Psychology and personality development / Carl Newton Rexroad.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rexroad, Carl Newton, author.

Series:

PsychBooks Collection

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Personality.

Psychology, Applied.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (501 pages) : illustrations, diagrams.

Place of Publication:

Boston : Christopher Publishing House, 1940.

Summary:

"This book is written primarily for college students who hope to obtain from their first study of psychology the material which will be most valuable to them in their present and future living. Its purpose is to give a general introduction to psychology, a grasp of important concepts, and a background for meeting life's problems and situations. Material is selected and presented in a manner suited to the needs of the general rather than the pre-professional student. On this basis more attention is given to emotions, habit formation, efficiency in learning and study, hereditary and environmental influences, and development of personality traits; and less attention is paid to sensory, physiological, comparative, and theoretical topics than that customary in textbooks and demanded in research and systematic treatises. In presentation major facts, concepts, applications and implications are emphasized rather than detailed experimental studies and techniques as demanded in advanced study. These shifts represent the author's conception of the needs of the first course, not his conception of what psychology as a whole is or should be, and his experience is that students who decide to major in psychology are not handicapped by the postponement of the more rigorously experimental study. The shifts vitalize rather than popularize, and enrich rather than make easier. When students recognize the immediate and more remote value of the material studied, motivation and permanence of learning are heightened. Fewer students resort to the easy but unprofitable method of memorizing, and more seek to grasp the interrelations and significance of the facts studied. It is because I believe that many teachers of the first course share my conviction that these shifts are advantageous and desirable that I add a book to the list of those already available. It has been used for three years in three preliminary forms privately printed, and members of the department of psychology at Stephens College have found it so satisfactory that it is now being made available to other schools and to the general reader"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Contents:

The subject matter and methods of psychology

The primary emotions, fear and anger

The principles of conditioning

The development of coordination

The nervous system

Language and learning

Factors determining efficiency in learning, particularly in study

Learning and forgetting

Personality development

The inferiority complex

The mechanism of heredity and some implications

Heredity and environment

Internal determiners of action : physiological conditions

Internal determiners of action : desires, feelings, moods, and attitudes

Philosophical and practical implications of determinism

Observing or perceiving

Thinking

Tests and measurements

Personality improvement

Psychological maturity.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.