Reddit mentions: The best psychology research books

I have tried twice to reply, and reddit somehow vaporized the post both times. Hopefully this one will work.

Two things stand out in your comments. 1. You seem exceptionally comfortable in your assumptions, and 2. Your knowledge gaps are huge. I make these observations not condescendingly, but matter of factly.

As mentioned prior, you seem an individual who is comfortable believing what you want to believe -- as opposed to the type of individual willing to pursue truth at all costs, even at the cost of comfort or happiness.

Placing comfort over truth is not necessarily a disastrous life choice; because there is no higher arbiter, happiness is the paramount thing. Many people can (and do) live happily ever after while embracing basic falsehoods as truths. Wisdom is not a prerequisite for happiness; indeed, in some cases it may even be an impediment to it.

With that said, IF you are interested in truth -- and in filling in your knowledge gaps -- I would suggest the following books:

• Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman
  
• On Human Nature by E.O. Wilson (everyone in the world should read this book)
  
• The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
  
  Also, on the subject of hell, you may find this article interesting: http://bible-truths.com/lake5.html
  
  It was written by a committed Xian (as you seem to be), and as I once was many years ago. The bible is like the sweater in Weezer's sweater song; if you yank on any of the loose threads with brutal honesty, and have the doggedness to keep yanking, it is only a matter of time before the sweater comes undone.
  
  As Morpheus offered Neo, one might say that truth is the red pill and comfort is the blue pill. Which you swallow, and where your life goes from here, is up to you. As mentioned, I was a deeply committed Xian myself at one time -- but many years ago I chose the red pill, and many years later I can say I did not regret it.
  
  Good luck on your journey...

This probably isn't the most helpful answer, but any resources I might have used to learn the fundamentals myself are probably pretty outdated now. Honestly I'd just try to find highly rated books on Amazon that are reasonably priced. I haven't read this one for psych research methods, but looking through the table of contents, it covers a lot of what I'd expect (ethics, validity and reliability, study design and common methods) and according to the reviews it's clear, concise, and has good stats info in the appendix. I had a similar "handbook" style textbook in undergrad that I liked. For practicing stats, I'm personally more of a learn-by-doing kind of person, and there are some free courses out there like this one from Khan Academy that covers the basics fairly well.

But if you can, take courses in college as electives! Chances are you'll have a few to fill (or maybe audit some if you can't get credit), so go outside of HCDE's offerings to get some complementary skills in research or design. I usually find classrooms to be more engaging than trying to get through a textbook at home on my own, and especially for psych research methods, you'll probably have a project that gives you hands-on experience doing research with human subjects (most likely your peers). There are lots of free online courses out there as well if you aren't able to take them for credit.

You guys are making me miss school.

Getting specifically into UX self-study, in addition to a UX-specific research methods book (this is a newer version of one I read in school) I'd also go through the UX classics like Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things and Emotional Design, Krug's Don't Make Me Think, and Casey's Set Phasers on Stun (this last one being more of a fun read than a practical one).

Hello. For general introduction these books (here, here) are popular picks. They are revised every few years and include new findings accordingly. (here is the link to the free e-book) You can continue reading into the disciplines you find interesting. I definitely recommend sticking to the history of psychology, how it historically developed and branched out of modern philosophy. The reason for reason for this is because you need to be able to engage psychology philosophically in order to interpret what underlies psychological findings. Also most of the early psychologists were philosophers, not scientists. (one might be interested to trace all the way back to Greek philosophers, by that I mean "Read classics!") You will learn about some of the precursors of psychology in the books I mentioned.

One can find excellent lectures on Psychology online these days for free so you might want to check them out. (Yale University has a popular course on introductory psychology)

Also what type of field in Psychology interest you? (Animal Behavior, Biology, Neuroscience, Sociology, Clinical Psychology, Developmental, Culture/Religion, Language, Psychoanalysis, Cognition)

Here are some of my personal recommendations.

1. A History of Personality Psychology - Frank Dumont (2010)
   
2. Discovery of the Unconscious - Henri Ellenberger (1994)
   
3. Fifty Key Thinkers in Psychology - Noel Sheehy
   
4. Statistics - David Hand
   
5. Factor Analysis - Richard L. Gorsuch (if you are interested in the scientific end of psychology, especially research fields, learning statistical tools like factor analysis will help greatly)
   
6. Little Science, Big Science, and Beyond - Derek Solla Price (1986)
   
7. Anxiety - Daniel Freeman & Jason Freeman
   
8. Perception - Brian Rogers
   
9. The Emotional Brain - Joseph Ledoux (1998)
   
10. Cognitive Neuroscience꞉ The Biology of the Mind (2019)

If you did not struggle with stats in undergrad, I would not worry about it, to be honest.

