If you’re a college student or professor looking for general psychology books to help you learn or help you teach, you’ve come to the right place. All of these books are general enough for any psychological field, and all of the authors have PhDs in psychology, meaning that you can trust the contents of the books. Whether you’re looking for a book presenting a brief overview of the field of psychology or a book highlighting some of the skills necessary to understand psychology research, one of these five books should be appropriate.
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Great psychology books for college students and professors
If you’re planning on majoring in psychology, reading one of these books can help you prepare, and if you’re a psychology professor looking for books for your students, one of these should be just right.
Bonior, A. (2016). Psychology: Essential Thinkers, Classic Theories, and How They Inform Your World. Berkeley: Zephyros Press.
This book is just a straightforward primer on psychology and its history. In this book, the author discusses the fields of cognitive psychology, behavioral psychology, psychoanalytical psychology, personality psychology, and developmental psychology. This book could be a good resource for introductory psychology classes, or for students looking to learn more about these individual fields of psychology so they can choose what to focus on in their psychology major.
Geher, G. (2019). Own Your Psychology Major! A Guide to Student Success, First Edition. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
This book is directly aimed at college students who are majoring or planning to major in psychology. This means it would also be good for advisors or parents who are looking for something for a student as well. The book is meant to help psychology majors get the most out of their program, and also includes a lot of information on making a career out of psychology beyond an undergraduate degree.
Meltzoff, J., Cooper, H. (2018). Critical Thinking about Research: Psychology and Related Fields, Second Edition. Washington: American Psychological Association.
This book is meant to help students get more out of research papers. It teaches students to be reasonably skeptical so that they can verify a paper’s claims for themselves, rather than just taking every research paper at its word. A lot of psychology is just reading research, so it is absolutely crucial to be able to do so accurately, and this book will help with that.
Oppenheimer, D., Klein, G. (2017). Psychology: The Comic Book Introduction. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
This book is also a primer on psychology and its history, but it is in the form of a comic book. Despite that, it is still useful for college students (or even high school students) considering a degree in psychology, especially for visual learners. The author is a psychology professor who has won the Nobel Prize in Literature, so you can trust that the information is correct and presented thoughtfully.
Urban, J.B., van Eeden-Moorefield, B.M. (2017). Designing and Proposing Your Research Project. Washington: American Psychological Association.
This book is good for college students who need to design a research project, but the lessons contained within will be good for anyone studying psychology. This book will help the reader choose a research topic and then design a study around that topic. Anyone who wants to learn more about designing psychology research will find this to be a useful handbook.
Wrapping up
Whether you are a high school student interested in psychology, a college student considering a psychology major, or a professor looking for textbooks for their introductory psychology students, I hope that one of these books fulfills your needs. While they have different focuses, they are all trustworthy resources written by extremely qualified authors. Although they are mostly targeted toward students, any one who works in psychology can get useful information from any of these books.
