Psychology revamped!
03 Dec 03

Neil Martin on writing the new edition of Pearson Education's best selling psychology text.

"Writing the second edition of Psychology presented challenges that were different to those posed by the first. The challenges of the first edition were obvious: to revamp completely a well regarded American introductory textbook on psychology, to include pedagogical features that were attractive to readers and that evoked the excitement of discovery in psychological science, and to 'Europeanise' (or 'deAmericanise', depending on your point of view) the content to give the text a fresh, international flavour.

The success of the first edition (it's Pearson's best selling psychology text) led us to think about how to make the text even better for the second edition. Because of time, there were things I wanted to include in the first edition but couldn't. In the second edition, therefore, I expanded the scope of the book significantly by covering much larger areas of psychology and by focusing on specific areas in much more detail. This is why the new text contains over 5OO new references and a new feature called 'Cutting Edge' in each chapter which describes a recent innovative, novel or important study or series of studies in psychology.

A clear strength of the first edition was the accessibility of the writing and this I have continued in the second edition. The content is also challenging for the reader: there is little spoon feeding and readers are encouraged to consider the material described as critically as they can. A criticism of many introductory psychology textbooks is that they present material uncritically and as unchallengeable fact. In Psychology, I try to avoid this approach by suggesting alternative ways of interpreting findings.

The research for the second edition involved scouring almost every important psychology journal for new and interesting studies in all the major branches of psychology. Being Associate Editor for the Research in Brief section of The Psychologist at the time helped. The research also involved finding studies that tried to answer interesting questions currently explored by psychologists such as: How do juries reach decisions? Do 'smart drugs' work? Does humour prevent ill health? Can writing about trauma reduce psychological distress? and so on.

Some of the sections were prompted by real life events: new material in the face perception section, for example, was provoked by the way in which the Brixton nail bomber was caught [a colleague had seen his face on CCTV during a TV programme]. Another example is the rail crash involving Gary Hart which killed 1O people and injured 76. This prompted a section, 'Psychology in Action', which discussed the psychological effects of sleep deprivation.
Since starting my study of psychology, almost 17 years ago, I've always been fascinated by developments in every field of the discipline. It is easy to become over familiar with your own parochial research interest and neglect other discoveries and developments in the field. There's a wealth of interesting findings published each year and an introductory text can only feature so much of it. I've tried to include the best and most interesting in the second edition."

Psychology by G Neil Martin, Neil Carlson, William Buskist published on 13th November. For more information or to purchase click here.

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