting and analyzing data - in the laboratory and in the field - with an emphasis on sharpening critical thinking in the interpretation of research findings.

103) The Behaving Brain  **updated**
Investigates the structure and composition of the brain: how neurons function, how information is collected and transmitted, and how chemical reactions determine every thought, feeling, and action.

104) The Responsive Brain  **updated**
Takes a closer look at how the brain, behavior and environment interact and how the brain's structure and functions are changed by stimulation from the social and physical context.

105) The Developing Child
Traces the processes and stages of growth and considers the nature vs. nurture debate by showing how developmental psychologists study the relative influence of heredity and environment.

106) Language Development
Examines the development of language and what psychologists hope to discover about the human mind, society and culture by studying how children use language in social communication.

107) Sensation and Perception
Reveals how visual information is gathered and processed and how our culture, past experience and personal interests influence our perceptions.

108) Learning  **updated**
Illustrates the basic principles of classical and operant conditioning and demonstrates how the research of Ivan Pavlov, John Watson, Edward Thorndike and B.F. Skinner has influenced today's thinking about the nature of animal and human learning.

109) Remembering and Forgetting  **updated**
Takes a look at the complex process called memory: how images, ideas, language, even physical actions, sounds, and smells are translated into codes, represented in memory and retrieved when needed.

110) Cognitive Process
Explores the higher mental processes - reasoning, planning and problem solving - and the "cognitive revolution" that is attracting a diverse assortment of investigators, from philosophers to computer scientists.

111) Judgement and Decision Making
Analyzes the decision making process and human intuition through interviews with leading authorities who reveal how and why people make good and bad decisions.

112) Motivations and Emotion
Reviews what researchers are discovering about why people act and feel as they do, from the exhilaration of love to the agony of failure.

113) The Mind Awake and Asleep
Surveys the nature of sleeping, dreaming, and altered states of consciousness, and how consciousness empowers us to interpret, analyze, and direct our behavior in adaptive, flexible ways.

114) The Mind Hidden and Divided  **updated**
Delves into the subconscious mind, examining how events and experiences that take place below the level of consciousness alter our moods, bias our actions and affect our health - as demonstrated in repression, discovered and false memory syndrome, hypnosis, and split-brain cases.

115) The Self  **updated**
Explores how psychologists systematically study the origins of self identity and self-esteem, social determinants of self-conceptions, and the emotional and motivational consequences of beliefs about oneself.

116) Testing and Intelligence  **updated**
Focuses on the field of psychological assessment and the efforts of psychologists and other professionals to assign values to different abilities, behaviors, and personalities.

117) Sex and Gender
Analyzes the similarities and differences between males and females, and how sex roles reflect social values and psychological knowledge.

118) Maturing and Aging  **updated**
Explains what really happens, physically and psychologically, as we age, and how society reacts to the last stages of life.

119) The Power of the Situation
Reveals how social psychologists attempt to understand behavior within its broader social context and how our beliefs and behavior can be influenced and manipulated by other people and by subtle situational forces.

120) Constructing Social Reality  **updated**
Investigates the factors that contribute to our interpretation of reality and how understanding the psychological processes that govern our behavior can help us become more empathetic and independent members of society.

121) Psychopathology  **updated**
Reviews what is known about the major types of mental illness - schizophrenia, anxiety, phobias and affective disorders - and the biological and social factors that influence them.

122) Psychotherapy
Compares the relationships among theory, research, and practice, and how historical, cultural, and social forces have influenced the treatment of psychological disorders.

123) Health, Mind, and Behavior  **updated**
Examines how research is forcing a profound rethinking of the relationship between mind and body-a new bio-psychosocial model is replacing the traditional biomedical model.

124) Applying Psychology in Life  **new**
Looks at some of the innovative ways psychology is being applied to practical situations and professions in areas concerning human factors, law, and conflict negotiation.

125) Cognitive Neuroscience  **new**
Cognitive neuroscience represents the attempt to understand mental processes at the level of the brain's functioning and not merely from information-processing models and theories. It relies heavily on an empirical analysis of what is happening in the brain, and where, when a person thinks, reasons, decides, judges, encodes information, recalls information, learns, and solves problems.

126) New Directions  **new**
This newly emerging field is integrating cross-cultural research with social and personality psychology, anthropology, and other social sciences. Its main new perspective is focused on how cultures construct selves and other central aspects of individual personality, beliefs, values, emotions, and much of what we are and do.

For more information: E-Mail: learning@unctv.org