More attractive people elicit more positive first impressions. This effect is called …
More attractive people elicit more positive first impressions. This effect is called the attractiveness halo, and it is shown when judging those with more attractive faces, bodies, or voices. Moreover, it yields significant social outcomes, including advantages to attractive people in domains as far-reaching as romance, friendships, family relations, education, work, and criminal justice. Physical qualities that increase attractiveness include youthfulness, symmetry, averageness, masculinity in men, and femininity in women. Positive expressions and behaviors also raise evaluations of a person’s attractiveness. Cultural, cognitive, evolutionary, and overgeneralization explanations have been offered to explain why we find certain people attractive. Whereas the evolutionary explanation predicts that the impressions associated with the halo effect will be accurate, the other explanations do not. Although the research evidence does show some accuracy, it is too weak to satisfactorily account for the positive responses shown to more attractive people.
It may seem strange to begin a logic textbook with this question. …
It may seem strange to begin a logic textbook with this question. ‘Thinking’ is perhaps the most intimate and personal thing that people do. Yet the more you ‘think’ about thinking, the more mysterious it can appear. Do our thoughts appear in our minds because of the electro-chemical workings of our brains? Or do thoughts come from something that can’t be described by science, such as a soul? Are there deeper levels to the scientific explanation of thinking, for instance involving sub-atomic quantum effects? Or do our thoughts come from pure magic? Does it fit the case to say that our thoughts ‘come from’ some place? Or that they ‘appear’ in our minds? Are the workings of the mind very different from the workings of the heart? Or are emotions and feelings only another kind of thinking? Might the same be said of intuitions, or inspirations, or dreams?
Cognitive Psychology is a psychological science which is interested in various mind …
Cognitive Psychology is a psychological science which is interested in various mind and brain related subfields such as cognition, the mental processes that underlie behavior, reasoning and decision making.
What cognitive styles do we use to interact with technology? The GenderMag …
What cognitive styles do we use to interact with technology? The GenderMag Project has identified five cognitive facets we bring to our use of technology.
This interactive activity helps learners visualize the role of electrons in the …
This interactive activity helps learners visualize the role of electrons in the formation of ionic and covalent chemical bonds. Students explore different types of chemical bonds by first viewing a single hydrogen atom in an electric field model. Next, students use sliders to change the electronegativity between two atoms -- a model to help them understand why some atoms are attracted. Finally, students experiment in making their own models: non-polar covalent, polar covalent, and ionic bonds. This item is part of the Concord Consortium, a nonprofit research and development organization dedicated to transforming education through technology.
An idea or solution is considered creative if it is original, useful, …
An idea or solution is considered creative if it is original, useful, and surprising. However, depending on who actually judges these three criteria, we must distinguish personal “little-c creativity” from consensual “Big-C Creativity.” In any case, psychologists who investigate creativity most often adopt one of three perspectives. First, they can ask how creators think, and thus focus on the cognitive processes behind creativity. Second, they can ask who is creative, and hence investigate the personal characteristics of highly creative people. Third, they can ask about the social context, and, thereby, examine the environments that influence creativity. Although psychologists have made major advances in the study of creativity, many exciting and important questions remain to be answered.
This textbook presents core concepts common to introductory courses. The 15 units …
This textbook presents core concepts common to introductory courses. The 15 units cover the traditional areas of intro-to-psychology; ranging from biological aspects of psychology to psychological disorders to social psychology. This book can be modified: feel free to add or remove modules to better suit your specific needs.
This book includes a comprehensive instructor's manual, PowerPoint presentations, a test bank, reading anticipation guides, and adaptive student quizzes.
The NOBA Project is a growing collection of expert-authored, open-licensed modules in …
The NOBA Project is a growing collection of expert-authored, open-licensed modules in psychology, funded by the Diener Education Fund. From these open modules, Tori Kearns and Deborah Lee created an arranged open textbook for her introductory psychology class. This textbook was created under a Round One ALG Textbook Transformation Grant.
Hearing allows us to perceive the world of acoustic vibrations all around …
Hearing allows us to perceive the world of acoustic vibrations all around us, and provides us with our most important channels of communication. This module reviews the basic mechanisms of hearing, beginning with the anatomy and physiology of the ear and a brief review of the auditory pathways up to the auditory cortex. An outline of the basic perceptual attributes of sound, including loudness, pitch, and timbre, is followed by a review of the principles of tonotopic organization, established in the cochlea. An overview of masking and frequency selectivity is followed by a review of the perception and neural mechanisms underlying spatial hearing. Finally, an overview is provided of auditory scene analysis, which tackles the important question of how the auditory system is able to make sense of the complex mixtures of sounds that are encountered in everyday acoustic environments.
"The Human Controller" presents and discusses design and evaluation issues of human-machine …
"The Human Controller" presents and discusses design and evaluation issues of human-machine interaction. The focus is on understanding human perception-action couplings (limitations, preferences, adaptation) and on quantifying control behavior of humans in the direct manual control loop of vehicles, robots or other man-made tools. Case studies from automotive, aviation, medical and tele-operation applications are discussed, with a special focus on the importance of including and enhancing haptics (=the sense of touch) during manual control.
