How to Use this GuideThis guide provides information and resources on teaching human development across the life span in an Introduction to Psychology course. All resources are Open Access and can be downloaded or added to a Course Management System (LMS) via the hyperlinks.IntroductionThis section introduces students to biological mechanisms that underlie behavior.  Specifically, students will be introduced to the structures and functions of the nervous system, and how the nervous system interacts with the endocrine system.Biology of Behavior is a core topic in the APA’s recommendations for Strengthening General Psychology, and is also a core topic in the Ohio TAG learning objectives. This topic is required for all Introduction to Psychology courses in Ohio as part of Pillar 1: Biological. Recall that the TAG requirements call for a second topic to be included from this pillar, which can be either Sensation or Consciousness or, time permitting in your course, both.

How to Use this GuideThis guide provides information and resources for teaching Therapy Approaches in an Introduction to Psychology course. All resources are Open Access and can be downloaded or added to a Course Management System (LMS) via the hyperlinks.  IntroductionThis section will provide an overview of different approaches to therapy, compare and contrast psychosocial therapies and biological therapies, and discuss the difference between a psychologist and psychiatrist.

How to Use this GuideThis guide provides information and resources on introducing the topic of thinking and cognition. All resources are Open Access and can be downloaded or added to a Course Management System (LMS) via the hyperlinks.IntroductionThinking is one of the smaller topics that make up cognitive psychology (along with perception, attention, intelligence, and memory). Faculty may want to first introduce Cognitive Psychology and discus how thinking fits into all the other areas.  This topic lends itself to several in-class activities to emphasize the different concepts. Faculty may also want to pair this section together with Intelligence and language development.

Originally created in 1990, the Ohio Transfer Module is a subset of general education courses guaranteed to transfer from campus to campus in the state of Ohio. This benefits students by ensuring their courses transfer - saving them money and time to degree if they change institutions. Faculty panels have determined a core set of learning objectives, or Transfer Assurance Guides (TAGs), for courses identified in the Ohio Transfer Module. The TAG specifies learning objectives to guide how individual instructors teach the course, ensuring key points of consistency for students no matter where they take the course. These objectives are periodically reviewed, with the most recent update in 2016; see Ohio’s Transfer Assurance Guide (TAG) for Introduction to Psychology for more information.

The science of social psychology investigates the ways other people affect our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It is an exciting field of study because it is so familiar and relevant to our day-to-day lives. Social psychologists study a wide range of topics that can roughly be grouped into 5 categories: attraction, attitudes, peace & conflict, social influence, and social cognition.

Humans are not perfect decision makers. Not only are we not perfect, but we depart from perfection or rationality in systematic and predictable ways. The understanding of these systematic and predictable departures is core to the field of judgment and decision making. By understanding these limitations, we can also identify strategies for making better and more effective decisions.

When people think of emotions they usually think of the obvious ones, such as happiness, fear, anger, and sadness. This module looks at the knowledge emotions, a family of emotional states that foster learning, exploring, and reflecting.

Welcome to the study of human growth and development, commonly referred to as the “womb to tomb” course because it is the story of our journeys from conception to death. Human development is the study of how we change over time.  Although this course is offered in psychology, this is a very interdisciplinary course. Psychologists, nutritionists, sociologists, anthropologists, educators, and health care professionals all contribute to our knowledge of life span.

“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 (semantic memory), among other types. Remembering episodes involves three processes: encoding information (learning it, by perceiving it and relating it to past knowledge), storing it (maintaining it over time), and then retrieving it (accessing the information when needed). Failures can occur at any stage, leading to forgetting or to having false memories. The key to improving one’s memory is to improve processes of encoding and to use techniques that guarantee effective retrieval. Good encoding techniques include relating new information to what one already knows, forming mental images, and creating associations among information that needs to be remembered. The key to good retrieval is developing effective cues that will lead the rememberer back to the encoded information. Classic mnemonic systems, known since the time of the ancient Greeks and still used by some today, can greatly improve one’s memory abilities.

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. The scientific field of behavior genetics attempts to study these differences empirically, either by examining similarities among family members with different degrees of genetic relatedness, or, more recently, by studying differences in the DNA of people with different behavioral traits. The scientific methods that have been developed are ingenious, but often inconclusive.

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, adaptive physiological and behavioral functions are similar across many animal species.

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 change are reviewed. The mechanisms thought to produce personality stability and personality change are identified and explained.

This module provides a basic overview to the assessment of personality. It discusses objective personality tests (based on both self-report and informant ratings), projective and implicit tests, and behavioral/performance measures. It describes the basic features of each method, as well as reviewing the strengths, weaknesses, and overall validity of each approach.

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 sociable in different situations and over time. Thus, trait psychology rests on the idea that people differ from one another in terms of where they stand on a set of basic trait dimensions that persist over time and across situations.

Have you ever had trouble teaching the various topics of social psychology and fitting them together to form a coherent field? Dr. Stangor felt like he was presenting a laundry list of ideas, research studies, and phenomena, rather than an integrated set of principles and knowledge. He wondered how his students could be expected to remember and understand the many phenomena that social psychologists study? How could they tell what was most important? It was then that he realized a fresh approach to a Social Psychology textbook was needed to structure and integrate student learning; thus, Principles of Social Psychology was born. This textbook is based on a critical thinking approach, and its aim is to get students thinking actively and conceptually Đ with a greater focus on the forest than the trees. Yes, there are right and wrong answers, but the answers are not the only thing. What is perhaps even more important is how students get to the answers Đ the thinking process itself. To help students better grasp the big picture of social psychology, and to provide you with a theme that you can use to organize your lectures, Dr. Stangor's text has a consistent pedagogy across the chapters.

Originating in the work of Sigmund Freud, the psychodynamic perspective emphasizes unconscious psychological processes (for example, wishes and fears of which we’re not fully aware), and contends that childhood experiences are crucial in shaping adult personality. The psychodynamic perspective has evolved considerably since Freud’s time, and now includes innovative new approaches such as object relations theory and neuropsychoanalysis. Some psychodynamic concepts have held up well to empirical scrutiny while others have not, and aspects of the theory remain controversial, but the psychodynamic perspective continues to influence many different areas of contemporary psychology.

Psychology is designed to meet scope and sequence requirements for the single-semester introduction to psychology course. The book offers a comprehensive treatment of core concepts, grounded in both classic studies and current and emerging research. The text also includes coverage of the DSM-5 in examinations of psychological disorders. Psychology incorporates discussions that reflect the diversity within the discipline, as well as the diversity of cultures and communities across the globe.

Sexuality is one of the fundamental drives behind everyone’s feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. It defines the means of biological reproduction, describes psychological and sociological representations of self, and orients a person’s attraction to others. Further, it shapes the brain and body to be pleasure-seeking. Yet, as important as sexuality is to being human, it is often viewed as a taboo topic for personal or scientific inquiry.