General Psychology for Honors Students

Reviewed by Sara Burton-Steele, Associate Professor, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts on 6/4/24

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

I thought the individual chapters were fairly comprehensive. However, there were some chapters that seemed to be omitted from the book. Maybe a chapter on Emotion/Motivation or Thinking/Decision Making would be a nice addition. I liked the focus on research methods in most of the readings. The only chapter I would have like to see more of was related to sensation and perception. It seems the focus was mostly on vision, but I did not see much on hearing, taste etc.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

I did not notice any errors. I specifically read over the content areas that are my specialty and the info seemed correct.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

I don't think this text will be obsolete anytime soon. There were some parts of the social psych section that could be updated a little to reflect the more recent controversy surrounding the details of the experiments and their conclusions. I thought the inclusion of the section on gender was very relevant. I wish more psych textbooks had that built in the way this one does.

Clarity rating: 5

I really liked the clarity of this text. It seems like it would be very accessible for a typical undergraduate honors student (or even high school student).

Consistency rating: 4

I really liked how each chapter/unit starts out the learning objectives and key terms right in the beginning. Telling the reader in a very clear way what to expect. I think it would be useful to have more of the exercises and critical thinking pieces in each reading though (maybe just 1 or 2 questions).

Modularity rating: 5

I think this text is divided nicely. All the readings could easily be assigned to students without it being too much a burden. There are plenty of graphs and pictures of break up the text too.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

Overall, I thought the organization made sense. The only suggestion I have is to maybe move the substance use and abuse section more towards the Psychopharmacology unit.

Interface rating: 4

Overall, everything worked well. It might have just been an issue on my end but the video in reading 3 "View a video illustrating how to do an APA PsycINFO search." was not working. Says video is not available anymore.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

Did not notice any grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

I don't think its offensive. I do think it could use a few more pictures of people other than Caucasian. I think that the multicultural psychology section in reading 1 could be its own separate reading, instead of being nestled into the history of psych section.

Comments

Honestly, I would adopt this text if I was teaching an honors section of Intro to Psych. I think the content is appropriate for honors students and is easy to follow. There were only a few changes that I suggested above, but those are mostly small things to address. Overall, it seems like a comprehensive textbook that would be useful to students.

Reviewed by Nicole Hansen-Rayes, Adjunct Instructor of Psychology, City Colleges of Chicago on 3/13/23

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

The table of contents is as follows;
• Introduction
• Psychophysiology
• Consciousness
• Perception
• Healthy Living
• Learning and Memory
• Social Psychology
• Psychological Development
• Personality and Psychological Disorders
• Therapy and Psychopharmacology

Content Accuracy rating: 5

All content is well-sourced and up-to-date.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

Content is a good blend of theory and real-world applications.

Clarity rating: 5

I really like how some concepts were grouped together giving a great flow to the overall outline of the text.

Consistency rating: 5

Everything looks uniform.

Modularity rating: 5

I chose the following text as it was published in 2020 and has a well-rounded overview of essential psychological concepts. The author has a good mix of text and pictures along with key terminology and definitions, and additional sources for students to tap into. I also really like the organization of the chapters and the combination of related concepts.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

Even though the title of the textbook includes ‘honors students’, I don’t believe that this excludes any college level student from being able to use this resources efficiently.

Interface rating: 5

I did not have any issues with navigation as a PDF.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

I did not see any grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

I think that this textbook would be an excellent OER option and I would recommend it. It covers all of the key concepts and brings a fresh approach of multicultural focus.

Comments

I like this book a lot and I'm excited that it could be used as a OER source.