Open Educational Resources and Psychology

This collection was curated by an ASCCC OERI discipline lead. A comprehensive list of current discipline leads is available.

The curated list provided here is intended to facilitate faculty selection of an OER text in lieu of a commercial text. If you are aware of additional resources that should be included, please contact us via our general OER e-mail.

Archived Psychology Webinars

Introductory Psychology (C-ID PSY 110)

  • Introductory Psychology (OpenStax) – LibreTexts (CC BY 4.0)

    Psychology 2e (Spielmen, Jenkins, and Lovett, 2020) (OpenStax) (CC BY 4.0)

    Includes: Powerpoint Slides, Test Bank, and Instructor Manual (Free registration and/or login required for all). OpenStax is maintained (and supported) by Rice University.  Students have the option of accessing free digital versions or purchasing a print version. CVC-OEI has imported the OpenStax text into Canvas. Additionally, Lumen Learning made an enhanced version of the digital text with embedded multiple choices available.  There are also openly available slides, assignments, and question banks available CC-BY.

  • Discover Psychology 2.0: A Brief Introductory Text (Diener and Biswas-Diener) (CC-BY-NC-SA)

    Includes: Powerpoint Slides, Test Bank (Free registration and/or login required), and Instructor Manual. Noba is “the dream project” of Ed and Carol Diener.  It has modules written by some big names in psychology  including Elizabeth Loftus, Ed Diener, Susan Fiske, David Buss, and many, many others.  There are also many links to animations and videos that are quite useful.  Students have the option of accessing free digital versions or purchasing a print version.

  • Introduction to Psychology: 1st Canadian Edition (Stangor & Walinga) (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

    Includes: Powerpoint Slides and Test Bank (Free registration and/or login required for both). Introduction to Psychology: 1st Canadian Edition was adapted by Jennifer Walinga from Charles Stangor’s textbook, Introduction to Psychology.  The adaptation and development of ancillary materials were supported by the B.C. (British Columbia) Open Textbook Project.  Students have the option of accessing a free digital version or purchasing a print version (although the shipping costs can be high). A version of this book by Cummings and Sanders is also available with a glossary and slides and test bank also available after verification of instructor status.

  • Psychology: The Science of Human Potential by Jeffrey Levy (CC-BY 4.0)

    The Science of Human Potential is designed to be a concise, cohesive introduction to psychology textbook. Psychology is described as a science studying how hereditary (nature) and experiential (nurture) variables interact to influence the thoughts, feelings, and behaviour of individuals. The remainder of the text is organized into sections entitled “Mostly Nature” (biological psychology; sensation and perception; motivation and emotion), “Mostly Nurture” (direct learning; indirect or observational learning; cognition), and “Nature/Nurture” (human potential, with regard to each of human development, personality, social psychology, maladaptive behaviour, and professional psychology). Includes H5P review exercises at the end of each chapter. Readable and editable versions are available, as is a hardcopy for sale.

Psychology of Personal and Social Adjustment (C-ID PSY 115)

Introduction to Abnormal Psychology (C-ID PSY 120)

Introduction to Human Sexuality (C-ID PSY 130)

Introduction to Biological Psychology (C-ID PSY 150)

The OERI’s Biopsychology is a complete text, but is still identified as a draft due to the need to significantly reduce the size of a number of chapters. Faculty piloted its use during the 2022-23 year and the Keys’ text is one revision that can certainly be used.

Introduction to Social Psychology (C-ID PSY 170)

Introduction to Lifespan Psychology (C-ID PSY 180)

Introduction to Research Methods in Psychology (without and with lab) (C-ID PSY 200/CID PSY 205B)

  • Research Methods in Psychology (Jhangiani, Chiang, Cuttler, and Leighton, 2019) – Libretexts) (CC BY-NC-SA)

    This Libretexts version is the fourth edition and includes a glossary. This text provides an overview of research design strategies used in psychological research. It covers the basic descriptive statistics and concepts within inferential statistics that are necessary for appreciation and comprehension of research findings. The course presents the student with the fundamentals of research that all psychology majors should know. Emphasis is placed on the critical evaluation of psychological research. Lecture slides are available.

  • Research Methods for Psychology (T. L. Brink, 2018) (CC BY-NC-SA)

    T.L. Brink is a social scientist and author of fifteen books, two dozen encyclopedia articles, and hundreds of journal articles, reviews and conference presentations.  He has posted a few textbooks with resources that include PowerPoints, games, videos, and quizzes.  One thing to note is that all of the resources are easily available to students.

  • Research Methods in Psychology (Dudley, 2019) (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

    Adapted by Michael G. Dudley from a work produced and distributed under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA) in 2010 by a publisher who has requested that they and the original author not receive attribution. Work supported by Palomar foundation.

  • Psychology Research Methods and Statistics (Pearcey, Kirsner, Randall, Willard, Williamson, and Downtain, 2017) (CC BY 4.0)

    Affordable Learning Georgia Grants Collections are intended to provide faculty with the frameworks to quickly implement or revise the same materials as a Textbook Transformation Grants team, along with the aims and lessons learned from project teams during the implementation process.

    **There is usable material here, but it is not a textbook, but rather modules/ppt etc that were developed for stat and research method classes at Kennesaw State University***

Psychological Statistics/Statistics for the Social Sciences/Introduction to Statistics (C-ID MATH 110)

Discipline-based Statistics

  • Elementary Statistics for Behavioral and Social Sciences (Oja) – LibreTexts (CC BY-NC-SA/CC BY-SA)   Worksheets for each chapter are in Canvas Commons under PSYC 2200. The author, Michelle Oja, is a California Community College faculty member. The licensing for this textbook changes based on the page (sub-section).  As most of the textbook was modified from Foster et al. (2021), much of the textbook is CC BY-NC-SA.  Most of the other authors’ work is licensed as CC BY-SA.
  • Introduction to Psychological Statistics by Foster, Lane, Scott, Hebl, Guerra, Osherson, Zimmer, 2018 (CC BY-NC-SA) University of Missouri – St. Louis “We are constantly bombarded by information, and finding a way to filter that information in an objective way is crucial to surviving this onslaught with your sanity intact. This is what statistics, and logic we use in it, enables us to do. Through the lens of statistics, we learn to find the signal hidden in the noise when it is there and to know when an apparent trend or pattern is really just randomness. The study of statistics involves math and relies upon calculations of numbers. But it also relies heavily on how the numbers are chosen and how the statistics are interpreted.” Authors are from Univ of Missouri, Rice and Univ of Houston
  • Introduction to Statistics in the Psychological Sciences (Cote, Gordon, Randell, Schmitt and Marvin, 2023) – Pressbooks (CC BY-NC-SA) This work was created as part of the University Libraries’ Open Educational Resources Initiative at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. The contents of this work have been adapted from the following Open Access Resources:
    • 1.) An Introduction to Psychological Statistics (https://irl.umsl.edu/oer/4/). Garett C. Foster, University of Missouri–St. Louis.
    • 2.) Online Statistics Education: A Multimedia Course of Study (http://onlinestatbook.com/). Project Leader: David M. Lane, Rice University.https://umsystem.pressbooks.pub/isps/
  • Recentering Psych Statistics (Bikos, 2023) – Open Textbook Library (CC BY-NC-SA)
    Covering basic statistics to ANCOVA with a chapter on R applications. Each chapter has research vignettes to make the material more accessible. Note: One chapter with extensive information about using R

Introduction to Statistics (C-ID MATH 110)

Some other resources to consider

Psychology-Specific OER Collections

This page was updated on October 3, 2023.