Introduction

Welcome to the First Edition of an Open Education Resource (OER) textbook for Psych 221, Introduction to Social Psychology. This text was developed with the assistance of an Affordable Course Transformation grant from The Pennsylvania State University.

This course will provide you an overview of various concepts related to the field of social psychology. In this course, we focus on a variety of factors that influence our behaviors. We will review concepts such as attraction and relationships and discuss factors that lead someone to be attracted to another. We review the influence of persuasive techniques that may be used in advertisements or sales. We also discuss the factors that can influence helping behavior and reliability of eyewitness testimony.

This text is designed to guide the learner through a series of brief readings, videos, and sample quiz questions in order to review and apply the concepts discussed in this course. This text is a work in progress and any comments or suggestions are greatly appreciated. This text will continue to be updated to reflect current ideas and research in the field of Social Psychology. Presently, limited chapters are included in the PressBook, with the hope that eventually, all core chapters covered in a typical Introduction to Social Psychology course will be included. The goal was to attempt to include chapters that may currently have less readily available resources and activities, in order to expand one’s knowledge and awareness in these areas. I hope that you enjoy this textbook and that it helps to enhance your knowledge of the field of Social Psychology.