This comprehensive, ready-to-adopt Introduction to Psychology course provides thorough coverage of all topics covered in a typical introductory course, including biological psychology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, social and personality psychology, and mental and physical health.

The course is organized around the recently recommended model from the American Psychological Association, which encompasses the five psychological domains, or pillars: biological psychology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, social and personality psychology, and mental and physical health psychology (see “Strengthening Introductory Psychology: A New Model for Teaching the Introductory Course”).

With the OpenStax Psychology textbook as a foundation, this contains other material curated by Lumen Learning and created by Patrick Carroll of the University of Texas at Austin. The course enriches learning with frequent application, curated videos, selected NOBA content, and interactive learning activities to foster practical skills. Engaging “Psychology in Real Life” features use recent research to help students think critically about experimental design.

What’s New?

We believe in making continual improvements to the course in order to enhance and facilitate student learning. This newest version of the course includes additional Psych in Real Life pages, which provide learners with the opportunity to think deeply about relevant psychological research. These 2019 additions include:

• Psych in Real Life: Brain Imaging and Messy Science
  • Dive into a psychological research article (McCabe and Castel) and learn more about the replication crisis
• Psych in Real Life: Consciousness and Blindsight
  • Describe unconscious perception as it relates to blindsight
• Psych in Real Life: Choice Blindness
  • Understand decision-making processes and choice blindness, based on research done by Johannson and Hall
• Psych in Real Life: Love and Pain
  • Look at two studies (Sarah Master and Jarred Younger) related to romantic love and the experience of pain
• Psych in Real Life: Blirtatiousness, Questionnaires, and Validity
  • Understand how personality tests are created, then examine how validity is measured
• Psych in Real Life: Growth Mindsets
  • Dive into Dweck’s research on growth mindsets
• Psych in Real Life: Reconsolidation
  • Understand how memory reconsolidation can be used as a therapy technique
• Psych in Real Life: Habits
  • Look at research on habitual behavior and popcorn eating by Wendy Wood and David Neal

In addition to these new pages, there are also several new assignments options. We have also used data to find areas in the course in need of further clarification or interactives, such as this interactive about reliability and validity.

Palo Alto College Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the original creators of this textbook, which we have used in our PSYC-2301 General Psychology course at Palo Alto College. Thank you for making it available to all as an open textbook.

Acknowledgments from the original creators can be found on the previous page.

We would also like to thank the U.S. Department of Education Open Pilot Program for awarding Palo Alto College (and sister colleges) with $1.96 million to fund the Alamo Colleges Open Educational Resources (OER) Consortium Project. This grant made it possible to adapt this textbook for Palo Alto College students and beyond. Thank you, too, to Dr. Pamela Moriarty (Department of Education grant) and Dr. Rebecca Dunham (Symbiosis Educational Consultants).