This book is distinguished by its authors, who are well known researchers in their fields and all teach at Harvard. Three of the authors are also successful trade book authors, so it’s known for having a very engaging writing style with jokes and unusual stories. Although the expertise of the authors leads some to believe this is a high level book, the writing is approachable and fun, making it a solid choice for schools of all levels.

The new edition has been completely retooled for the classroom. For the first time, each chapter section begins with Learning Outcomes to guide students’ learning. These outcomes represent the big picture understanding we want readers to come away with, so they come away with more than a collection of facts. They come away with psychology as a living science.

The new edition also includes a new feature called A World of Difference. This is a feature that highlights interesting and important research on individual differences, showing the importance of sex, gender, culture, SES, and ethnicity in understanding the breadth of psychology.

This edition also includes our popular Data Visualization Activities, which are a unique resource for building students’ quantitative reasoning skills.

Daniel Schacter is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. Schacter received his BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He subsequently developed a keen interest in amnesic disorders associated with various kinds of brain damage. He continued his research and education at the University of Toronto, where he received his PhD in 1981. He taught on the faculty at Toronto for the next six years before joining the psychology department at the University of Arizona in 1987. In 1991, he joined the faculty at Harvard University. His research explores the relation between conscious and unconscious forms of memory and the nature of distortions and errors in remembering. Many of Schacter‘s studies are summarized in his 1996 book, Searching for Memory: The Brain, The Mind, and The Past, and his 2001 book, The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers, both winners of the APA’s William James Book Award.

Daniel Gilbert is Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. After attending the Community College of Denver and completing his BA from the University of Colorado, Denver, he went on to earn his PhD from Princeton University. From 1985-1996, he taught on the faculty of the University of Texas, Austin, during which time he received the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology. In 1996, he joined the faculty of Harvard University. Gilbert has won numerous awards including the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His research on affective forecasting is an attempt to understand how and how well people predict their emotional reactions to future events. He is the author of the national bestseller Stumbling on Happiness.

Daniel Wegner is Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He received his BS in 1970 and PhD in 1974, both from Michigan State University. He began his teaching career at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX, before his appointments at the University of Virginia in 1990 and Harvard University in 2000. He is Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and former associate editor of Psychological Review. His research focuses on thought suppression and mental control, social memory in relationships and groups, and the experience of conscious will. His seminal work in thought suppression and consciousness served as the basis of two trade titles, White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts and The Illusion of Conscious Will, both of which were named Choice Outstanding Academic Books.

Matthew K. Nock is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Laboratory for Clinical and Developmental Research at Harvard University. He received his BA from Boston University and his PhD in psychology from Yale University in 2003 and completed his clinical internship at Bellevue Hospital and the New York University Child Study Center. His research is aimed at advancing the understanding of why people behave in ways that are harmful to themselves, with an emphasis on suicide and other forms of self-harm. His research is multidisciplinary in nature and uses a range of methodological approaches to understand better how these behaviors develop, how to predict them, and how to prevent their occurrence. His work has been recognized through the receipt of four early career awards from the American Psychological Association, the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and the American Association of Suicidology; in 2011 he was named a MacArthur Fellow. In addition to conducting research, he has been a consultant and scientific advisor to the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health Survey Initiative, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Association DSM-5 Childhood and Adolescent Disorder Work Group. At Harvard, he has received several teaching awards including the Roslyn Abramson Teaching Award and the Petra Shattuck Prize.