Free, Open, and Affordable Resources: Psychology

Publication Date: 2019
The first chapter provides an overview of the textbook and reviews the history of psychology and its methodology. Psychology is described as a science studying how hereditary (nature) and experiential (nurture) variables interact to influence the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals. The remainder of the text will be organized in sections entitled “Mostly Nature” (Biological Psychology; Sensation & Perception; Motivation & Emotion), “Mostly Nurture” (Direct Learning; Indirect Learning (i.e., observational learning and language); Cognition), and “Nature/Nurture” (Human Development; Personality; Social Psychology; Maladaptive Behavior; Professional Psychology and Human Potential).

Grounded in foundational theories and scientific research, the text teaches students about core aspects of human development—physical, cognitive, social, emotional—across the lifespan. A primary goal of the book is to incorporate content, scholarship, and activities that explore a variety of perspectives that encourage all students to feel seen and included.

Introduction to Psychology. Courseware than can also be used as a textbook. Contains chapters on Researching Psychology, Biological Foundations of Psychology, Sensation and Perception, States of Consciousness, Learning, Memory, Cognition, Language, Intelligence, Motivation, Emotion, Human Development, Gender and Sexuality, Personality, Stress and Health Psychology, Psychological Disorders, Treatment, Social Psychology, and Workplace Psychology.

Introduction to Psychology is a concise and conceptual introduction to the subject. Stangor focuses on behavior and empiricism throughout the text in an effort to better organize the material with fewer chapters, making it ideal for a one-semester introductory course.

Introduction to Psychology, by Jorden A. Cummings (Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Saskatchewan) and Lee Sanders (Sessional Lecturer, Department of Psychology, University of Saskatchewan), has been created from a combination of original content and materials compiled and adapted from several open educational resources (OERs), including Source Chapters from:
* Introduction to Psychology – 1st Canadian Edition (Stangor & Wallinga, 2014), part of the B.C. Open Textbook Project, available at: https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontopsychology/, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License and a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
*The Noba Project (various authors), available at: https://nobaproject.com/, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
*Research Methods in Psychology – 3rd American Edition (Price, Jhangiani, Chiang, Leighton, & Cuttler, 2017), available at: https://opentext.wsu.edu/carriecuttler/, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

When you teach Introduction to Psychology, do you find it difficult — much harder than teaching classes in statistics or research methods? Do you easily give a lecture on the sympathetic nervous system, a lecture on Piaget, and a lecture on social cognition, but struggle with linking these topics together for the student? Do you feel like you are presenting a laundry list of research findings rather than an integrated set of principles and knowledge? Have you wondered how to ensure your course is relevant to your students? Introduction to Psychology utilizes the dual theme of behavior and empiricism to make psychology relevant to intro students. The author wrote this book to help students organize their thinking about psychology at a conceptual level. Five or ten years from now, he does not expect his students to remember the details of most of what he teaches them. However, he does hope that they will remember that psychology matters because it helps us understand behavior and that our knowledge of psychology is based on empirical study.

This textbook presents core concepts common to introductory courses. The 15 units cover the traditional areas of intro-to-psychology; ranging from biological aspects of psychology to psychological disorders to social psychology. This book can be modified: feel free to add or remove modules to better suit your specific needs. Each module in this book is accompanied by instructor's manual, PowerPoint presentation, test items, adaptive student quiz, and reading anticipation guide.

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