Psychology: Books, Videos & Websites

This program traces the history of cognitive psychology. It explores the interactions among consciousness, sensation, attention, perception, memory models, decision making, language, and thought. The program also discusses cognitive neuroscience in animals and humans.

This film begins by looking at how stricter ethical guidelines were developed in psychology. Using an on-going research project, it illustrates contemporary ethical guidelines and the issues arising from the potential conflicts between protecting participants and producing socially useful research. It ends by asking if ethical guidelines might have gone too far and are stifling important new research.

Traces the history of educational psychology from ancient philosophy to modern theories. It explores the ideas of such figures as Plato, Aristotle, Vives, Herbert, Thorndike, James, Hall, Dewey, Cubberley, Binet, Piaget, Steiner, Bloom, Bandura, Vygotsky, and Bruner.

Might psychology have ethnocentric biases? This film begins by explaining the key concept of social construction and then illustrates three sources of potential ethnocentrism: researcher, conceptual and reporting bias. It also stresses the importance of evaluation. Is there clear evidence of ethnocentrism? Is ethnocentrism becoming less of an issue in a globalising world? And, does ethnocentrism apply in the same way to all branches of psychology?

This program looks at the association of modern psychological theory with criminality and incarceration in the U.S., including prison problems, psychological explanations for criminality, and criminal justice reform.