By Debi Brannan and Cynthia D. Mohr, Western Oregon University, Portland State University. Friendship and love, and more broadly, the relationships that people cultivate in their lives, are some of the most valuable treasures a person can own. This module explores ways in which we try to understand how friendships form, what attracts one person to another, and how love develops. It also explores how the Internet influences how we meet people and develop deep relationships. Finally, this module will examine social support and how this can help many through the hardest times and help make the best times even better.

By Kathleen B. McDermott and Henry L. Roediger III, Washington University in St. Louis.  “Memory” is a single term that reflects a number of different abilities: holding information briefly while working with it (working memory), remembering episodes of one’s life (episodic memory), and our general knowledge of facts of the world (semantic memory), among other types. Remembering episodes involves three processes: encoding information (learning it, by perceiving it and relating it to past knowledge), storing it (maintaining it over time), and then retrieving it (accessing the information when needed). Failures can occur at any stage, leading to forgetting or to having false memories. The key to improving one’s memory is to improve processes of encoding and to use techniques that guarantee effective retrieval. Good encoding techniques include relating new information to what one already knows, forming mental images, and creating associations among information that needs to be remembered.

By Anda Gershon and Renee Thompson, Stanford University, Washington University in St. Louis. Everyone feels down or euphoric from time to time, but this is different from having a mood disorder such as major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder. Mood disorders are extended periods of depressed, euphoric, or irritable moods that in combination with other symptoms cause the person significant distress and interfere with his or her daily life, often resulting in social and occupational difficulties. In this module, we describe major mood disorders, including their symptom presentations, general prevalence rates, and how and why the rates of these disorders tend to vary by age, gender, and race. In addition, biological and environmental risk factors that have been implicated in the development and course of mood disorders, such as heritability and stressful life events, are reviewed. Finally, we provide an overview of treatments for mood disorders, covering treatments with demonstrated effectiveness, as well as new treatment options showing promise.

By Lorin Lachs, California State University, Fresno. Most of the time, we perceive the world as a unified bundle of sensations from multiple sensory modalities. In other words, our perception is multimodal. This module provides an overview of multimodal perception, including information about its neurobiology and its psychological effects.

By David Watson, University of Notre Dame. 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.

By Cristina Crego and Thomas Widiger, University of Kentucky. The purpose of this module is to define what is meant by a personality disorder, identify the five domains of general personality (i.e., neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness), identify the six personality disorders proposed for retention in the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) (i.e., borderline, antisocial, schizotypal, avoidant, obsessive-compulsive, and narcissistic), summarize the etiology for antisocial and borderline personality disorder, and identify the treatment for borderline personality disorder (i.e., dialectical behavior therapy and mentalization therapy).

By Edward Diener and Richard E. Lucas, University of Utah, University of Virginia, Michigan State University. 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. Thus, trait psychology rests on the idea that people differ from one another in terms of where they stand on a set of basic trait dimensions that persist over time and across situations. The most widely used system of traits is called the Five-Factor Model. This system includes five broad traits that can be remembered with the acronym OCEAN: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Each of the major traits from the Big Five can be divided into facets to give a more fine-grained analysis of someone's personality...

By Robert V. Levine, California State University, Fresno. This module introduces several major principles in the process of persuasion. It offers an overview of the different paths to persuasion. It then describes how mindless processing makes us vulnerable to undesirable persuasion and some of the “tricks” that may be used against us.

By Nathaniel M. Lambert, Brigham Young University. Most research in the realm of relationships has examined that which can go wrong in relationships (e.g., conflict, infidelity, intimate partner violence). I summarize much of what has been examined about what goes right in a relationship and call these positive relationship deposits. Some research indicates that relationships need five positive interactions for every negative interaction. Active-constructive responding, gratitude, forgiveness, and time spent together are some sources of positive deposits in one’s relational bank account. These kinds of deposits can reduce the negative effects of conflict on marriage and strengthen relationships.

By Susan T. Fiske, Princeton University. People are often biased against others outside of their own social group, showing prejudice (emotional bias), stereotypes (cognitive bias), and discrimination (behavioral bias). In the past, people used to be more explicit with their biases, but during the 20th century, when it became less socially acceptable to exhibit bias, such things like prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination became more subtle (automatic, ambiguous, and ambivalent). In the 21st century, however, with social group categories even more complex, biases may be transforming once again.

By Chris Patrick, Florida State University. Psychopathy (or “psychopathic personality”) is a topic that has long fascinated the public at large as well as scientists and clinical practitioners. However, it has also been subject to considerable confusion and scholarly debate over the years. This module reviews alternative conceptions of psychopathy that have been proposed historically, and reviews major instruments currently in use for the assessment of psychopathic tendencies in clinical and nonclinical samples. An integrative theoretic framework, the Triarchic model, is presented that provides a basis for reconciling differing historic conceptions and assessment approaches. Implications of the model for thinking about causal hypotheses of psychopathy, and for resolving longstanding points of contention in the field, are discussed.

