Social Sciences
Psychology
The scientific study of mind and behaviour — including a hard-won understanding of how easily its own findings mislead.
13 fields · 121 topics · 14 curated works
Fields within Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
12Perception, memory, attention and thought as information processing.
Perception · Attention · Working Memory · Long-Term Memory · Forgetting & Interference
Judgement & Decision Making
11How people actually decide, as opposed to how models assume they do.
Heuristics & Biases · Anchoring · Availability Heuristic · Confirmation Bias · Overconfidence
Social Psychology
12Behaviour in the presence of other people, real or imagined.
Conformity · Obedience to Authority · Group Polarisation · Social Identity Theory · Attitudes & Persuasion
Developmental Psychology
10How minds change across the lifespan.
Infant Cognition · Attachment Theory · Language Acquisition · Piaget & Cognitive Stages · Theory of Mind
Personality & Individual Differences
9Stable patterns, and how well they actually predict anything.
Big Five Traits · Trait vs State · Personality Assessment · Intelligence & IQ · Heritability of Traits
Clinical & Abnormal Psychology
10Psychological disorder and treatment.
Diagnostic Classification · Anxiety & Mood Disorders · Trauma & PTSD · Personality Disorders · Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Behavioural Psychology
8Learning through consequence.
Classical Conditioning · Operant Conditioning · Reinforcement Schedules · Habit Formation · Behaviour Change Techniques
Motivation & Emotion
9What moves people, and what it feels like.
Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation · Self-Determination Theory · Goal Setting · Emotion Theories · Emotion Regulation
Psychometrics & Measurement
8Whether the instrument measures what it claims to.
Reliability · Validity · Test Construction · Factor Analysis · Item Response Theory
Evolutionary & Biological Psychology
7Behaviour explained by its history and its substrate.
Evolutionary Explanations of Behaviour · Mating & Reproduction · Kin Selection & Altruism · Behavioural Genetics · Hormones & Behaviour
Applied Psychology
8The field put to work.
Industrial-Organisational Psychology · Educational Psychology · Health Psychology · Sport Psychology · Forensic Psychology
Research Methods & the Replication Crisis
9The most important thing to understand before believing any result in this domain.
Experimental Method in Psychology · Questionable Research Practices · The Replication Crisis · Preregistration · Open Science Practices
History & Schools of Psychology
8Where the ideas came from, including the discredited ones.
Structuralism & Functionalism · Psychoanalysis · Behaviourism · The Cognitive Revolution · Humanistic Psychology
Reading in Psychology
14Start here
No prior grounding assumed.
- BookMan's Search for MeaningViktor Frankl, 1946
Written from the camps: the last human freedom is the choice of attitude, and meaning is what makes suffering survivable.
- BookInfluence: The Psychology of PersuasionRobert Cialdini, 1984
Six compliance principles that work on almost everyone, presented so you can recognise them being used on you.
- BookFlowMihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1990
Absorption occurs where challenge and skill are matched, which makes engagement something you can engineer rather than wait for.
- BookThinking, Fast and SlowDaniel Kahneman, 2011
Two systems of thought and a catalogue of the biases produced by the fast one — with several chapters since undermined by replication failures.
- BookPersonality: What Makes You the Way You AreDaniel Nettle, 2007
Treats the five-factor model as a set of trade-offs rather than a set of scores — each trait costs something wherever it pays.
- BookPeak: Secrets from the New Science of ExpertiseAnders Ericsson & Robert Pool, 2016
Expertise comes from deliberate practice with feedback at the edge of ability, not from accumulated hours.
Then
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
- PaperJudgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and BiasesAmos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, 1974· 8 pages
Three heuristics — representativeness, availability, anchoring — explain a wide family of systematic reasoning errors.
- PaperEstimating the Reproducibility of Psychological ScienceOpen Science Collaboration, 2015· 8 pages
Replicated 100 psychology studies; roughly a third produced significant effects, and effect sizes halved on average.
Go deeper
Primary sources and full treatments.
- BookThe Principles of PsychologyWilliam James, 1890
The book that founded psychology in English, on habit, attention and the stream of consciousness — still quoted because it is still right.
- BookScience and Human BehaviorB. F. Skinner, 1953
The full behaviourist case that conduct is shaped by consequences — overreaching about inner life, and still the best account of reinforcement.
- BookCognitive Therapy and the Emotional DisordersAaron T. Beck, 1976
Distress follows from the interpretation rather than the event, and the interpretation can be tested — the foundation of CBT.
- BookMind in SocietyLev Vygotsky, 1978
Cognitive development is social before it is individual: what a child can do with help today they do alone tomorrow.
- BookPsychometric TheoryJum C. Nunnally, 1967
The reference on reliability and validity — that is, on whether a psychological measurement is measuring anything at all.
- BookThe Adapted MindBarkow, Cosmides & Tooby, 1992
The founding statement of evolutionary psychology — that the mind is a set of evolved special-purpose mechanisms. Contested ever since.