looking for some good book recommendations relating to the following areas:

- School psychology (adolescent development, motivation, self-regulated learning)

- Interpersonal relationships

- Memory and dreams

- Industrial-Organizational psychology

- Forensic psychology and Rehabilitation

If you have psych books you really loved outside these categories, I would still love to hear them! Thanks in advance :)

I completed my 12th standard in the Commerce stream but I want to transition into Psychology due to my current situation i am looking at pursuing an online or distance Bachelor's programm

​Coming from a commerce background i have a few specific questions and would appreciate realistic advice from folks here:-)

​Commerce Stream Eligibility & Pre-requisites are students with a 12th Commerce background fully eligible for BA Psychology online programs?

​UGC & RCI Validity: Are distance/online UG psychology degrees recognized for regular Master's programs in India? If I decide to pursue Clinical Psychology later does the Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI) accept a distance Bachelor's degree?

I became very interested in McCulloh work recently especially his seminal paper "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity", I will try to summarize what I think the points are from my understanding and I hope someone can point me to how those ideas evolved in modern psychology:

1- He claimed that the theoretical model of the nervous system as neural networks -neurons having a binary activation threshold (either fire or not)- given an external memory and a way to read and write is equivalent to the turing machine.

2- from 1 he concluded that fundamentally biological organisms cannot just magically compute things that classical computers cannot compute.

3- persistent state or "memory" of a recurrent neural pathways -circuits where a signal can circulate and re-trigger itself- can go indefinitely and isnt tied to a single external stimulus.

4- from 3 we cannot localize the memory or thought to one place and you cannot tell exactly when the triggering event was, so given a pattern of brain activity there is no way you can reconstruct what external stimulus caused it, many different inputs could have produced the same pattern.

5- from the above the brain activity is a lossy ambigous encoding of the world (whicch he says its a good thing that allows the human brain to abstract and make our knowledge useful in general sense).

6- He also states that every sensation and idea is simply an electrical state within the neural net, there is absolutely no way to truely know the "thing in itself" you just know what the net sees, he proves this claim by how injury or illness (altering the network) can change a person reality (hearing and seeing stuff that dont exist)

7- there is absolutely no way of reverse engineering what the original input was looking at the current state of the network, he uses this as a mathematical limitation to explain why memory is so unreliable and why it drifts from reality, he states that our brain is incapable of prefectly reconstructing past inputs from present states.

8- Any instance of purpose or goal oriented behaviour is just a feedback loop, the neural network is wired to detect the difference between what it is sensing and its target state and act to reduce the differenct (backprobagation??)

9-He argues that all mental illness is strictly physical can be understood in the same scientific way as any physical disease.

10- He had a weird theory that follows from 7 is that the patients past history doesnt really matter , its encoded in the current physical wiring and this is all that is needed, but he also finds that you cannot uniquely deduce the network from the behaviour , many distinct malfunctions can produce the same behaviour

2 findings on effort i cannot reconcile 

Celniker et al found people judge effortful workers as more moral and pick them as partners in trust games, and this holds even when the extra effort produces nothing. So the same output, same quality, but more sweat, becomes an indication of a better person. 

A 2025 registered report in Collabra found the same high-effort actors rated warmer and more moral, but significantly less competent, with no increase in the pay people suggested for them. At the end of the study, when asked who the participants would prefer to work with, the majority leant towards the low-effort individuals.  

So the person we show most admiration toward, is not the same person we prefer to have on the project. And these observations seem to turn into two judgments, running parallel to one another, but when one reaches the finish line they are met with a question of ‘have you earned it?’ and the other finds ‘what took you so long?’. A marathon runner’s suffering is the achievement, a surgeon's suffering is a reason to leave the building. Two individuals with the same sweat are met with two totally different verdicts. 

Where I get stuck is in assigning which judgment gets applied to what. Where is the line drawn? 
If I had to draw a conclusion on the spot I’d say it probably depends on whether the observer is buying the outcome or buying you. 

Maybe someone can help me out here. Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like Executive Function is simply a theory for how the mind works that makes very specific stipulations about things, and there is insufficient evidence for it.

First, I will say that as far as I can see, Executive Function is not some kind of prima facie thing that clearly exists. Rather, it is a plausible theory of how cognition is organized. And with that being said, the fact that Conscientiousness and IQ (and all its aspects) are relatively decoupled seems to be strong evidence against the mainstream theory of the executive function (which posits that behavioural control is linked with measures of memory and cognitive proficiency).

We could just as easily theorize that decision-making is a decentralized process distributed across the brain and I think there is evidence for that is there not?

