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PSYC 1000 Course Materials (Videos) (Readings)

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TOPICS (pdf)

This NOBA Project work "Introductory Psychology" curated by Jacob Shane is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

TOPIC: Course Overview & Introduction to the Field

Why Science (Diener)
Scientific research has been one of the great drivers of progress in human history, and the dramatic changes we have seen during the past century are due primarily to scientific findings—modern medicine, electronics, automobiles and jet…
Nature-Nurture Question (Turkheimer)
People have a deep intuition about what has been called the “nature–nurture question.” Some aspects of our behavior feel as though they originate in our genetic makeup, while others feel like the result of our upbringing or our own hard work

TOPIC: Research in Psychology

Research Designs (Scollon)
Psychologists test research questions using a variety of methods. Most research relies on either correlations or experiments. With correlations, researchers measure variables as they naturally occur in people and compute the degree to which t…
Conducting Psychology Research in the Real World (Mehl)
Because of its ability to determine cause-and-effect relationships, the laboratory experiment is traditionally considered the method of choice for psychological science. One downside, however, is that as it carefully controls conditions and t…

TOPIC: Research in Psychology - (continued)

Statistical Thinking (Chance & Rossman)
As our society increasingly calls for evidence-based decision making, it is important to consider how and when we can draw valid inferences from data. This module will use four recent research studies to highlight key elements of a statistica…

TOPIC: Nervous System and Neuronal Communication

Nervous System (Ahmad)
The mammalian nervous system is a complex biological organ, which enables many animals including humans to function in a coordinated fashion. The original design of this system is preserved across many animals through evolution; thus, adaptiv…
Neurons (Furtak)
This module on the biological basis of behavior provides an overview of the basic structure of neurons and their means of communication. Neurons, cells in the central nervous system, receive information from our sensory systems (vision, audit…

TOPIC: The Brain

Brain (Beck & Tapia)
The human brain is responsible for all behaviors, thoughts, and experiences described in this textbook. This module provides an introductory overview of the brain, including some basic neuroanatomy, and brief descriptions of the neuroscience

TOPIC: Sensation and Perception

Sensation & Perception (Privitera)
The topics of sensation and perception are among the oldest and most important in all of psychology. People are equipped with senses such as sight, hearing and taste that help us to take in the world around us. Amazingly, our senses have the …
Multi-Modal Perception (Lachs)
Most of the time, we perceive the world as a unified bundle of sensations from multiple sensory modalities. In other words, our perception is multimodal. This module provides an overview of multimodal perception, including information about i…

TOPIC: Learning

Conditioning and Learning (Bouton)
Basic principles of learning are always operating and always influencing human behavior. This module discusses the two most fundamental forms of learning -- classical (Pavlovian) and instrumental (operant) conditioning. Through them, we …
Factors Influencing Learning (Benjamin)
Learning is a complex process that defies easy definition and description. This module reviews some of the philosophical issues involved with defining learning and describes in some detail the characteristics of learners and of encoding activ

TOPIC: Memory and Attention

Attention (Friedrich)
We use the term “attention“ all the time, but what processes or abilities does that concept really refer to? This module will focus on how attention allows us to select certain parts of our environment and ignore other parts, and what happens…
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) (McDermott & Roediger III)
“Memory” is a single term that reflects a number of different abilities: holding information briefly while working with it (working memory), remembering episodes of one’s life (episodic memory), and our general knowledge of facts of the world…

TOPIC: Memory Distortion and Loss

Forgetting and Amnesia (Dudukovic & Kuhl)
This module explores the causes of everyday forgetting and considers pathological forgetting in the context of amnesia. Forgetting is viewed as an adaptive process that allows us to be efficient in terms of the information we retain.
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases (Laney & Loftus)
Eyewitnesses can provide very compelling legal testimony, but rather than recording experiences flawlessly, their memories are susceptible to a variety of errors and biases. They (like the rest of us) can make errors in remembering specific d…

TOPIC: Consciousness, Self, and Identity

Consciousness (Paller & Suzuki)
Consciousness is the ultimate mystery. What is it and why do we have it? These questions are difficult to answer, even though consciousness is so fundamental to our existence. Perhaps the natural world could exist largely as it is without hum…
Self and Identity (McAdams)
For human beings, the self is what happens when “I” encounters “Me.” The central psychological question of selfhood, then, is this: How does a person apprehend and understand who he or she is? Over the past 100 years, psychologists have appr…

TOPIC: Personality

Personality Traits (Diener & Lucas)
Personality traits reflect people’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Personality traits imply consistency and stability—someone who scores high on a specific trait like Extraversion is expected to be sociabl…
Personality Stability and Change (Donnellan)
This module describes different ways to address questions about personality stability across the lifespan. Definitions of the major types of personality stability are provided, and evidence concerning the different kinds of stability and chan…

TOPIC: Self-Efficacy and Self-Regulation

Self-Efficacy (Maddux & Kleiman)
The term “self-efficacy” refers to your beliefs about your ability to effectively perform the tasks needed to attain a valued goal. Self-efficacy does not refer to your abilities but to how strongly you believe you can use your abilities to w…
Self-Regulation and Conscientiousness (Baumesiter)
Self-regulation means changing oneself based on standards, that is, ideas of how one should or should not be. It is a centrally important capacity that contributes to socially desirable behavior, including moral behavior. Effective self-regul…