This is a free, open-educational textbook and set of course materials for …
This is a free, open-educational textbook and set of course materials for an introductory undergraduate course in cognition.
The suite is developed using open-source software (R, RStudio, Bookdown). The source code for this project is available at https://github.com/CrumpLab/cognition.
The suite includes:
This textbook: https://www.crumplab.com/cognition/textbook A course website: https://www.crumplab.com/cognition/ Web-based slide decks for a one semester long course (see course website) An exam test bank (email mcrump@brooklyn.cuny.edu)
We have plans to continually revise, improve, and add to this suite. In particular, a major stretch goal for the textbook is to embed lab activities in the form of web-based experiment demonstrations, and data-analysis demonstrations. Another goal is to develop tutorials showing others how to copy, use, and/or collaborate on content development.
Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Religion introduces some of the major traditional …
Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Religion introduces some of the major traditional arguments for and against the existence of God, as well as some less well-known, but thought-provoking arguments for the existence of God, and one of the most important new challenges to religious belief from the Cognitive Science of Religion. An introductory chapter traces the connection between philosophy and religion throughout Western history, and a final chapter addresses the place of non-Western and non-monotheistic religions within contemporary philosophy of religion.
When you teach Introduction to Psychology, do you find it difficult — …
When you teach Introduction to Psychology, do you find it difficult — much harder than teaching classes in statistics or research methods? Do you easily give a lecture on the sympathetic nervous system, a lecture on Piaget, and a lecture on social cognition, but struggle with linking these topics together for the student? Do you feel like you are presenting a laundry list of research findings rather than an integrated set of principles and knowledge? Have you wondered how to ensure your course is relevant to your students? Introduction to Psychology utilizes the dual theme of behavior and empiricism to make psychology relevant to intro students. The author wrote this book to help students organize their thinking about psychology at a conceptual level. Five or ten years from now, he does not expect his students to remember the details of most of what he teaches them. However, he does hope that they will remember that psychology matters because it helps us understand behavior and that our knowledge of psychology is based on empirical study.
This is a derivative of INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY by a publisher who has requested that they and the original author not receive attribution, which was originally released and is used under CC BY-NC-SA. This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This textbook represents the entire catalog of Noba topics. It contains 90 …
This textbook represents the entire catalog of Noba topics. It contains 90 learning modules covering every area of psychology commonly taught in introductory courses. This book can be modified: feel free to rearrange or remove modules to better suit your specific needs.Please note that the publisher requires you to login to access and download the textbooks.
The microscopic world is full of phenomena very different from what we …
The microscopic world is full of phenomena very different from what we see in everyday life. Some of those phenomena can only be explained using quantum mechanics. This activity introduces basic quantum mechanics concepts about electrons that are essential to understanding modern and future technology, especially nanotechnology. Start by exploring probability distribution, then discover the behavior of electrons with a series of simulations.
When people think of emotions they usually think of the obvious ones, …
When people think of emotions they usually think of the obvious ones, such as happiness, fear, anger, and sadness. This module looks at the knowledge emotions, a family of emotional states that foster learning, exploring, and reflecting. Surprise, interest, confusion, and awe come from events that are unexpected, complicated, and mentally challenging, and they motivate learning in its broadest sense, be it learning over the course of seconds (finding the source of a loud crash, as in surprise) or over a lifetime (engaging with hobbies, pastimes, and intellectual pursuits, as in interest). The module reviews research on each emotion, with an emphasis on causes, consequences, and individual differences. As a group, the knowledge emotions motivate people to engage with new and puzzling things rather than avoid them. Over time, engaging with new things, ideas, and people broadens someone’s experiences and cultivates expertise. The knowledge emotions thus don’t gear up the body like fear, anger, and happiness do, but they do gear up the mind—a critical task for humans, who must learn essentially everything that they know.
This module provides a structured way of observing and describing a patient's …
This module provides a structured way of observing and describing a patient's current state of mind, under the domains of appearance, attitude, behavior, mood and affect, speech, thought process, thought content, perception, cognition, insight and judgment. There are some minor variations in the subdivision of the Mental State Examination (MSE) and the sequence and names of MSE domains.
The text provides an upper-level undergraduate introduction and explanation of the social …
The text provides an upper-level undergraduate introduction and explanation of the social and cognitive processes involved in human communication, focusing on how people create understanding.
In this activity, students interact with 12 models to observe emergent phenomena …
In this activity, students interact with 12 models to observe emergent phenomena as molecules assemble themselves. Investigate the factors that are important to self-assembly, including shape and polarity. Try to assemble a monolayer by "pushing" the molecules to the substrate (it's not easy!). Rotate complex molecules to view their structure. Finally, create your own nanostructures by selecting molecules, adding charges to them, and observing the results of self-assembly.
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