Some More (Free) Psychology Textbooks

I’ve recently, for some reason, been collecting links to a number of free psychology textbooks – either books released under a Creative Commons licence, such as OpenStax Psychology and the almost-but-not-quite rude-sounding Noba Collection, or texts that, for one reason or other have gone out-of-print, been superseded by a newer, shiner, version or simply fallen off a publishing cliff – and thought it might be an idea to post the stuff I’ve collected in time for the New Academic Year (Sort of. Maybe.).

Introducing Social Psychology (2015): The 8^th edition of this textbook covers a wide range of topics (research methods, aggression, deviant behaviour and more) from a social psychological perspective. Hence the title.

Probably.

Everything is also in Black and White.

Quite literally.

Discovering Psychology (2011) The 5^th edition of Hockenbury and Hockenbury’s textbook (so good they named it twice. Or maybe there’s two of them…) – it’s now in its 8^th edition – covers much the same ground as just about every other Psychology textbook (Research Methods, Neuroscience, Learning, Memory, Personality…) but you might find the page layout a little weird (and if you don’t believe me, take a look).

Introduction to Psychology: This series of texts may take a little bit of explanation, so bear with me. It seems that Charles Sanger created a free Introduction to Psychology textbook (2013) that, under some sort of Creative Commons license could be freely adapted by other teachers / colleges. This means Colleges could take Sanger’s somewhat basic layout and adapt it to their own particular needs – hence this (2018) version from Lake County College that actually looks a lot better than the “original”. There may be other versions, so it might be worth looking around.

Or alternatively adapting your own…

Psychological Science (2010): The third edition of a textbook that’s now well-into it’s 6^th reincarnation covers much same stuff as every other textbook currently on the market, but its claimed USP is that it offers students a “thorough and interesting overview of contemporary psychological research using the best practices from the science-of learning research. It develops psychological literacy by presenting the material in a way that is directly related to their lives”.

The truth or otherwise of this bold claim is now something about which you can be the judge.

Psychology (2015) The 4^th edition of this big, colourful, text is filled with pretty pictures, nice illustrations, self-tests, chapter summaries and video links (that only work if you’ve signed-up to the MyLab access feature that constitutes the main USP of the text). Even without the (very expensive…) MyLab, this is a perfectly serviceable text, even though you’ll have to forgo the “Student Voice videos” that introduce each chapter, where “Psychology students share personal stories about how the chapter theme directly applies to their lives”.

Which, to my untutored ear actually sounds like a plus-point.

But then, what do I know?