I was also out of school for 4 years before starting and I did not have any difficulties with the statistics classes we started with. My intro stats classes in grad school covered much of the material that we did in undergrad, just more in-depth, more variations on the tests, and we were expected to understand the math behind the equations more fundamentally.

If it happens to be helpful, my first two quarters of stats had these textbooks:

Statistical Methods for Psychology - https://www.amazon.com/Statistical-Methods-Psychology-David-Howell/dp/0495597848/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1523397437&sr=8-2&keywords=statistical+methods+for+psychology&dpID=51T8KyWmliL&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

and

Design and Analysis: A Researcher's Handbook - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0135159415/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A17LQ734FP5YDC

Please do not pay lots of money for them.

If it is at all helpful (aka not stressful), I also took a pic of my "map of statistical analyses", which basically has the non-fancy statistics - https://imgur.com/xw6cGxM Do NOT look at this and be like "oh no!". Look at it and be like, "Oh yeah, an ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) is a thing that exists."

If you do decide to spend a little time reviewing, I strongly recommend not spending a lot of time on it and not feeling worried about it. This is your time to unwind a bit and you should enter your program feeling chill and relaxed if it all possible. You got it because you are smart, passionate, and hard working, and, as a result, you will do fine in statistics.

>Freud was a strict adherent to the scientific method

No therapist nor therapy is completely successful, that would be a miracle. I don't know Freud's complete bibliography of published cases, but from what I read even Freud himself considered the case of Dora a failure. But when Freudian psychoanalysis is measured with the empirical tools we have today the success rate is not that high compared to other therapies (and none of them is 100% successful).

Anyway, I was not arguing if Freud was a good therapist or not, I was criticizing his theoretical framework. If you think he was "a strict adherent to the scientific method", you don't really know what scientific method is in the Karl Popper sense of the word.

The standard intro textbook on scientific method in psychology, How to Think Straight About Psychology by Keith E. Stanovich, have just called it's first chapter "The Freud Problem". You should find a pdf or torrent of that book online easy, check out that chapter. Or just read this or this summary.

As for Freuds view of religion being emotional immature, I find it ironic that the movement he started himself was more dogmatic than most Christian denominations alive today. Freud managed to come in conflict with almost all the intellectual capacities that he managed to lure to the cult of psychoanalysis, basically because he disagreed when people tried to evolve his ideas. Eugene Bleuer, the man who defined schizophrenia put it best: this 'all or nothing' is in my opinion necessary for religious communities and useful for political parties...but for science I consider it harmful. There is a reason that Freud is being taught in the humanites department but not in the psychology department.

I currently live with two MTF transwomen, both Christian. One Catholic, one protestant. I am genderqueer and Anglican. I have personally done a lot of research on this issue, as have my roommates.

A great place to get actual scientific literature (as opposed to gender theory) is here: http://www.amazon.com/Gender-Dysphoria-Disorders-Sex-Development/dp/146147440X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411329057&sr=1-2&keywords=gender+dysphoria

My conclusion after quite a lot of research: Yes, the existence of intersex individuals does throw a monkey wrench into the traditional framework.

The gender binary is an illusion. An approximation. It seems like gender and sex operate more on a double bell-curve. If you do some research on sex-differentiation and how that works, it's pretty easy to see how things can end up less-than-normative.

There are a lot of people that display non-normative traits in relation to their chromosomal sex. This can be anything from ambiguous genitalia, abnormal hormonal disorders (like hirsutism), chromosomal disorders (XXY, CAIS, etc), and neurological disorders such as gender dysphoria where one's brain chemistry more closely matches that of the opposite sex.

Sexual orientation is just one of many sex-linked traits. In the case of male homosexuality you have males expressing a typically female trait in terms of attraction, and vice versa for female homosexuality. So essentially, just like intersex individuals (where both masculine and feminine traits are morphologically present), you have a mixed expression of sex that deviates from the norm. If you accept that one's sex is encompasses more than just genitalia but also the neurology of the brain and hormones, then it seems to greatly complicate the issue of who gets to marry whom.

I have had quite a few discussions with pastors and priests on the subject. It is like trying to convince someone from the middle ages that the earth revolves around the sun, not vice versa. What seems to be the "obvious truth" is blown away when you scrutinize the subject. Problem is, most theologians haven't actually studied the biology of sex in any capacity.

Unfortunately I can't give you many answers. I consider myself fairly sexually conservative, but I think most conservative theology regarding sex and gender is extremely misguided. I don't think people are entitled to sexual fulfillment in their lives, but at the same time it seems like an intellectual cop-out to say, "Any deviations from the normative male/female binary must be celibate because we don't know how to fit you into our theological framework."