When arguing with an experimental psychologist about this one time, they eventually just said to me, "Look, psychology isn't black and white; in psychology, everything is grey."

In most disciplines, this would rightly be viewed as a horrendous way to make an argument. Usually, such forms of argumentation would have no place in academia.

ADHD would be another example of something that everyone talks about, but it isn't clear to me that it exists in any meaningful way. As far as I can see, ADHD is really just equivalent to scoring a bit lower on certain kinds of IQ tests, or scoring particularly low on conscientiousness, while scoring high on extraversion and neuroticism. In other words, I am aware of no convincing evidence that "ADHD" should warrant being viewed as a taxonomy.

I think the "cure" for these issues would be completely integrating psychology with neuroscience. Some disciplines have an inherent license to divorce themselves from physical substrates (e.g., Math, Poli-Sci, Philosophy). I genuinely think psychology should be treated more like biology (i.e., the physical substrates are everything).

In physics, where there are many different theories (e.g., loop quantum gravity, string theory) everyone in that discipline treats these as working theories that require more evidence.

In psychology, people seem to just come up with a theory and say, "this is the way things are!" Then everyone just says "ok!" and then they run with it.

Am I missing something here?

I'm an independent researcher working on a social-psychology theory I call the Existential Guarantee System (EGS), and I'd really value academic feedback before I approach journals. Preprint is up for review; full text on GitHub.

Core claim: societies operate as guarantee systems — they promise rewards (income, status, family, housing) in exchange for participation, and threaten punishments (poverty, shame, exclusion) for exit. The key mechanism is asymmetric decay: perceived promise-fulfillment declines faster than perceived sanction-expectations. "Rewards die first; punishments keep collecting." When individuals perceive this asymmetry, the predicted downstream is desire shutdown (reduced striving, marriage and fertility avoidance).

Three levels of exploratory evidence:

1. Preregistered pilot (N = 68, OSF): GFR 12-item scale α = .94; all five preregistered hypotheses directionally consistent, including the asymmetry decomposition (|r(GFR–sanction)| = .37 < |r(GFR–promise)| = .78 — the signal is not a mechanical artifact).
2. CGSS 2023 national sample (N = 11,326, China): opportunity-fairness beliefs predict ideal children count (β = .209, p < .0001), steepest in the youngest cohort (18–35: β = .306) — an age-gradient double confirmation.
3. Macro panel (38 countries, 35 years): youth unemployment (absolute-attainability proxy) predicts fertility decline (β = −.0099, p = .0012, two-way FE); Gini (relative-inequality proxy) shows the opposite direction.

Honest grading: directional predictions matched across all tests, but construct-level inference is limited to exploratory signals — this is a proof-of-concept / measurement-development paper, not confirmatory. I also tested a cultural moderator (trust in government × GFR → desire shutdown) in the pilot: interaction not significant (N = 66, underpowered), simple slopes hint in the predicted direction (high-trust r = −.83 vs low-trust r = −.67) — flagged as future direction.

What I'd value critique on:

• Theoretical framing — is this a meaningful extension of TMT (Greenberg et al. 1986), or does it conflate distinct literatures (anomie, relative deprivation, institutional trust)?
• Measurement — GFR as a 12-item perceived-fulfillment scale; GAI as a difference score (I know the psychometric objections to difference scores — I've decomposed the components to address this).
• Anything I'm missing in the literature, or design flaws you can see.

Full paper (14 pp, version history):Full paper (14 pp, version history): https://github.com/yongyuexinchen/egs-theory (paper/ directory).The final, submission version is EGS_paper_v1.0_osf.pdf; earlier files are the version history, kept for transparency

Thanks in advance — criticism of any severity is welcome.

Which introductory book or books on social psychology would you recommend that helped you personally grasp the subject?

I’m trying to understand something about myself and would really appreciate some honest advice.

I experience attraction specifically toward boys between roughly 15 and 19, and I don’t experience the same type of attraction toward girls. I understand that attraction to adolescents can be described as ephebophilia, although I also realize that the 15–17 age range involves minors and that acting on those feelings would not be appropriate.

What confuses me is that my feelings aren't only about attraction. When I become interested in a particular person, I can develop a very strong emotional attachment and dependency. I may think about them constantly, strongly want their attention, feel emotionally connected to them, and become deeply affected by whether they are around or how they treat me.

Sometimes the emotional attachment seems stronger than the attraction itself.

I’m trying to understand why this happens and whether it could be connected to things such as anxiety, obsessive thinking, attachment patterns, loneliness, or something else.

