Psych matters, in the American Psychologist journal

I’m thrilled to announce that this article just published: 

Bernstein, D. A., & Frantz, S. (2025). Teaching an introductory psychology course that matters. American Psychologist. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001597

If you don’t have access to the American Psychologist, you can access the article on ResearchGate. The American Psychological Association added a pdf of the article to the page. To access it, scroll down on the ResearchGate page and click on the “Publisher Full-text” tab.

If you’re a frequent reader of this blog or have heard me speak in the last few years, you know that I’m a proponent of Intro Psych reform. This blog is called Psych Matters because psychology does matter, and the Intro Psych course is where we can convey that message to the most people. But the content we teach is not always the content which matters most.

We have all fallen into the trap of teaching certain content because that’s what other faculty teach or because that’s what is in the textbook we use. A lot of what we have historically taught has good value, but not all of it. As you teach the course this fall, ask yourself as you prep for each class, “Do people really need to know all of this? And what I am not teaching that my students really need to know?”

Our time with our students is finite. “Whenever we choose to teach something in a course, we are choosing not to teaching something else” (Bernstein & Frantz, 2025, p. 7).

Postscript: I am deeply grateful to my friend Doug Bernstein for his masterful research and writing skills and for insisting that this was a worthwhile project.

Reference

Bernstein, D. A., & Frantz, S. (2025). Teaching an introductory psychology course that matters. American Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001597