Dr Nicky Hayes is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Chartered Psychologist and an Honorary Life Member of the Association for the Teaching of Psychology. She has written widely and is a prominent media figure, thanks to her ability to apply psychology to everyday life and her experience working with business and the public sector as well as in universities and colleges. She lives in Gairloch, Scotland.

Intro • Philosophical roots • Epistemology: the problem of knowledge • Descartes and mind-body dualism • British Empiricism: Hobbes, Locke and Hume • Scientific method • The development of psychology • William James and consciousness • Wilhelm Wundt and controlled experiments • Ivan Pavlov and learning • Behaviourism • Gestalt psychology • Humanist psychology • Psychological research methods: Experiments • Observations • Case studies and accounts • Brain scanning • Neuroscience • Neuropsychology • The nervous system • Neural processes • Seeing • Hearing • Other senses • Movement • Remembering • Emotions • Emotions in the brain • Arousal • Being awake • Being asleep • Learning • Classical conditioning • Little Albert • The Law of Effect • Reinforcement • One trial learning • Imprinting • Cognitive behaviourism • Animal and human learning • Social learning • Skill learning • Schema development • Self-efficacy & Mindset • Cognitive psychology • Memory • Representing memories • Organizing memory • Models of memory • Active memory • Eyewitness testimony • John Dean's memory • Perception • Perceiving distance • Perceptual set • Visual illusions • Two theories of perception • The perceptual cycle • Attention • Thinking • Challenging mental set • Experts and novices • Social influences in decision-making • Heuristics • Fast and slow thinking • Origins of Psychoanalysis • Freud and "The Talking Cure" (Freud and Breuer) • The unconscious • Free association and dreams • Psychodynamics and drives • The libido and development • Love and Hate (Klein and Winnicott) • Adlerian Psychology • The collective unconscious • Jungian Archetypes • Complexes and Parts • Meaning and Happiness (Victor Frankl) • Existential Psychotherapy (Rollo May) • Creativity and Play • Postmodern Psychoanalysis (Jacques Lacan: the self and "The Other") • The myth of mental illness (Antipsychiatry, Thomas Szasz) • Transactional analysis (Eric Berne) • Social psychology • Non-verbal interaction • Symbolic communication • Verbal communication • Attribution • Social scripts • Social representations • Attitudes • Changing attitudes • Prejudice and discrimination • Aggression • Social identification • Social roles: the Stanford prison study • Bystanders and helping • The presence of others • Obedience • Conformity • Person perception • The social self • Developmental psychology • Nature v nurture • animal theories of attachment • Harry Harlow • John Bowlby • Mary Ainsworth • Gender development • Forms of play • Developing social competence • Skills, schemas & self-efficacy & locus of control • Piaget: cognitive development • Lev Vygotsky: support and scaffolding • Labelling • Lawrence Kohlberg: moral development • Erik Erikson: stages of psychosocial development • Adolescence personal relationships & bereavement • Life-transitions & Family life cycle • Types of age • Ageing and intelligence • Individual differences • Gordon and Floyd Allport: personality traits • Hans Eysenck: extravert/introvert and neurotic/stable • the "Big Five" • Issues in psychometric testing • Walter Mischel: personality and situation • George A Kelly: personal construct theory • Intelligence (and Flynn effect) • Charles Spearman • Multiple factors • Multiple Intelligences • Sternberg: triarchic intelligence • Racial and cultural prejudices • Normality and abnormality • Mental disorders and their classification • Substance abuse and dependence • Challenging conventional ideas of mental disorders • Clinical psychology • Psychiatry • Psychotherapy and counselling • Humanistic psychotherapies • Behavioural therapy • Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) • Gestalt psychotherapy (Perls) • Person-centred therapy • Family and systemic therapy • Positive psychology (Martin Seligman) • Mindfulness-based therapy • Somatic therapies • Parts of the self (Structural dissociation and IFS) • Applied psychology • Sports psychology • Organizational psychology • Organizational cultures & social groups • Vocational guidance • Education: learning & disadvantage: autism • Persuasion • Forensic psychology and criminology • Gaming and media influence • Ethics of psychological research • The breadth of psychology • Glossary and Further Reading.