Psychology Textbooks: Examining Their Accuracy

Abstract

Sales figures and recollections of psychologists indicate textbooks playa central role in psychology students' education, yet instructors typically must select texts under time pressure and with incomplete information. Although selection aids are available, none adequately address the accuracy of texts. We describe a technique for sampling textbooks' content and evaluating accuracy. Preliminary studies indicated multiple errors in texts we examined. We present a proposed taxonomy of such errors. We speculate that errors are more likely when textbook authors use "deductive" rather than "inductive referencing," but acknowledge that authors frequently are under pressure to use the former. Discipline-wide efforts to assess textbooks' scholarly quality could facilitate improvements in accuracy, providing fundamental benefits to the discipline.

The new Medical College Admission Test: Implications for teaching psychology.

“…If all students sitting for the new MCAT were to take introductory psychology, then we would predict a 50% increase or 30,000 additional premedical students taking introductory psychology each year. Although, this estimate represents an increase of only 2% above the 1.5 million students now taking introductory psychology (Steuer & Ham, 2008; Gurung et al, 2016), staffing issues could become significant, depending on the number of premedical students and the elasticity of the size of introductory psychology at a given institution. For schools with a relatively large number of premedical students and small, inflexible class sizes, this will create staffing challenges.…”

Instructional Manuals of Boundary‐work: Psychology Textbooks, Student Subjectivities, and Disciplinary Historiographies

“…One of the common arguments to support this assertion by the community gathered around the received view are the enormous sales figures, which by the force of their sheer volume assert their importance. For example, Steuer and Ham (, p. 160): “Informed estimates suggest that annual domestic expenditures on all psychology textbooks reach $160–200 million (S. Scarrazzo, personal communication, July 11, 2005). Such figures imply that introductory textbooks in combination with those used in upper level undergraduate courses constitute a substantial—and potentially massive—part of the education experience of most psychology students.” The other support for the importance of textbooks Steuer and Ham mobilize is Kihlstrom's () survey of “fondly remembered textbooks” on three professional psychology listservs.…”

The Disappearance of Independence in Textbook Coverage of Asch’s Social Pressure Experiments

“…In his classic book on teaching, McKeachie (2002) pointed out that ''research on teaching suggests that the major influence on what students learn is not the teaching method but the textbook'' (p. 14). Hence, because textbooks play a central role in our students' education and because introductory psychology is the most popular course in psychology with an estimated annual enrollment in the United States of 1.2-1.6 million students (Steuer & Ham, 2008) and may be the only psychology course taken by most of these students, we want our introductory textbooks to be as accurate as possible. According to Morawski (1992), textbooks are the key transmitters of psychological knowledge both to potential new members of the discipline and to those outside of the discipline (giving psychology away), and therefore, it is essential that textbook information be accurate.…”