Psychology students

lunarcat522

I know there's a lot of psychology students on here (current and former) and was wondering if anyone knows of any good resources for studying psychology at university as I plan on progressing to year 2.

I'm aware of the Richard Gross textbook Psychology the Science of Mind and Behaviour so was wondering if anyone knew of any good textbooks, websites/journal articles etc that are accessible and not too difficult to digest

Thanks!

Laura_tigger82

What topics will you be studying within psychology in year 2 @lunarcat522? Generally, as an overview, I found YouTube and Simply Psychology helpful. However, you will want to find more academic sources (like journal articles) to reference once you have a clear gist of the topic. Generally, I found websites - books - references in books - a general journal article search the most helpful as then you can stage your understanding

lunarcat522

@Laura_tigger82 I'm not sure yet specifically but maybe biological psychology, cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, individuals differences and psychological assessment, social psychology and research methods.

We've been advised to steer clear of simplypsychology

Former Member

I am just finishing up my degree in psychology and I can confidently say that my best friend throughout my degree has been Google scholar. It has been my holy grail throughout the whole process especially with writing essays. You can literally find anything psychology related and you can refine your searches to find things very specific that you may need. I will 100% be using it for my post grad.

Former Member

Hello @lunarcat522 I agree with @Diddy456

Google scholar was the most helpful tool to use for finding journals and books for essays and other assignments. Was a great way to find resources that were more unique to use for assignments too which often results in a better mark. Also make use of the filter options where you can filter the search results to be publications within the last so many years. Using more recent and up-to-date articles results in a better mark too!

sharelle

Hi @lunarcat522 ! I have just graduated from studying Psychology at university and I am starting my masters to train as a Psychotherapist. I would say that past first year of uni, you are not really relying on textbooks anymore as the style of learning will change.

In first year, your learnings are very much surface level and "by the book", whereas what you'll find during second and final year is that your further reading beyond lecture content should predominantly come from journal and scholarly articles.

The best places to access these articles would be google scholar (also finding a well-known paper and reading articles they have cited), and also checking your university's library online database (as they will most probably have an online page where you can carry out advanced searches and you will have access to them through your university).

Hope this helps!

Katie12

I agree with everyone about goggle scholar! would not have gotten through my degree without it!
Sometimes i found that the article i wanted to use was considered out of date so goggle scholar is great because you can see other articles that have cited that same paper to help find a more up to date source

PetiteQuark

I study psych for my alevels soo idk alot but I have heard of arxiv (usually its used for physics but its also used for psychology)
But the articles on arxiv are not peer reviewed however you don't need to pay to access them. Theres also the open psychology journal which is open access.

Trimina

I agree with everyone that Google Scholar and my Uni database was super helpful in collecting papers and research. Some extra tips too when keeping organising your articles within google scholar or whatever research database you decide to use is by having something to help organise them all.

Depending on your Uni they can offer free subscriptions to stuff like Paperpile which can help you organise and collate your papers. It was super useful for my degree since I could install a button on my web browser and any paper I found interesting I just press it and it would be added to my Paperpile reading list ready to be used and organised later.

Mendeley here is a good free reference collator:
https://www.mendeley.com/search/
It's just like Paperpile where you can group stuff together into folders, so if you find any particular interesting papers or research subjects on cognitive or biological psych, etc you can collate them all. Just sign up and I think, just like Paperpile it has a button to install on your web browser and can offer about 2GB of space to save whatever it is you need.

These services will just help you keep track of stuff, because as time continues you'll be given/ find loads of papers and it can be super confusing to keep track of them. Hope this helps in some way