Open Educational Resources: Psychology and Social Sciences
Major Repositories
Additional Resources
Psychology of Personality
- Psychology from OpenStax 10 Modules on psychology of personality
- The Psychodynamic Perspective- NOBA Originating in the work of Sigmund Freud, the psychodynamic perspective emphasizes unconscious psychological processes (for example, wishes and fears of which we’re not fully aware), and contends that childhood experiences are crucial in shaping adult personality.
- Personality Traits - NOBA Personality traits reflect people’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Personality traits imply consistency and stability—someone who scores high on a specific trait like Extraversion is expected to be sociable in different situations and over time.
- Gender -NOBA This module discusses gender and its related concepts, including sex, gender roles, gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexism. In addition, this module includes a discussion of differences that exist between males and females and how these real gender differences compare to the stereotypes society holds about gender differences.
- Personality Assessment This module provides a basic overview to the assessment of personality. It discusses objective personality tests (based on both self-report and informant ratings), projective and implicit tests, and behavioral/performance measures. It describes the basic features of each method, as well as reviewing the strengths, weaknesses, and overall validity of each approach.
- Self-Regulation and Conscientiousness Self-regulation means changing oneself based on standards, that is, ideas of how one should or should not be. It is a centrally important capacity that contributes to socially desirable behavior, including moral behavior. Effective self-regulation requires knowledge of standards for proper behavior, careful monitoring of one’s actions and feelings, and the ability to make desired changes.
- Creativity 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.
- Self-Efficacy The term “self-efficacy” refers to your beliefs about your ability to effectively perform the tasks needed to attain a valued goal. Self-efficacy does not refer to your abilities but to how strongly you believe you can use your abilities to work toward goals. Self-efficacy is not a unitary construct or trait; rather, people have self-efficacy beliefs in different domains, such as academic self-efficacy, problem-solving self-efficacy, and self-regulatory self-efficacy.
- Intellectual Abilities, Interests, and Mastery Psychologists interested in the study of human individuality have found that accomplishments in education, the world of work, and creativity are a joint function of talent, passion, and commitment — or how much effort and time one is willing to invest in personal development when the opportunity is provided. This module reviews models and measures that psychologists have designed to assess intellect, interests, and energy for personal development.
Course Libguides
Regis McCord worked with librarians to create this customized course for PSY 250, using his own Mind Maps paired with readings that are freely available online.
Project Gutenberg
NOBA Collection
- Introduction to Psychology: The Full Noba Collection This textbook represents the entire catalog of Noba topics. It contains 101 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. Noba is an online platform that provides open, ready-made psychology textbooks and the opportunity to build a textbook from freely available chapters. Users must create an account to use Noba.