Recommended reading

One of the common questions from teachers new to the program is - what books should we have in our library? The answer? Books that students want to read. Planning your library collection for students who might do an extended essay may result in many books that no one ever reads. Below is a list of some of the books that students in our school enjoy reading. If your students are readers like mine, you may find that students will suggest titles that will enrich your collection.

Magazines and databases

The following magazines and databases are good resources for extended essays.

The EBSCO database is the most commonly used database in high schools. The database has a module called "Psychology and Behavioural Sciences Collection." This has full original articles. In addition, the "eBook Academic Collection" and "eBook High School Collection" both have several full texts online. If you only have this one source, you can do your EEs. In addition, EBSCO has tools for students to take notes and highlight texts for later use.

The Psychologist - published by the BPS. Quarterly. Also contains teacher support materials.

Scientific American Mind - a monthly publication with many topics highly relevant to the IB curriculum. Highly recommended. All back copies are available in EBSCO.

When looking at sites that might help to find journal articles that are free on the Internet, I recommend the following three sites.

  • The most basic place to look is Google Scholar.  Always type in what you are looking for by adding the key terms "psychology" and "pdf."  For example, "social media", bulimia, adolescents, psychology, pdf
  • Research gate
  • Semantic Scholar

Animal research

Bats sing, mice giggle by Karen Shanor

The Bird Way: A new look at how birds talk, work, play, parent, and think - by Jennifer Ackerman

The inner life of animals by Peter Wohlleben

A Primate's Memoir by Robert Sapolsky

Clinical and health psychology

Brain on fire - my month of madness by Susannah Cahalan

Crazy like us by Ethan Watters

The great pretender by Susannah Cahalan (the story of the Rosenhan study)

Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker

The Inflamed Mind: A Radical New Approach to Depression by Edward Bullmore

Mad in America by Robert Whitaker

The Man who mistook his wife for a hat by Oliver Sacks

Night falls fast – Kay Redfield Jamison

Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness by Richard Thaler

Shrinks - the untold story of psychiatry by Jeffrey Lieberman and Ogi Ogas

The Skeleton Cupboard: The making of a clinical psychologist by Tanya Bryon

Cognitive psychology

Amazing decisions by Dan Ariely

The art of choosing by Sheena Iyengar

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Drive by Daniel Pink

Forever today by Deborah Wearing

Influence by Robert Cialdini

The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals about our Power to Change Others by Tali Sharot

The invisible gorilla by Chabris & Simon

Mistakes were made, but not by me by Carol Tavris

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

Out of my skull: The psychology of boredom by James Danckert and John Eastwood

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

The Shallows: how the internet is changing the way we think by Nicholas Carr

Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahnemann

Criminal psychology

The Dark Side of the Mind: True Stories from my life as a forensic psychologist by Kerry Daynes

Picking Cotton: Our memoir of injustice and redemption by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton

The psychopath test by Jon Ronson

Why they kill: the discoveries of a maverick criminologist by Richard Rhodes

Zero degrees of empathy: A new theory of human cruelty by Simon Baron-Cohen

Developmental psychology

The Big Disconnect by Catherine Steiner Adair

In the shadow of the Holocaust: the second generation by Aaron Hass

Love at Goon Park by Deborah Blum

Nurture shock by Bronson & Merryman

Quiet: The Hidden Power Of Introverts by Susan Cain

Surviving Survival: The art and science of resilience by Laurence Gonzales

The Survivor's Club by Ben Sherwood

When breath becomes air by Paul Kalanithi

Research methods

Numbers rule your world: The hidden influence of probabilities and statistics on everything you do by Kaiser Fung

Research in psychology: A practical guide to methods and statistics by Colin Dyer

Research methods and statistics in psychology by Hugh Coolican

Social research methods by Alan Bryman

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