I would buy an old edition, but the best introduction to psychology is How to Think Straight About Psychology. Doesn't just give an overview of the field, but explains the difference between what is and is not psychology.

http://www.amazon.com/Think-Straight-About-Psychology-Edition/dp/0205914128

From the description:


Keith Stanovich's widely used and highly acclaimed book presents a short introduction to the critical thinking skills that will help students to better understand the subject matter of psychology. How to Think Straight about Psychology, 10e helps students recognize pseudoscience and be able to distinguish it from true psychological research, aiding students to become more discriminating consumers of psychological information.

Learning Goals
Upon completing this book, readers should be able to:
Evaluate psychological claims they encounter in the general media.
Distinguish between pseudoscience and true psychological research.
Apply psychological knowledge to better understand events in the world around them.

some good introductory science podcasts are Science Friday and RadioLab.

I can highly recommend "How To Think Straight About Psychology" by Keith Stanovich - it's not just about psychology, but careful, critical, scientific thinking in general.

A very good and readable book about where we currently are in a variety of scientific fields is "Thirteen Things That Don't Make Sense" by Michael Brooks. Don't be fooled by the sensationalist presentation, the actual content is well-researched and clear.

Should be a pretty good start.

For starters, I'd recommend the following to get a taste of the issues we have to wrestle with when thinking about resurrection:

Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes - here is an author who is almost immediately dismissed by the status quo of Christianity as being a crazy man. But in this book, he has been incredibly thorough in presenting evidence for his thesis. I know he writes other books where he speaks more generally, and I think that conservatives tend to seize this as an opportunity to attack without actually addressing the things he brings up in books like this one. Also by the same author, and related to this topic, you should check out:

The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic

Resurrection: Myth or Reality?

Related to Paul, you should read:

The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon

There are three books by this duo, and they are all fantastic - very thorough, meticulous, and yet easy to read and understand. Related to this topic, you'd want to read:

The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem

Another great book to understand where the debates lie in Jesus scholarship would be:

The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions

These are really "get your feet wet" books. But really, one of the biggest problems with theology these days, I feel, is that it is all too often done without even an attempt to connect with science. We think we can argue "the Bible says" and stop there - as if that implies "so therefore this is what we have to believe". This is generally how scholars like N.T. Wright operate - they spend all kinds of effort laying out what the language says, but never really get into the questions of whether these things are tenable with today's knowledge of science, whether or not Paul actually might not have been the author of such things, whether there are contradictions between the gospels (or some of the writings attributed to Paul), etc. With scholars like Wright, it's just assumed that everything which was said was reliable and came from the actual people we have long said it came from - we never have to think about problems like science and historical methodology.

But if you really want to understand the problems surrounding resurrection, I think you need to study what science has to say about consciousness. A few books that come to mind off the top of my head:

The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind

Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness

And if you're really up for some fun with science and the question of eternity:

Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe

The Self-Aware Universe

Please note: I don't think any of these books close the questions. They provide possibilities, for sure, and do so in a way that thoroughly wrestles with the evidence, logical problems, etc. But no one can prove or disprove afterlife, it seems. However, there are certainly many afterlife theories which simply do not work with modern science - literal bodily resurrection being one of them (if we're all going to be resurrected into physical bodies, how is our limited earth that is already stretched to the point of breaking going to support all those resurrected beings?).

I’m a psychology major. I highly recommend the book “how to think straight about psychology” as it goes into detail regarding why psychology is a real science. I honestly loved my major and I think it truly does apply to more than people think.

Here’s that link to the book.

I plan to do a masters in Biomedical Informatics soon. I currently work at a health insurance company for Medicare Part D being a business analyst/admin for our technology.

I have found the APA style manual (pg. 128-150) and Nicol and Pexman's book helpful in designing tables and figures.

Off the top of my head:

• put the table number and title in the body of the text, and dbl space
  
  
• remove all vertical borders (5.17 in style manual)
  
  
• if you are presenting "rates across conditions", then one of your columns should display conditions (or call this "rates under different criterions")
  
  
• did you provide tasks as a reinforcer? if so, then column two is OK but you might want to consider reducing the text to make it easier to read at-a-glance
  
  
• if possible, try to make each row have the same width height (kinda relates to 5.17 in style manual, with regard to white space)
  
  Edit: See above (though it might be good to balance the widths of the columns too).

I really enjoyed reading Statistics as Principled Argument by Robert P. Abelson. He covers basic probability and statistics in the context of what he thinks makes good research. It's a great book!

Edit: Included a link.

>I want to learn how my psychology and biology works.

Actually reading his Maps of Meaning book is the best way to go, but if you're looking for a broader interest in psychology and biology, I highly recommend The Norton Psychology Reader.

I think it is an evolved response. According to attached, this is just an activated attachment system.

