Introduction to Psychology
The OpenStax survey course, from the scientific method and the neuron through disorders and therapy, taught as animations.
16 units · 157 topics · 721 questions
What psychology actually studies, the schools of thought that fought over how to study it, and the fields that grew out of the argument.
1.1 What Psychology Is and Does · 1.2 Structuralism, Functionalism, and Psychoanalysis · 1.2 Behaviorism, Humanism, and the Cognitive Turn · 1.3 Contemporary Subfields of Psychology
How psychologists turn a hunch into a testable claim, the designs that separate correlation from causation, and the numbers behind a real result.
2.1 Why Psychology Needs the Scientific Method · 2.2 Case Studies, Naturalistic Observation, and Surveys · 2.2 Sampling and Sampling Bias · 2.2 Archival Research and Longitudinal vs. Cross-Sectional Designs · +10 more
The single cell that runs the nervous system, the chemistry between two neurons, and how genes, hormones, and brain structures shape behavior.
3.1 Genes, Alleles, and Gene-Environment Interaction · 3.2 Neuron Structure and the Resting Potential · 3.2 The Action Potential · 3.2 Synaptic Transmission · +9 more
The brain's daily rhythm, why the same brain looks so different at each stage of sleep, and what drugs and hypnosis do to consciousness.
4.1 Circadian Rhythms and Sleep Debt · 4.2 Why We Sleep: Restoration and Consolidation Theories · 4.3 The Stages of Sleep Across a Night · 4.3 REM Sleep, Dreaming, and Theories of Dreaming · +5 more
How raw energy from the world becomes a signal the brain can use, and how the brain assembles those signals into a scene.
5.1 Transduction and Absolute Thresholds · 5.1 Signal Detection Theory · 5.1 Sensory Adaptation · 5.2 Light and Sound as Waves · +9 more
How experience rewires behavior, from a dog salivating at a bell to a pigeon's response holding steady under a schedule of reward.
6.1 Instincts, Reflexes, and the Three Types of Learning · 6.2 Pavlov and Classical Conditioning Basics · 6.2 Acquisition, Extinction, and Spontaneous Recovery · 6.2 Stimulus Generalization, Discrimination, and Taste Aversion · +6 more
How the mind organizes ideas into categories, builds and understands language, solves problems, and how intelligence itself gets defined and measured.
7.1 Concepts, Prototypes, and Schemata · 7.2 The Structure of Language: Phonemes to Sentences · 7.2 Language Acquisition and the Critical Period · 7.3 Problem-Solving Strategies and Cognitive Biases · +5 more
How an experience becomes a memory, why some memories fade or distort while others fossilize, and what actually strengthens recall.
8.1 Encoding and the Memory Stores Model · 8.1 Working Memory and Chunking · 8.1 The Serial Position Effect · 8.1 Retrieval Cues and the Tip-of-the-Tongue State · +7 more
How thinking, moral reasoning, attachment, and identity change from before birth into old age, and the stage theories built to describe it.
9.1 Nature, Nurture, and Continuity in Development · 9.2 Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development · 9.2 Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development · 9.2 Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development · +5 more
What actually drives behavior, from a hungry stomach to a hierarchy of needs, and how the body and mind together produce an emotion.
10.1 Theories of Motivation: Drive to Self-Determination · 10.1 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs · 10.2 The Biology of Hunger and the Set Point · 10.3 The Biology of Sexual Motivation · +3 more
The competing theories built to explain why one person's way of thinking, feeling, and behaving stays recognizably the same across situations.
11.1 What Makes Personality Consistent Across Situations · 11.2 Freud's Model of Id, Ego, and Superego · 11.2 Freud's Psychosexual Stages and Fixation · 11.2 Defense Mechanisms Protecting the Ego · +6 more
How the presence, opinions, and mere existence of other people quietly reshape what one person thinks, feels, and does.
12.1 The Fundamental Attribution Error · 12.1 Actor-Observer and Self-Serving Biases · 12.2 Social Roles, Scripts, and the Stanford Prison Experiment · 12.3 Attitudes and Cognitive Dissonance · +8 more
How psychology gets applied to hiring, evaluating, motivating, and designing safe, usable workplaces for the people inside them.
13.1 What Industrial-Organizational Psychologists Actually Do · 13.2 Job Analysis and Employee Selection Tests · 13.2 Performance Appraisal Methods · 13.3 Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment · +4 more
What stress actually does to the body over time, the coping strategies that blunt its damage, and what predicts a person's lasting happiness.
14.1 The Fight-or-Flight Response · 14.1 Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome · 14.2 Acute Versus Chronic Stressors · 14.3 How Chronic Stress Suppresses Immunity · +3 more
How a pattern of thought or behavior crosses the line into a diagnosable disorder, and what's actually happening in the brain behind each major one.
15.1 What Counts as a Psychological Disorder · 15.2 The DSM and Diagnostic Classification · 15.3 The Biopsychosocial Model of Mental Illness · 15.4 Generalized Anxiety and Panic Disorder · +8 more
How treatment for mental illness evolved from asylums to evidence-based therapy, and what each major approach actually does in the room.
16.1 From Asylums to Deinstitutionalization · 16.2 Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic Therapy · 16.2 Behavior Therapy and Systematic Desensitization · 16.2 Cognitive and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy · +5 more