Filled with exciting, current research findings, Wayne Weiten's PSYCHOLOGY: THEMES AND VARIATIONS shows you the many ways that psychology applies to your life today and every day! In the book's "Featured Studies," you'll get a bird's eye view of real psychological research in action. "Critical Thinking Applications" give you specific critical thinking tools that you can use to help you think analytically and critically about what you read. Weiten also helps you excel in the psychology course by including overarching concepts--weaving these concepts throughout the book to help you see how the topics and research you are studying fit together into one understandable picture called psychology! Every chapter offers tools to help you focus on what's important--showing you how to study in ways that help you retain information and do your very best on exams.