An AP Psychology Reading List to Help You on the Exam
Back with another AP reading list to get you through the exam. As you make your way through the curriculum, you’ll learn that the most effective way to learn is to integrate knowledge in various manners: absorb the content in as many ways as possible, attach it to personal experiences, and, most importantly, recall, recall, recall. Below you’ll find a list of nonfiction, and a sprinkling of fictional, books to help you recall and integrate psychological concepts.
Unit 1: Scientific Foundations of Psychology
The basis of psychological theory, the study of human and animal behavior, mental processes, and learning how psychologists design and conduct research.
An Introduction to Psychology by Wilhelm Wundt
Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth by Stuart Ritchie
Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by Sandra Blakeslee and V. S. Ramachandran
Unit 2: Biological Bases of Behavior
Behaviors and mental processes from a biological perspective, and the effects of the interaction between human biology and our environment.
Neuroscience For Dummies
by Frank Amthor
Tales from Both Sides of the Brain by Michael S. Gazzaniga
Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov
Unit 3: Sensation and Perception
How humans perceive and process the world around them via their senses and convert those observations into perceptions that influence how we think and behave.
Fixing My Gaze – A Scientist’s Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions by Susan Berry
The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
by Christopher Chabris, Daniel Simons
Visual Intelligence: Sharpen Your Perception, Change Your Life
Book by Amy E. Herman
Unit 4: Learning
The field of psychology that studies how humans and other animals learn as well as how learning changes over a lifetime.
Aggression: a social learning analysis by Albert Bandura
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Make it Stick by Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel, and Peter C Brown
Unit 5: Cognitive Psychology
The complex nature of how memory, intelligence, and other mental processes impact human behavior.
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Enough by Judith Greisel
In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind by Eric R. Kandel
Unit 6: Developmental Psychology
How physical and social changes over humans’ lifespans can influence behavior and mental processes from a variety of perspectives.
The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults by Amy Ellis Nutt and Frances E. Jensen
The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma and Adversity by Nadine Burke Harris M.D.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Unit 7: Motivation, Emotion, and Personality
Human personality through the lens of behavior and mental processes and how they interact to produce an individual’s personality.
Descartes' Error by Antonio Damasio
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Behave by Robert Sapolsky
Unit 8: Clinical Psychology
How psychologists evaluate, study, and treat a range of psychological disorders.
Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole: Extraordinary Journeys into the Human Brain by Dr Allan Ropper and Brian David Burrell
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
Afterparty by Daryl Gregory
Unit 9: Social Psychology
How humans interact in groups and social situations, as well as how others can affect an individual’s behavior and mental processes.
The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Philip Zimbardo
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson