IBDP Psychology optional summer reading list

Created by Mr. Grady and amended by Ms. Koprivica Redshaw

The titles in bold dark green are the most recommended. Some were recommended by current or past students. Their names appear with the books they recommended.  All reading is optional.

Year 1 summer reading (strongly suggested):

Among other themes, year 1 Psychology introduces students to three approaches to studying human behavior and mental processes: Biological, cognitive and sociocultural. Two excellent books that combine the science of psychology with compassion for individuals that are being studied are listed below. 

Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. Sacks is one of the most respected scientists and writers in modern Psychology. This is usually considered one of his finest works. In the introduction, he explains why right hemisphere disorders are rarely covered in psychological literature. 

Geoff Rolls, Classic Case Studies in Psychology. The cases are all written about as a combination of story and scientific theory, and the writing is clear and engaging. The author considers that argument that case studies cannot be generalized because they are so often about unusual lives. But in many chapters he explains how these cases contributed to scientific knowledge. The most familiar examples might be those of HM and Phineas Gage. But nearly all of the cases relate to the theories we cover in class. 

Year 2 Summer reading:

Year 2 Psychology will involve the study of abnormal psychology for SL and HL, as well as the study of developmental psychology for HL students. HL students will also learn to write paper 3, which is about research methods. 

Abnormal psychology (strongly suggested): 

Ethan Watters, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche. A good book if you are interested in how culture shapes psychological disorders, the extent to which disorders can be treated with medication. The rise of anorexia in Hong Kong, and of depression in Japan, are both discussed as the result of increased contact with the United States. In the chapter on “megamarketing of depression in Japan,” the author explains how American pharmaceutical companies studied Japanese culture in order to “frame” the disorder of depression in a way that would make Japanese people more open to diagnosis. The phrase they settled on was “a cold of the soul.” Eunsol So (class of 2021) wrote an article about this book in the ASP Library newsletter. 

Developmental and Abnormal psychology: 

Johnathan Hedit, The Anxious Generation shows how smartphones, social media, and helicopter parenting have led to a decline in young people's mental health and offers actionable solutions to help both our kids and ourselves become mature, emotionally stable adults.   (Great to read together with your parents)

Eric Kandel, The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell us about Ourselves (2018)

More challenging books for Year 1 or Year 2 

Eric Kandel, The Age of Insight. Kandel won a Nobel prize in neuroscience, specifically for his discovery of processes related to neuroplasticity. This book is a mix of history, art, literature, and science. His argument is that developments in psychology were related to the blending of multiple disciplines in 1900 Vienna. He also says that recent developments in neuroscience support claims of psychodynamic psychologists from 1900, Freud in particular. So while we often say to stay away from anything psychodynamic or Freudian, Kandel has a Nobel prize in neuroscience. The evidence base for this book is surprising - it's not every day you see works of avant-garde art and brain scans on facing pages! 

Antonio Damasio, The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures. This is new to the list. The book was published in 2018. Damasio already became famous in the 1990s for his book Descartes’ Error, which argued that the brain is really not divided into logical and creative/ emotional sides, and also that if we removed emotion from our thoughts, we would be poor thinkers. While emotions remain a challenge to define and study scientifically, Damasio and other researchers of “the emotional brain” have inspired researchers in various branches of psychology.

Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia. The first case in the book is a person who is struck by lightening, survives, and develops outstanding musical sensitivity and ability afterwards.

HL, advanced reading

The books below relate to the HL extension on Paper 1 as well as the HL option on Paper 2. 

An HL extension for the cognitive approach is the influence of digital technology on cognition. Jane McGonigal’s book argues in favor of video games. Nicholas Carr’s book looks at negative effects of technology on cognition. 

McGonigal, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. 

Gamers have had enough of reality. They are abandoning it in droves—a few hours here, an entire weekend there, sometimes every spare minute of every day for stretches at a time—in favor of simulated environments and online games. Maybe you are one of these gamers. If not, then you definitely know some of them. 

