About This Course

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.

Acknowledgments

This book has benefited from the contributions of many people, including Stephen Alexander, Madison Barnett, Mike Bonham, Rachael Brown, Alisha Cassani, Adrianna Cluff, Elizabeth Gaudino-Goering, Katie Gibson, Amanda Gill, Jake Hamilton, Kayden Hawkins, Ammon Heinzen, Maya Landgraf, Josh Marshall, Emily Parks, Madelin Pepper, Luke Phillips, Anakin Purser, Blake Rawlings, Celia Scott, Sarah Thompson, Samantha Wendell, and Bridget Wyall.