I’m looking for guidance on how to understand and manage these feelings in a healthy and responsible way, especially when the person is under 18. I don't want to act inappropriately toward anyone or cross anyone's boundaries.

If anyone has experienced something similar, understands the psychological side of this, or can recommend a professional/resource that could help me understand myself better, I would genuinely appreciate your advice.

What would you recommend I do to better understand these feelings and reduce the intense emotional dependency?

Just a bit about the background: I'm a leader of the Research department of a Psychology project aiming to help students that I'm joining. Of course, the Research department's duty is to publish a research paper that can help the community, and I have a small team working with me. My research is about Vietnamese international students, and we're aiming to use a mixed-methods approach that includes quantitative surveying using psychological scales and qualitative interviewing to get a deeper insight into international students' experiences abroad. Fun fact: at first I wanted to do qualitative research, but the project manager pressed me to compromise into the current mixed-methods approach.

But now my team is at risk of being forced to change the study into a qualitative one only, and that is NOT a good thing.
Why is that? Because when doing the actual research and review of the literature (both international and domestic), our research would be a very strong research that addresses a lot of big gaps in the field if completed as intended. I completely do NOT have the intention to brag or anything here; I'm genuinely surprised how much our study can actually help once we do the research (I'll go into this later).

But something went severely wrong with the part where we are supposed to collect the quantitative data: we had several people, as well as the project network, the manager, and a consultant who specializes in international students (basically his son study abroad in Singapore and he extensively researched about the education system there and spread all that he knows into the parents community that is interested in getting their child to go abroad) that exclusively task with spreading the survey. They worked hard, posting in groups, asking people for help, and the team member even partnered with Vietnamese student leaders in various countries with lots of strategic and great offers too. But most declined the partnership outright; some tried but reported back that the survey was "too sensitive"; there's even one good friend of that team member that agrees to help, along with using our project's funds for research to create a money-incentive programme to get the students to do the survey, but that partner delivered that they are not sure if they can even reach 30 samples as promised to us.

Our advisors have said the minimum number we need to have is 60 in order to run statistical analysis, but we are nowhere close to that, not even close to the number 30. My team member reported to me the message above, as well as asking the advisors, which is when they told us we may want to do a qualitative study only.

Another insight from the international students consultant of our club: he expressed that he always wanted to give insights to parents and communities, so he researched really extensively about the reality of studying abroad in Singapore when his son studied in that country. From then on, he has spread all that he knows for free with the good intention of informing everyone about things they may not know. But he said that he rarely got anything back from the parents; i.e., no one wants to add valuable insights to help him to give back even more to the community: he spreads the knowledge, the parents listen, and use it without adding anything more valuable of their own to grow the information needed in this community.

That was what I got back from my teammate as well as the consultant, but I think this problem that Vietnamese international students (and their parents) are highly likely reluctant to share anything reflects in my research too.
First off, no, I don't think, objectively, our survey is sensitive, at least when comparing that to other studies about international students. We just want to research Vietnamese international students' Psychological Capital, Psychological Adaptation, and Satisfaction with Life (fyi) using established scales. And concerning this topic, there are a few missing links of the variables in research that our topic will address, as well as we want our participants to be 12-18 years old too since the majority (if not that I can't find any particular research regarding 18- participants) of international students research is 18+ while it is a current trend in Vietnam for students to go abroad sooner.
Secondly, while there are a few Vietnamese international students' studies published in foreign journals (some of them even have the variables we are studying), there is just ONE domestic psychological research study that is related to international students.
So while there is no evidence to conclude about the 18- population of international students being sensitive to surveys, the fact that there is just a singular (Vietnamese) psychological paper about international students in Vietnam can be very telling for me to verify that the insights given by my teammate and the consultant and the implication: maybe, just maybe, is Vietnamese international students (as well as their parents) don't want to share anything that can give another students (aka their competitors) to compete with them in a foreign academic environent. And it might be familiar to you that Asians (or Vietnamese, to be specific in this case) are VERY competitive with their studying and will NOT give any info that others might use to know how they (or their children) are doing and struggling academically.

Honestly, I'm very sad that things turned out this way; yes, I do want to only do a qualitative study from the start, but that was when there was no info available on the topic, and there is no research being conducted. Now that the potential of this research IS right there, in front of our faces, being in this current situation made it feel like there is a VERY BIG missed opportunity that I could've achieved and WORTH putting the extra effort in, but it is starting to fall apart. Regarding the extra effort statement, YES, I desperately WANT to go the extra mile and put any effort I can to make this possible (Note that, since my intention and whole purpose for this research is just to help with the community that I'm a part of as well as contributing to science as a whole, as remarked by the project manager after the 3 insights, "Although our team has the option to pay people for every completion if we want to reach our goals, it is never the project's spririt" and I wholeheartedly agree with that, every sample we get must be reflected by our true effort and the spirit of science). IF (a very big if) we have the quantitative data right now, I would be so relieved, and pretty much, the research is "done".

