Debate about the merits of the psychodynamic perspective led us to wonder about the extent of its inclusion in personality textbooks and its coverage by teachers of the undergraduate personality psychology course. We reviewed the tables of contents of 25 recent personality textbooks and found only 4 that had no chapters dedicated to psychodynamic…

To identify where ethics is presented to undergraduate psychology students, this study reviewed a national sample of 706 syllabi for required mandatory psychology courses. The results indicated that 6 syllabi were designated as ethics courses and 65 syllabi did not mention ethics at all. Even though 641 syllabi mentioned ethics, the most frequent…

The present study examined 12 abnormal psychology textbooks to determine whether Rosenhan's classic study, "Being sane in insane places," was covered, and if so, the nature of that coverage. Only 50% covered the study, with all describing the study as demonstrating the biasing power of psychiatric labels. Two key aspects of the study…

Historically, psychology education about disability focused narrowly on psychiatric and cognitive disabilities. Furthermore, disability tends to be viewed from the medical model, rather than the social model endorsed by disability scholars, which describes disability as primarily socially constructed. Course offerings for the psychology…

Given the many inaccuracies in the original "New York Times" 38-witnesses version of the Kitty Genovese story, this study examined the accuracy of this story in current introductory psychology textbooks, 50 years later. Recent studies have shown that there is no evidence for the following three key features of the original story: (1)…

Inaccuracies, especially concerning the stimulus generalization findings, in textbook descriptions of the Little Albert study have been well documented since the 1970s. However, there has not been a systematic examination of introductory psychology textbooks since the 1980s to determine whether such inaccuracies still persist. This study filled…

Asch's classic social pressure experiments are discussed in almost all introductory and social psychology textbooks. However, the results of these experiments have been shown to be misrepresented in textbooks. An analysis of textbooks from 1953 to 1984 revealed that although most of the responses on critical trials were independent correct ones,…

It has been 12 years since the last objective analysis of brief introductory psychology textbooks was published and 13 years since the textbook copyright period used in that study, 1997-2000. Given the importance of informed textbook evaluation and selection to the introductory course but the difficulty of this task because of the large number of…

Honoring "Teaching of Psychology" ("ToP") as it approaches its 40th anniversary, we extend prior overviews of its development and growth into 2012. We describe changes in editorial staff and journal organization, identify and describe the top 20 most frequent contributors to "ToP," and present the results of a content…

It has been 13 years since the last objective analysis of full-length introductory psychology textbooks was published and 15 years since the textbook copyright period used in that study, 1995-1997. Given the importance of informed textbook evaluation and selection to the introductory course but the difficulty of this task because of the large…

This study assessed the nature of psychology and its consensus regarding core content. We hypothesized that psychology possesses little agreement regarding its core content areas and thus may "envy" more canonical sciences, such as physics. Using a global sample, we compared psychologists' and physicists' perceptions regarding…

Introductory psychology textbooks have been criticized for being too long and too expensive. A national survey of introductory teachers found that 89% of introductory courses are only one term in length and that teachers could only cover 68% of a text's topics. This situation has been made more problematic by the soaring prices of…

The purpose of the current study was to examine the sample diversity of empirical articles published in four premier teaching of psychology journals from 2008 to 2013. We investigated which demographic information was commonly reported and if samples were ethnically representative and whether gender was representative compared to National…

Similar to the other developing countries, undergraduate psychology programs in Turkish universities have rapidly grown in the last two decades. Although this sharp increment signifies the need for psychologists, it has also caused a number of challenges for effective teaching of psychology. The department chairs (N = 42) were interviewed with an…

This study is concerned with the nature of the coverage in introductory social psychology textbooks of the Stanford prison experiment (SPE), given the many criticisms, especially recently, of the SPE. These criticisms concern both the study's methodology and the situationist explanation of the outcome. Ten textbooks were analyzed for coverage of…