By Kenneth Tan and Louis Tay, Purdue University. The relationships we cultivate in our lives are essential to our well-being—namely, happiness and health. Why is that so? We begin to answer this question by exploring the types of relationships—family, friends, colleagues, and lovers—we have in our lives and how they are measured. We also explore the different aspects of happiness and health, and show how the quantity and quality of relationships can affect our happiness and health.

By Christie Napa Scollon,Singapore Management University.Psychologists test research questions using a variety of methods. Most research relies on either correlations or experiments. With correlations, researchers measure variables as they naturally occur in people and compute the degree to which two variables go together. With experiments, researchers actively make changes in one variable and watch for changes in another variable. Experiments allow researchers to make causal inferences. Other types of methods include longitudinal and quasi-experimental designs. Many factors, including practical constraints, determine the type of methods researchers use. Often researchers survey people even though it would be better, but more expensive and time consuming, to track them longitudinally.Scollon, C. N. (2021). Research designs. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers.

By Angela Lukowski and Helen Milojevich, University of Calfornia, Irvine. What do infants know about the world in which they live – and how do they grow and change with age? These are the kinds of questions answered by developmental scientists. This module describes different research techniques that are used to study psychological phenomena in infants and children, research designs that are used to examine age-related changes in development, and unique challenges and special issues associated with conducting research with infants and children. Child development is a fascinating field of study, and many interesting questions remain to be examined by future generations of developmental scientists – maybe you will be among them!

By Rajiv Jhangiani, Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Social psychologists are interested in the ways that other people affect thought, emotion, and behavior. To explore these concepts requires special research methods. Following a brief overview of traditional research designs, this module introduces how complex experimental designs, field experiments, naturalistic observation, experience sampling techniques, survey research, subtle and nonconscious techniques such as priming, and archival research and the use of big data may each be adapted to address social psychological questions. This module also discusses the importance of obtaining a representative sample along with some ethical considerations that social psychologists face.

By Deanna M. Barch, Washington University in St. Louis.  Schizophrenia and the other psychotic disorders are some of the most impairing forms of psychopathology, frequently associated with a profound negative effect on the individual’s educational, occupational, and social function. Sadly, these disorders often manifest right at time of the transition from adolescence to adulthood, just as young people should be evolving into independent young adults. The spectrum of psychotic disorders includes schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, delusional disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, schizophreniform disorder, brief psychotic disorder, as well as psychosis associated with substance use or medical conditions. In this module, we summarize the primary clinical features of these disorders, describe the known cognitive and neurobiological changes associated with schizophrenia, describe potential risk factors and/or causes for the development of schizophrenia, and describe currently available treatments for schizophrenia.

By Dan P. McAdams, Northwestern University.For human beings, the self is what happens when “I” encounters “Me.” The central psychological question of selfhood, then, is this: How does a person apprehend and understand who he or she is? Over the past 100 years, psychologists have approached the study of self (and the related concept of identity) in many different ways, but three central metaphors for the self repeatedly emerge. First, the self may be seen as a social actor, who enacts roles and displays traits by performing behaviors in the presence of others. Second, the self is a motivated agent, who acts upon inner desires and formulates goals, values, and plans to guide behavior in the future. Third, the self eventually becomes an autobiographical author, too, who takes stock of life — past, present, and future — to create a story about who I am, how I came to be, and where my life may be going. This module briefly reviews central ideas and research findings on the self as an actor, an agent, and an author, with an emphasis on how these features of selfhood develop over the human life course.

By Adam John Privitera, Chemeketa Community College. The topics of sensation and perception are among the oldest and most important in all of psychology. People are equipped with senses such as sight, hearing and taste that help us to take in the world around us. Amazingly, our senses have the ability to convert real-world information into electrical information that can be processed by the brain. The way we interpret this information-- our perceptions-- is what leads to our experiences of the world. In this module, you will learn about the biological processes of sensation and how these can be combined to create perceptions.

By Todd Kashdan, George Mason University. Social anxiety occurs when we are overly concerned about being humiliated, embarrassed, evaluated, or rejected by others in social situations. Everyone experiences social anxiety some of the time, but for a minority of people, the frequency and intensity of social anxiety is intense enough to interfere with meaningful activities (e.g., relationships, academics, career aspirations). When a person’s level of social anxiety is excessive, social interactions are either dreaded or avoided, social cues and emotions are difficult to understand, and positive thoughts and emotions are rare, then that person may be diagnosed with social anxiety disorder (or social phobia). There are effective treatments—with both medications and psychotherapy–for this problem. Unfortunately, only a small proportion of people with social anxiety disorder actually seek treatment.