Psychology and life

Introduction

"Psychology and Life" is a classic work of introductory psychology textbooks. For more than half a century, it has been highly acclaimed in the world of psychology. In 1937, Dr. Floyd L. Ruch of Stanford University in the United States wrote the first edition of this book, which was a great success and revised it alone to the 7th edition. From the 8th edition, Philip G. Zimbardo, an American social psychologist known as the "voice and face of contemporary psychology", began to join the author team of this book and became the first author from the 9th edition. Entering the 21st century, cognitive psychology has achieved fruitful results and has become the mainstream direction of psychology. In order to make this classic work stand at the forefront of the times, starting from the 14th edition, Professor Zimbardo cordially invited Richard J. Gerrig, a cognitive psychologist from Yale University, to join as the second author of this book. Since the 16th edition, Gerrig has served as the first author and presided over the revision of the book, and became the sole author in the latest 20th edition.

Many teachers in the field of psychology in my country have used this book as a textbook or main teaching reference book for many years. Peking University has been using this book as a textbook for general psychology courses since 1990. With a sense of mission for the basic education and popularization of psychology in my country, 19 professors from the School of Psychology and Cognitive Science (formerly the Department of Psychology) of Peking University worked together, each of whom selected a part of the book and translated it carefully according to his or her research expertise and interests. As Professor Wang Lei, then the director of the Department of Psychology at Peking University, said: "The translation of this textbook is the result of the collective wisdom and team cohesion of the professors of the Department of Psychology at Peking University." The Chinese translation of "Psychology and Life" (16th and 19th editions) has been published in China for 20 years, with a cumulative circulation of more than 1.5 million copies, winning the love and recognition of the majority of psychology teachers and students and ordinary readers.