On Human Nature

[Pair-Bonding, Romantic Love, and Evolution](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1745691614561683
Attached

Handbook to Attachment Theory

The Fantasy Bond

Not so much a general psychology book, but I enjoyed this one from one of my forensic psychology courses.
Measure of Madness
http://www.amazon.com/The-Measure-Madness-Disturbed-Disturbing/dp/0806531053

BTW, it you are going to be a psych major understand that you are going to graduate school if you want to make any money in the field.


edit: here is another one that I was supposed to read but never got around to. I hear it is good

On Human Nature
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674016386/ref=oh_details_o08_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

edit edit: another one that came to mind, good short read

Letters to a Young Therapist
http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Young-Therapist-Art-Mentoring/dp/0465057675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374088838&sr=1-1&keywords=letters+to+a+young+therapist

Another excellent book is CAR. I really like it. In addition to the regression content it teaches a good number of practices and tricks in working with R.

I've heard back very good things from psych/neuroscience folks to whom I have previously recommended Serious Stats. It's a very comprehensive treatment of classical methods, from elementary distributions through to multi-level models, all written with a lucid clarity that is rather uncommon in books with this kind of scope.

These are all good recommendations. I'd also add to my recommendation above Bayesian Cognitive Modeling: A Practical Course, which is also very good and has a fair overlap with the Kruschke book. (It's also shorter and cheaper.)

For research methods I think [Evaluating A World Of Information] (https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0393617548/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_eyXnDb5GRDMNM) is a really helpful starter. It is a visually appealing book and provides a fantastic framework for understanding how psychological research is performed.

It is not a particularly technical statistics book but has appendices which do a good job of showing you the necessary statistical concepts.

Currently in my 3rd year of undergrad, taking a Research Methods course (actually just came from it and found out I got a 100% on my first exam! SCORE!)

We are currently using this textbook (there is also an 8th edition).

Hope this helps at least add to the options :)

For quantitative research methods and SPSS, I really like Meyer, Gamst, and Guarino's book (http://www.amazon.com/Applied-Multivariate-Research-Design-Interpretation/dp/1412904129/). It lays out steps for analyzing and interpreting common research and statistical procedures (in APA format!), as well as step by step guides for SPSS (with dialogue box screenshots!).

The second edition (http://www.amazon.com/Applied-Multivariate-Research-Design-Interpretation/dp/141298811X/) is available but I have not read it -- seems like it would have more up-to-date SPSS instructions.

The book "How to Think Straight about Psychology" would be great, although it is slightly more academic than the ones you listed. Any edition of this book is going to be pretty much the same, they update it a lot because it is sometimes used as a textbook, but the changes are minimal.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Think-Straight-About-Psychology/dp/0205685900/

https://www.amazon.com/Psychological-Science-Sixth-Michael-Gazzaniga/dp/0393640345/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1538542894&sr=8-1&keywords=psychological+science+6th+edition+by+gazzaniga

​

5$ please! if not, that's okay!

For research methods in behavioral and social sciences, you probably can't get better than Shadish, Cook, and Campbell's : Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Design for generalized causal inference. As far as stats go, the Andy Field books are good and he has one for R, one for SAS, and one for SPSS. I prefer the John Fox book on Applied Regression analysis and the corresponding r book. Here are some links:
http://www.amazon.com/Experimental-Quasi-Experimental-Designs-Generalized-Inference/dp/0395615569/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417220301&sr=8-1&keywords=shadish+cook+and+campbell

http://www.amazon.com/Applied-Regression-Analysis-Generalized-Linear/dp/0761930426/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1417220395&sr=8-6&keywords=John+Fox

http://www.amazon.com/An-R-Companion-Applied-Regression/dp/141297514X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y

Cause I'm a fan: http://www.amazon.com/R-Companion-Applied-Regression/dp/141297514X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421684716&sr=1-1&keywords=john+fox

Looking for https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393640345/

Paypal $20, has to be 16e, i found 15e already but unfortunately doesn't work for my class. Thanks!

1. Abramowitz and Stegun (1965) - Handbook of mathematical functions with formulas, graphs, and mathematical tables
   
   
2. Baguley (2012) - Serious stats: A guide to advanced statistics for the behavioral sciences

Check your library for the book How to Think Straight About Psychology by Keith Stanovich. The Amazon description might not make this clear, but the book addresses a lot of your concerns. He talks about the term "soft" science and why it's not demeaning, as well as how the field of psychology is related to biology, chemistry and more.

https://www.amazon.com/Human-Nature-new-Preface-Revised/dp/0674016386

https://www.amazon.com/Sociobiology-New-Synthesis-Twenty-Fifth-Anniversary/dp/0674002350

https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/1501264338

https://www.amazon.com/Open-Society-Its-Enemies/dp/0691158134

Here's a start. All these were instrumental in dismantling communist ideology.

My local Psyc department uses this to guide 1st year undergrad courses