Who are they? They are the nine-to-fivers who come home and apply all of the smarts and talents that are underutilized at work to plan and coordinate complex raids and quests in massively multiplayer online games like Final Fantasy XI and the Lineage worlds. They’re the music lovers who have invested hundreds of dollars on plastic Rock Band and Guitar Hero instruments and spent night after night rehearsing, in order to become virtuosos of video game performance. 

Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains. 2011. 

I read this book when it came out. The author seems to have made the transition from a traditional form of journalism to a type of journalism heavily influenced by the possibilities of doing investigations on the internet and sharing ideas via email, chats, and social media. However, he concludes chapter 1 with the sentence “I missed my old brain.” Carr’s ways of thinking changed. Was the change permanent? And was it, as he suggests, a change that involved biological changes to his brain?

Textbooks 

These are university level books for areas that we touch upon in the class. Many appear challenging at first but are actually pretty accessible for strong students. You can borrow these from the school library. 

Richard Gross, Key Studies in Psychology. Gross is a leading authority in Psychology. The 6th edition of this book looks at recent replications of classic studies, such as Zimbardo or Asch. The 7th edition goes into depth on the classic studies themselves, seen in the light of recent research. What I really appreciate about these books is the use of three approaches of critical thinking for each study: Methodological considerations, ethical issues, and subsequent research. 

Alan Baddeley, Michael Eysenck and Michael Anderson, Memory (2nd edition), 2009. Baddeley is one of the creators of the working memory model, and he has published widely on memory since the 1970s. This book was published in 2009 and includes research up to that time. 

David Sue, Derald Wing Sue, Diane Sue, and Stanley Sue, Understanding Abnormal Behaviour, 11th edition (2016). Yes, all four authors have the surname “Sue.” To me this text is the best introduction to abnormal behaviour. It is written in an engaging and academic style. This book has been published 11 times, and this edition is adapted to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 5th edition, published by the American Psychiatric Association in 2013. The book looks at the causes (etiology) disorders based on four dimensions: biological, psychological, social and sociocultural. It also uses the same four dimensions to explain resilience.  The format of the book includes images of celebrities that have suffered different disorders and have decided to share their experiences as ways of providing hope for others. Ben Stiller and Catherine Zeta Jones, for example, appear at the end of the chapter on depression and bi-polar disorders. 

Cognitive Neuroscience: The biology of the Mind.  by Michael Gazzaniga et al., 2018.  

This book has inspired and supported several interesting EEs. It frequently links cognitive constructs to biological aspects of those constructs. It often gives clear and authoritative explanations of topics that we look at in class, especially flashbulb memory theory and the various forms of neuroplasticity. It can also help you to understand which, if any, complex behaviours are clearly localized in the brain. 

Science and/or Fiction

Sometimes reading science fiction can help you think about material we are studying in new ways. For those of you interested in linking psychology and creative writing, this might be worthwhile. 

Ted Chang, Stories of Your Life and Others; Exhalation

In both of the short story collections the author pushes the boundaries related to what is known in neuroscience and what might become possible in the near future. Recommended by Eunsol So, class of 2021.

Alix Nathan, The Warlow Experiment. An “experiment in isolation” that took place in 1790. Historical fiction, but meant to ask psychological questions that endure.  Suggested by Poetica, class of 2020. Synopsis:  Herbert Powyss lives in an estate in the Welsh Marches, with enough time and income to pursue a gentleman's fashionable investigations and experiments in botany. But he longs to make his mark in the field of science--something consequential enough to present to the Royal Society in London. He hits on a radical experiment in isolation: For seven years a subject will inhabit three rooms in the basement of the manor house, fitted out with rugs, books, paintings, and even a chamber organ. Meals will arrive thrice daily via a dumbwaiter. The solitude will be totally unrelieved by any social contact whatsoever; the subject will keep a diary of his daily thoughts and actions. The pay: fifty pounds per annum, for life.

Only one man is desperate to apply for the job: John Warlow, a semi-literate laborer with a wife and six children to provide for. The experiment, a classic Enlightenment exercise gone more than a little mad, will have unforeseen consequences for all included.