What's in Intro Psychology, Unit by Unit

Introduction to Psychology is one of the most common college courses, and one of the widest. In one semester it runs from neurons and sleep stages to conformity, personality tests and the diagnostic manual. Few topics go deep, but there are a lot of them, and most come with named researchers, named studies and terms that sound alike.

Encodr's free Intro Psychology course follows the 16 chapters of OpenStax Psychology 2e, plus standard introductory terminology. It has 16 units, 95 chapters and 1,356 study cards drawn from 17 sources. Here is what each unit covers, in teaching order.

Foundations: what psychology is and how it is studied (units 1-2)

Unit 1, What Psychology Is (4 chapters, 61 cards). The definition of psychology as the scientific study of mind and behavior, the historical schools (structuralism, functionalism, psychoanalysis, Gestalt, behaviorism, humanism, the cognitive revolution), today's perspectives and subfields, and careers, including the difference between a clinical psychologist and a psychiatrist.

Unit 2, Psychological Research (5 chapters, 80 cards). Theories and hypotheses, falsifiability, descriptive methods (case studies, naturalistic observation, surveys, archival research), longitudinal versus cross-sectional designs, correlation and experiments, statistics, and research ethics. This is the most quantitative unit: the correlation coefficient r from -1 to +1, independent and dependent variables, random assignment, statistical significance at p below .05, Type I and Type II errors, and reliability versus validity. It deserves extra time, because every later unit describes studies in these terms.

The biological side (units 3-5)

Unit 3, Biopsychology (7 chapters, 108 cards). Genes and alleles, neurons and glia, the action potential, neurotransmitters, agonists and antagonists, the central and peripheral nervous systems, brain structures, the four lobes of the cortex, split-brain research, brain imaging, and the endocrine system. This is a memorization-heavy unit with many structure-to-function pairs.

Unit 4, States of Consciousness (6 chapters, 64 cards). Circadian rhythms, theories of why we sleep, sleep stages N1 to N3 and REM, sleep disorders, substance use and drug classes, and hypnosis and meditation.

Unit 5, Sensation and Perception (7 chapters, 97 cards). Absolute and difference thresholds, Weber's law, the physics of waves, vision (rods, cones, trichromatic and opponent-process theories), hearing (place and temporal theories), taste and smell, touch and pain, and Gestalt principles of perceptual organization.

Learning, thinking and memory (units 6-8)

This stretch is the core of the course for many exams, and it is the part most useful for studying itself.

Unit 6, Learning (5 chapters, 84 cards). Reflexes and instincts, classical conditioning with Pavlov, operant conditioning with Thorndike and Skinner, reinforcement schedules and shaping, latent learning, and Bandura's observational learning. The terms here are a classic source of mix-ups; classical vs operant conditioning works through them with examples.

Unit 7, Thinking and Intelligence (6 chapters, 82 cards). Concepts, prototypes and schemas, language, problem solving and decision biases (confirmation bias, anchoring, the availability heuristic), theories of intelligence, IQ testing (scores normed to a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15), and nature and nurture.

Unit 8, Memory (5 chapters, 87 cards). Encoding, storage and retrieval, the Atkinson-Shiffrin model, working memory, explicit and implicit memory, the brain areas involved, amnesia, interference, the misinformation effect, and memory-enhancing strategies. The final chapter states plainly that practice testing and spacing have strong evidence while highlighting and rereading do not. That is the same research behind spaced repetition and why highlighting doesn't work.

Development, motivation and personality (units 9-11)

Unit 9, Lifespan Development (6 chapters, 113 cards). Domains and milestones, Freud's psychosexual and Erikson's psychosocial stages, Piaget, Vygotsky and Kohlberg, prenatal development and attachment, adolescence and adulthood, and death and dying. Lots of stage theories, each with its own ordered list.

Unit 10, Emotion and Motivation (5 chapters, 83 cards). Theories of motivation (drive, arousal, Maslow), hunger and eating, sexual behavior and gender identity, and theories of emotion (James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, Schachter-Singer), with the replication caveats noted.

Unit 11, Personality (6 chapters, 81 cards). Trait theories and the Big Five, Freud's id, ego and superego, the neo-Freudians, learning and humanistic approaches (Bandura, Rotter, Rogers), biological and cultural perspectives, and personality assessment (the MMPI and projective tests).

Social and applied psychology (units 12-14)

Unit 12, Social Psychology (7 chapters, 101 cards). Attribution and the fundamental attribution error, roles and norms, attitudes and cognitive dissonance, conformity and obedience, prejudice and discrimination, aggression and the bystander effect, and prosocial behavior and attraction. This unit overlaps the most with sociology; what's in Intro Sociology covers the same ground from the level of groups and institutions.

Unit 13, Industrial-Organizational Psychology (4 chapters, 41 cards). The shortest unit: job analysis, employee selection and appraisal, job satisfaction and leadership, and human factors.

Unit 14, Stress, Lifestyle and Health (5 chapters, 61 cards). Fight-or-flight, Selye's general adaptation syndrome, appraisal, stressors and burnout, stress and illness, coping, and positive psychology.

Disorders and treatment (units 15-16)

Unit 15, Psychological Disorders (11 chapters, 127 cards). The largest unit by both chapters and cards. What counts as a disorder, the DSM-5-TR and ICD-11, perspectives on causes, then anxiety disorders, OCD and related disorders, trauma and stressor-related disorders, depressive and bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, dissociative disorders, childhood disorders, and personality disorders in their three clusters.

Unit 16, Therapy and Treatment (6 chapters, 86 cards). The history of treatment and deinstitutionalization, the psychotherapies (psychoanalysis, behavior therapy, cognitive therapy and CBT, humanistic therapy), biomedical therapies, treatment modalities, substance use disorders, and the sociocultural model.

Which units are math-heavy and which are memorization-heavy

Psychology has little calculation. The challenge is volume and look-alike terms, which is why how to study for Intro Psychology focuses on applying terms to scenarios rather than memorizing definitions.

How the course is built

Each chapter starts with a short note card, then mixes recall, multiple choice, cloze, true or false, and a few sequence and explain cards. Classic studies are dated and described as they were run, and contested findings, such as the Stanford prison experiment and the Little Albert study, are flagged rather than taught as settled. The cards are text only.

Intro Psychology pairs naturally with Intro Sociology, and many students take both in the same year. Functionalism, conflict theory and symbolic interactionism is a good place to see how the two fields frame the same questions differently. The free college gen-ed course flashcards post lists every course in the series, and the flashcard deck time estimator shows roughly how long 1,356 cards take at your daily pace.

All 16 units are free to study on Encodr: Intro Psychology flashcards.