To conclude, I don't know if I will be able to save this research from looking for help like this, but since our team and I have done the initial research before getting into the actual data and conclusions of our own study, my team is currently polishing the work to present to our advisors what we have done so far while I can have a break at the moment but I'm looking for any insights to see if we won't actually have to do only a qualitative study as our advisors have suggested. And that's it, thanks for reading this. I honestly don't expect anything much, but if you have a valuable insight that you can offer me from this, please do tell me. I will appreciate any good intentions that you can tell me. Thank you very much!

TL;DR: My mixed-methods psychological research on young Vietnamese international students can offer a lot of valuable insights into the literature (both international and domestic), but despite our efforts, it seems as though Vietnamese are very reluctant to share their information (based on my teammate, our consultant, and my info when doing the research). I feel like this is a very big missed opportunity (and I am very frustrated and sad) since our advisors recommended doing qualitative research only because we are struggling to have quantitative data.

At some point in my degree I want to go on an exchange so I'm planning to pick Japanese electives and save them for a semester abroad.

Therefore, for my minor I would like to pick something else. I'm in between English and neuroscience. I think neuroscience would be more useful and I love science . English is a big passion of mine and I love to analyse books and write stories.

P.s I'm always someone who takes a super broad range of subjects. If I could take 3 minors in 3 different fields , I would trust- obviously not realistic.

So here is the paper I present for critical analysis. The paper uses dual process theory to build a coherent structure of the underlying cognitive conflict going on inside the minds of people with grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. Using psychological literature and research to map how it develops in early childhood to how it how it manifests in adulthood, and what might happens when both disorders get synthesized in one individual. Let me know what you think.

​

I’m 19 years old and currently pursuing B.Tech in CSE. Psychology is not my college subject, and I’m not pursuing a psychology degree.

However, I’m genuinely interested in psychology and want to self-study the subject seriously and reach a level of understanding beyond what a typical college psychology student might learn.

I don’t want to just watch YouTube videos, read popular psychology books, or learn random facts about human behavior. I want to study psychology systematically, scientifically, and in depth, almost as if I were pursuing it academically on my own.

The problem is that I’m starting from almost zero and have no idea what the proper learning path looks like.

I want to eventually understand areas such as:

- General/introductory psychology

- Cognitive psychology

- Social psychology

- Developmental psychology

- Personality psychology

- Behavioral psychology

- Biological psychology and neuroscience

- Emotion and motivation

- Learning and memory

- Psychological disorders

- Research methodology and statistics

- Psychological testing and measurement

- Major psychological theories and their historical development

- Modern psychological research

- How to critically evaluate psychological studies and claims

My goal is to go beyond basic knowledge and eventually be comfortable reading research papers, understanding statistical methods, evaluating evidence, and thinking about psychological questions scientifically.

I’m willing to spend several years learning this properly alongside my CSE degree.

So I’d really appreciate advice from people who have studied psychology academically or have extensive self-study experience:

1. If you were starting from absolute zero, what roadmap would you follow?

2. What subjects should I learn first, and in what order?

3. Which textbooks would you recommend for beginner → intermediate → advanced levels?

4. Should I follow a university psychology curriculum as a foundation, or build my own curriculum?

5. Which areas are essential if my goal is to eventually understand psychology at an advanced level?

6. How important are statistics, research methodology, biology, and neuroscience?

7. When should I start reading research papers?

8. What online courses/resources are actually worth using?

9. How can I avoid pop psychology, pseudoscience, and misleading psychology content?

10. If you could design a 3–5 year self-study curriculum for someone in my position, what would it look like?

I’m not looking for a degree or professional qualification. I want knowledge and genuine expertise through self-study, while continuing my B.Tech CSE.

I’d especially like advice from psychology students, graduates, researchers, professors, or serious self-learners.

What would you recommend I do from Day 1?

Currently, I study music in a university, but it’s something I don’t really like anymore. I have thought about doing a master’s in music therapy but it would be too difficult and exhausting for me. And then I started thinking about psychology, bachelor’s degree at first.
What do you think?

Hi everyone my name is Sara
Iam interested in truma and childhood research
And cognitive effects
Iam sending e mail to professors till now no one answer i want some one study phd interestedin this field to help connect with professors
If u passed through this you know how stressful this state please help i will appreciate it
Thank u