Introductory Psychology in Modules Understanding Our Heads, Hearts, and Hands

Introductory Psychology in Modules: Understanding Our Heads, Hearts, and Hands is a unique and comprehensive introduction to psychology. It consists of 36 short modules that keep students engaged with humor, a narrative style, and hands-on activities that facilitate interactive learning and critical thinking.

Each stand-alone module focuses on a major topic in psychology, from the brain, sensation, memory, and cognition to human development, personality, social psychology, and clinical psychology. The modular format also allows a deep dive into important topics that have less coverage in other introductory psychology textbooks. This includes cross-cultural psychology, stereotypes and discrimination, evolutionary psychology, sex and gender, climate change, health psychology, and sport psychology. This truly modular format ? ideal for both face to face and virtual learning ? makes it easy for instructors to customize their readings and assign exactly what they wish to emphasize. The book also contains an abundance of pedagogical features, including numerous hands-on activities and/or group discussion activities, multiple-choice practice quizzes, and an instructor exam bank written by the authors.

By covering both classic and contemporary topics, this book will delight students and instructors alike. The modular format also makes this a useful supplementary text for classes in nursing, medicine, social work, policing, and sociology.

I. History of and Methods in Psychology:

1) Psychology and the Four Ways of Knowing

2) Seven Windows on the History of Psychology

3) Doing Good Science: Internal Validity in Psychological Research

4) Doing Relevant Science: External Validity and Archival Research

II. The Brain:

5) Six Important Features of the Human Brain

6) The Structure and Function of Key Brain Regions

III. Genetics & Evolution:

7) Genetics – Our Biological Origins

8) Evolutionary Psychology: How the Past Informs the Present

IV. Sensation & Perception:

9) How the World Gets Inside You: Sensation and Perception

10) Four Windows on Human Perception

V. Learning:

11) Classical Conditioning: Learning by Association

12) Operant Conditioning: Learning the Consequences of Our Behavior

VI. Motivation, Emotion, and More:

13) Motivation: The Psychology of Wants and Needs

14) Emotions: Are You Feeling It?

15) Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

VII. Memory and Cognition:

16) Memory: Making the Past the Present

17) Consciousness (or the Lack Thereof)

18) Exploring the "Snap" in Snap Judgment: Judgment and Decision Making

19) Look Who’s Talking: Language and Reasoning

20) Intelligence and the Insularity of Genius

VIII. Lifespan Human Development:

21) Human Prenatal Development and Birth

22) Critical and Sensitive Periods in Human Development

23) Cognitive Development: Going from the Concrete to the Abstract

24) Psychosocial Development: Navigating Challenges Across the Lifespan

25) Adult Development: Getting There – and then Hanging in There

IX. Social, Personality, and Cultural Psychology:

26) Social Psychology: The Power of the Situation

27) Stereotypes and Social Perception

28) Six Lenses on Human Aggression

29) Is there an "I" in Altruism? Human Prosocial Behavior

30) Personality: Our Uniqueness and Why it Matters

31) Culture: How Psychology Varies with Geography

X. Clinical Psychology:

32) Everybody Hurts: Understanding Psychological Disorders

33) Getting Well: Treatment of Psychological Disorders

XI. Applied Psychology:

34) Health Psychology: How the Psychological Becomes the Physical

35) Mind Games, in a Good Way: Sport Psychology

36) Saving the Planet: Psychology and Climate Change

Brett W. Pelham is a UT Austin PhD. Brett has worked at UCLA, SUNY, Buffalo, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Swarthmore College, and Georgetown University. Brett studies the self, gender, stereotypes, health psychology, social judgment, and evolutionary psychology. He’s the author of three other textbooks. Brett is currently at Montgomery College, Maryland – where he gets to teach students from 160 nations. For fun, Brett loves being with his dogs, wife, and kids, in exactly that order. He also enjoys art, astronomy, carpentry, cooking, juggling, metallurgy, music, and studying Spanish. Brett hopes this book will inspire a diverse group of future psychologists.

David Boninger began his academic career in 1991 as a professor of Psychology at UCLA, and later at the University of Haifa in Israel. He is currently a professor at Glendale Community College in Arizona. David earned a BA from Northwestern University and PhD from The Ohio State University and has conducted and published research in the areas of persuasion, stereotypes, counterfactual thinking, and consumer behavior. David’s perfect day is one spent outside with his wife and two daughters. His outside antics include running, hiking, kayaking, and biking. David loves the oceans, the mountains, and the trees, especially Aspens.