TOPIC: Motivation and Emotion

Motives and Goals (Fishbach & Touré)
Your decisions and behaviors are often the result of a goal or motive you possess. This module provides an overview of the main theories and findings on goals and motivation. We address the origins, manifestations, and types of goals, and the…
Culture and Emotion (Tsai)
How do people’s cultural ideas and practices shape their emotions (and other types of feelings)? In this module, we will discuss findings from studies comparing North American (United States, Canada) and East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)…

TOPIC: Creativity

Creativity (Simonton)
An idea or solution is considered creative if it is original, useful, and surprising. However, depending on who actually judges these three criteria, we must distinguish personal “little-c creativity” from consensual “Big-C Creativity.” In an…
Intellectual Abilities, Interests, and Mastery (Lubinski)
Psychologists interested in the study of human individuality have found that accomplishments in education, the world of work, and creativity are a joint function of talent, passion, and commitment — or how much effort and time one is wi…

TOPIC: Industrial/Organizational Psychology

Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology (Bauer & Erdogan)
This module provides an introduction to industrial and organizational (I/O) psychology. I/O psychology is an area of psychology that specializes in the scientific study of behavior in organizational settings and the application of psychology …

TOPIC: Conformity, Obedience, and Persuasion

Conformity and Obedience (Burger)
We often change our attitudes and behaviors to match the attitudes and behaviors of the people around us. One reason for this conformity is a concern about what other people think of us. This process was demonstrated in a classic study in whi…
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled (Levine)
This module introduces several major principles in the process of persuasion. It offers an overview of the different paths to persuasion. It then describes how mindless processing makes us vulnerable to undesirable persuasion and some of the …

TOPIC: Attitudes towards Others: Helping or Harming

Helping and Prosocial Behavior (Poepsei and Schroeder)
People often act to benefit other people, and these acts are examples of prosocial behavior. Such behaviors may come in many guises: helping an individual in need; sharing personal resources; volunteering time, effort, and expertise; cooperat…
Prejudice, Discrimination, and Stereotyping (Fiske)
People are often biased against others outside of their own social group, showing prejudice (emotional bias), stereotypes (cognitive bias), and discrimination (behavioral bias). In the past, people used to be more explicit with their biases, …

TOPIC: Relationships & Groups

Psychology of Groups (Forsyth)
This module assumes that a thorough understanding of people requires a thorough understanding of groups. Each of us is an autonomous individual seeking our own objectives, yet we are also members of groups—groups that constrain us, gui…
Love, Friendship, and Social Support (Brannan & Mohr)
Friendship and love, and more broadly, the relationships that people cultivate in their lives, are some of the most valuable treasures a person can own. This module explores ways in which we try to understand how friendships form, what attrac…

TOPIC: Child Development

Social and Personality Development in Childhood (Thompson)
Childhood social and personality development emerges through the interaction of social influences, biological maturation, and the child’s representations of the social world and the self. This interaction is illustrated in a discussion of the…
Cognitive Development in Childhood (Siegler)
This module examines what cognitive development is, major theories about how it occurs, the roles of nature and nurture, whether it is continuous or discontinuous, and how research in the area is being used to improve education.

TOPIC: Adolescent and Adult Development

Adolescent Development (Lansford)
Adolescence is a period that begins with puberty and ends with the transition to adulthood (approximately ages 10–20). Physical changes associated with puberty are triggered by hormones. Cognitive changes include improvements in complex and a…
Aging (Queen & Smith)
Traditionally, research on aging described only the lives of people over age 65 and the very old. Contemporary theories and research recognizes that biogenetic and psychological processes of aging are complex and lifelong. Functioning in each…

TOPIC: Psychological Disorders

Anxiety and Related Disorders (Barlow & Ellard)
Anxiety is a natural part of life and, at normal levels, helps us to function at our best. However, for people with anxiety disorders, anxiety is overwhelming and hard to control. Anxiety disorders develop out of a blend of biological (gene…
Mood Disorders (Gershon & Thompson)
Everyone feels down or euphoric from time to time, but this is different from having a mood disorder such as major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder. Mood disorders are extended periods of depressed, euphoric, or irritable moods that in…

TOPIC: Psychological Disorders (continued)

Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders (Barch)
Schizophrenia and the other psychotic disorders are some of the most impairing forms of psychopathology, frequently associated with a profound negative effect on the individual’s educational, occupational, and social function. Sadly, these di…
Personality Disorders (Crego & Widiger)
The purpose of this module is to define what is meant by a personality disorder, identify the five domains of general personality (i.e., neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness), identify the six personality …

TOPIC: Treatment

Psychopharmacology (Barron)
Psychopharmacology is the study of how drugs affect behavior. If a drug changes your perception, or the way you feel or think, the drug exerts effects on your brain and nervous system. We call drugs that change the way you think or feel psy…
Therapeutic Orientation (Boettcher, Hofmann & Wu)
In the past century, a number of psychotherapeutic orientations have gained popularity for treating mental illnesses. This module outlines some of the best-known therapeutic approaches and explains the history, techniques, advantages, and dis…

TOPIC: Health and Happiness

Healthy Life (Hooker & Pressman)
Our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors play an important role in our health. Not only do they influence our day-to-day health practices, but they can also influence how our body functions. This module provides an overview of health psycholog…
Happiness: The Science of Subjective Well-Being (Diener)
Subjective well-being (SWB) is the scientific term for happiness and life satisfaction—thinking and feeling that your life is going well, not badly. Scientists rely primarily on self-report surveys to assess the happiness of individuals…

TOPIC: Appendices - Vocabulary

Appendices - Vocabulary
Vocabulary from the book "Introductory Psychology"

TOPICS (online)