Top 11 Psychology Books For Students Updated 04 /2024

Psychology can be very interesting, even if it's hard to remember when you're studying for a test and looking at a lot of books.

Here are eight books that will not only help you with your course but also help you remember why you loved psychology in the first place.

Make your mind smarter by reading about the mind.

Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole: Extraordinary Journeys into the Human Brain by Dr Allan Ropper and Brian David Burrell.

In Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole, a book about clinical neurology, the author talks about how hard it is to help people when their bodies and minds are in trouble.

Because he watches and listens to what the patient says, he can quickly figure out what's wrong with him. Dr. Ropper's patients are full of absurdities, just like Alice's adventures in Wonderland. He talks about some of the more interesting cases he sees.

The man found in traffic because he couldn't find his way home, a child molester who has a dead brain inside a body that's still alive, and a mom with ALS who has to decide if living inside her own head is worth it.

This is a good book for psychology students who want to learn about the different symptoms of brain diseases. It's written more like a story than a list of facts, and it goes into great detail with each case. The book is both compassionate and informative, and it gives you a better idea of how hard it is to be a neurologist.

Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments by Alex Boese

Elephants on Acid is a look at some of the weirdest psychological experiments that have been done over time (but mostly in the 1970s) in the name of science. Experiment: The elephant named Tusko was chosen for a study to find out what happens when an elephant is given a huge dose of LSD.

Other experiments that have been talked about include: Will babies naturally choose a well-balanced diet? In an emergency, will the average dog call for help? Because we can't tickle ourselves. So, can we bring back the dead?

During this time, there were no safety measures in place to protect people who were being experimented on. This book is full of weird and scary experiments.

Every psychology student should read this because it makes you understand how important it is to follow ethical rules when doing psychological experiments in the 21st century. This is a good book to read. This is a book that is both scary and funny.

Keep in mind that this book may be upsetting to animal lovers because many of the experiments in this book are very upsetting.

Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson

No, I haven't thought about that. Have you ever bought the more expensive of two similar things and then spent a long time telling yourself that the cheaper one wouldn't have worked out? Is that the case? Then this book is for you.

It was written by two social psychologists and talks about cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, and other cognitive biases. It explains why people think they are right when they make a mistake so they don't have to deal with the embarrassment of being wrong.

If someone else made a mistake, "memory helps us remember that they did it." It happens all the time, for example, when you say you put something somewhere and it turns out to be in a different place. You start to think that someone else must have moved the thing.

What do Tavris and Aronson do? They look into whether or not people believe the stories they tell themselves or other people, and what that has meant through time.

The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt

Winner: Jonathan Haidt takes ancient wisdom and ideals that people thought were important to follow and tests them against modern science in his book The Happiness Hypothesis. When he gets the results from these tests, he then applies the lessons he learned from them to his daily life in the modern world.

If you're someone who likes a mix of philosophy and psychology, then this book is just for you. For its uniqueness, the book puts well-known principles like "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and "do unto others as you would want them to do unto you" to the test in this book. This is a book that will help you think about how people act.

The Private Life of the Brain by Susan Greenfield

People who study psychology at the University of Oxford should read this one because it's on the reading list for the class. As a book, The Private Life of the Brain looks into "the consequences of neurological disorders, the effects of drugs, the nature of thought when you dream, when you're sick, and when you're young."

A lot of people like to read this book, even though it can be a lot of work. If you want to learn about neuroscience research, this is the book for you. The book gives a fascinating look into the human mind and shows how physiology and experience work together to make up a person.

People often make assumptions about how the brain works. Greenfield challenges these assumptions while answering interesting questions like, "What is the relationship between pleasure and pain?" and "How might an understanding of the science of emotion help us better understand schizophrenia and depression?"

You should read this book if you want to learn more about how the human brain works.

The Little Book of Psychology by Emily Ralls and Caroline Riggs

This book has everything you need to know about psychology, but none of the extra stuff. if you want to learn about some of the most important ideas in psychology, this is a good book to read.

In this book, you will learn about some of the best psychologists, their theories, studies, and themes that you need to know for your class.

Only 128 pages long, this book is a great place to start if you're about to start college as a psychology major.

The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Philip Zimbardo

Author Philip Zimbardo, a well-known social psychologist, wrote The Lucifer Effect, which is based on his film The Stanford Prison Experiment. It looks at how good people can be made to do bad things and where the line is drawn between good and bad.

Zimbardo talks about his famous Stanford Prison Experiment, in which a group of college students were placed in a mock prison environment and randomly split into either "prisoners" or "guards." Zimbardo was the superintendent of the experiment, and he tells the story in person.

There had to be a break in the experiment at the end of a week because both groups quickly got into their roles, with the guards putting some prisoners through psychological abuse. There was a lot of stress in this environment, and some prisoners left early because they had mental breakdowns.

If you're studying psychology or not, this book is worth reading. Even though there have been a lot of people who don't like the experiment, it's a good read. It also gives a good look at the power of roles and group identity, and how people can be cruel very quickly in the right situation.

In the book, Zimbardo talks about the psychological reasons why this experiment worked so well, and he also talks about the terrifying truth about human nature.

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson

From an influential psychologist, Jon Ronson learns how to tell if someone is a psychopath. This person thinks that a lot of high-ranking people are psychopaths.

If he looks at a lot of verbal and nonverbal clues, he can do this, he is told. A death squad leader, a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who says he isn't a psychopath, and an iconic CEO who has been talked about in the press are all people he talks to next.

This book isn't going to help you very much in your class, but it's still a fun and interesting read for psychology students.

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