7  Reading

🏢 Lab class

Key details:

  • Get hold of a copy of Beth Morling’s book Research methods in psychology: Evaluating a world of information.
  • Also read more widely, e.g.:
    • Harford, T. (2021). How to make the world add up: Ten rules for thinking differently about numbers. The Bridge Street Press.
    • Pinker, S. (2019). Enlightenment now: The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. Penguin.

🏠 Self-study

7.1 Core reading

The core book for this module is: Morling, B. (2025). Research methods in psychology: Evaluating a world of information (5th ed.). W. W. Norton & Co.

The fourth edition of this book will also be fine.

You can either obtain a hard copy from George Green Library1 or buy the book, either directly from the publisher Norton or from a bookshop. Norton offers three versions:

  • A hard copy (which includes access to the interactive ebook plus the Norton learning tools for 1 year).
  • The standalone ebook (access not time-limited).
  • The interactive ebook plus the Norton learning tools (access to the book and the learning tools is limited to 1 year).

If you intend to buy a hard copy, please enter the code WN217 at checkout. This should give you a 30% discount. If you would like to buy either of the ebook versions, please enter the code WN218 at checkout2 This should give you a 15% discount. The codes are valid until 31 October. (And please do .)

Please also note that the first three chapters are available as ebook demo chapters. You can access these demo chapters without purchasing the book or signing up to the website.

If no more books are available in the library, please make sure to request a copy. This is the only way for the library to notice that they need to order more books.

Please also note that you can copy or scan a “fair” proportion of a book for private study and research. Please also note that, for the purposes of private study or non-commercial research, you may make a single copy of a “fair” proportion of a work. As the Library explains, what counts as fair is not precisely defined. As a rule of thumb, the Library suggests that one chapter from a book is likely to fall within safe limits. It is also good to be aware of the fact that the printers in the library allow you to scan documents directly to your OneDrive. You might also come across shadow library websites such as Sci-Hub or Library Genesis. Please note these sites infringe copyright laws.

Should you borrow or buy books? If you tend to create your own excerpt while reading a book, without making annotations in the book, a library copy will serve you perfectly well. However, I’ve always had a penchant for buying books. In my view, there are three main advantages to owning a book:

  • You have the book available when you need to revise.
  • You can work with the book (e.g., add notes, highlight things you find relevant, etc.).
  • You can keep the book and look things up later in your studies.

7.2 Wider reading

The books below are popular science books that I think every psychology student should have read. I haven’t listed them as core reading as they’re not technically psychology text books. They are great though and address some key psychological issues. One could perhaps say that an overarching theme in these books is how to make sense of the world using data, something that will be critically important for your course. The books are listed in the order in which I would recommend reading them.

Harford, T. (2021). How to make the world add up: Ten rules for thinking differently about numbers. The Bridge Street Press.

Pinker, S. (2019). Enlightenment now: The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. Penguin.

Levitt, S. D., & Dubner, S. J. (2020). Freakonomics (Rev. ed.). William Morrow. (Note that their follow-up book, SuperFreakonomics, is not as good in my view.)

Rosling, H. (2019) Factfulness. Sceptre. (Also very good, but there is some overlap with Pinker’s book. If you read only one, I would suggest reading Pinker’s book.)

You might want to have a look at BookFinder if you’re potentially interested in buying a new or used copy of one of the books and at WorldCat to check if a book you’re interested in is available in a near-by library.

If you like podcasts, I would highly recommend a conversation between Ezra Klein and Yuval Noah Harari (the title somewhat misleadingly suggests that the episode focuses on Donald Trump, but it’s actually much wider-ranging).

  1. Unfortunately, it is not available as an ebook via the e-library.↩︎

  2. Norton have notified me that there was an issue with using this code; this should be fixed now. However, if you still encounter an issue, download these instructions from Moodle to learn how to use a temporary access code valid until 23/10 instead).↩︎