Top Psychology Schools in the U.S.

A number of online academic resources have come out with lists of the best U.S. colleges for psychology majors. We decided to take a look at College Crunch, Social Psychology Network, Schoolahh to see which undergraduate programs were highly ranked across the board. Stanford University in Palo Alto, California ranks number one on all three of the lists above. This isn’t surprising given that Stanford’s psychology department has been collecting kudos for more than fifty years. The philosophy of the department is that success results from the connection between teaching and scientific research. It’s organized into five areas of study within the field of psychology: Cognitive, Developmental, Neuroscience, Personality and Social Psychology. Research at Stanford includes (but is not limited to) topics like aggression, social behavior, competitiveness, dreaming, color perception, spatial relations, learning and memory. The University of Michigan Ann Arbor appears in the top five of each list. This Big Ten School offers three concentrations: 1) Psychology, 2) Brain, Behavior and Cognitive Science and 3) Neuroscience. The school has many research labs that provide undergraduates with the ability to participate in research studies. Active research studies include African-American racial identity, human brain electrophysiology, human performance and cognition, visual and verbal working memory, affective neuroscience and biopsychology, neuronal mechanisms of movement and reward, and many more. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign appears in the top ten on the lists above largely because of its laboratories for research in human learning, animal learning, physiological psychology, animal motivation, human perception, and social behavior, just to name a few. The school houses extensive computer facilities, a complete animal colony, a fully equipped video laboratory facility for observation and videotape production. The Urbana-Champaign psychology department also operates a psychological clinic and other research and training facilities housed outside of its main building. Because PAR, Inc. is based in Florida, we’re also familiar with high caliber programs in our Sunshine State.  Most notable is University of Florida’s graduate program, which was voted one of the best programs in the country by U.S. News and World Report in 2009. Programs at University of South Florida and University of Miami also earn high marks for their courses of study and resources.

The Standard Inventory Measure of the Five-Factor Model Is Now Applicable to Those as Young as 12 Years

The new NEO™ Inventories for the NEO™ Personality Inventory-3 (NEO™-PI-3), NEO™ Five-Factor Inventory-3 (NEO™-FFI-3), and NEO™ Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO PI-R™) by Robert R. McCrae, PhD and Paul T. Costa, PhD are now available. In  addition, several updated NEO software products are now available including the NEO™ Software System with NEO™-PI-3, NEO PI-R™, NEO™-FFI-3, and NEO™ PDR™ Modules; the NEO™ Software System with NEO™-PI-3, NEO PI-R™, and NEO™-FFI-3 Modules; the NEO™ Software System On-Site Scanning Module for the NEO™-PI-3 and NEO PI-R™; as well as all materials needed for the NEO PI-R™ and NEO™-PI-3 Professional Report Service. The NEO-PI-3 provides a comprehensive and detailed assessment of adult and adolescent personality. It is a concise measure of the five major domains of personality (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness). The NEO-FFI-3 is a 60-item version of the measure, ideal for situations where time is limited and global information on personality is sufficient. The NEO PI-R forms and norms have not changed with the update of the NEO Inventories Professional Manual. Both the NEO-PI-3 and NEO-FFI-3 include a downward extension to age 12. Items have been revised to make them easier to read and more appropriate for younger examinees. Separate adolescent and adult norms are available. NEO-PI-3 Profile Forms have been made larger and now more user-friendly; combined-sex Profile Forms are now available. New features such as the NEO Problems in Living Checklist and NEO Style Graph Booklet provide innovative ways to give clients feedback on their particular personality profile.

Try the NEO-3 and let us know what you think.

Congratulations! You’ve received an unexpected financial windfall. Should you use the money to buy a new GPS or go to a concert with friends? According to a 2009 study conducted by the San Francisco State University psychology department, you’d be well served to choose the concert; your appreciation of the experience will grow over time, whereas your appreciation for the GPS will lessen in a matter of weeks. Participants in the study answered questions about purchases they made with the intention of making themselves happy. Most were initially happy with their purchases regardless of whether they were material or experiential. However, those who invested in experiences tended to show higher levels of satisfaction for a significant amount of time after the events occurred. Also, because the experiences usually included other people, they reported a sense of connecting to friends or relatives, fulfilling a need for social bonding. We found out about this study in a blog post from David DiSalvo called Ten Psychology Studies from 2009 Worth Knowing About. There are some other interesting studies on his list. We encourage you to take a look.

Well, we are all packed and ready to go to San Diego for the 118th Annual APA conference. We hope you’ll stop by the booth to meet some of our staff and take a look at several of the new products we have released this year including the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2™,  Child and Adolescent (STAXI-2™ C/A), the Tasks of Executive Control™ (TEC™), the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms, 2nd Edition (SIRS-2), and the 11 new NAB® stand-alone tests. We also have copies of the new Mini-Mental® State Examination, 2nd Edition ( MMSE®-2™) and a sample copy of the soon-to-be-released NEO™ Inventories 3 for you to examine. Remember, you’ll receive 15% and free shipping and handling on all purchases made at APA. So, be sure to stop by and say, “hello.” Cynthia Lumpee Vice President Customer Support