Recommended reading
A common question from teachers new to the program is: What books should we include in our library?
The answer is simple—choose books that students actually want to read. If you focus on supporting the extended essay, you may end up with many books that are rarely, if ever, used. Instead, prioritize titles that engage and interest your students.
Below is a list of books that students at our school enjoy. If your students are similar to mine, you may also find they recommend additional titles that can further enrich your collection.
Magazines and databases
The following magazines and databases are good resources for extended essays.
The EBSCO database is the most commonly used database in high schools. The database has a module called "Psychology and Behavioural Sciences Collection." This has full original articles. In addition, the "eBook Academic Collection" and "eBook High School Collection" both have several full texts online. If you only have this one source, you can do your EEs. In addition, EBSCO has tools for students to take notes and highlight texts for later use.
The Psychologist - A summary of research on currently relevant topics. A good source for potential EE topics!
When looking at sites that might help to find journal articles that are free on the Internet, I recommend the following three sites.
- The most basic place to look is Google Scholar. Always type in what you are looking for by adding the key terms "psychology" and "pdf." For example, "social media", bulimia, adolescents, psychology, pdf
- Research gate
- Semantic Scholar
New book recommendations (2026)
The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn Saks (recovery from schizophrenia)
The Expectation Effect by David Robson
How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain by Gregory Byrnes
How to Knit a Human by Anna Jacobson
The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chttka
Misbelief: What makes rational people believe irrational things? by Dan Ariely
Sociopath: A Memoir by Patric Gagne
Supercommunicators: How to unlock the secret language of connection by Charles Duhigg
Unmasking Autism by Devon Price
A Very Private School by Charles Spencer
What We Value: The neuroscience of choice and change by Emily Falk
Animal research
Bats sing, mice giggle by Karen Shanor
The Bird Way: A new look at how birds talk, work, play, parent, and think by Jennifer Ackerman
The Genious of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman
The inner life of animals by Peter Wohlleben
A Primate's Memoir by Robert Sapolsky
Biology and neuroscience
Behave: The biology of humans at our best and our worst by Robert Sapolsky
Do no harm: Stories of life, death and brain surgery by Henry Marsh
Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke
Eat, Move, Sleep by Tom Rath
The gene: An intimate history by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Livewired: The inside story of the ever-changing brain by David Eagleman.
Musicophilia: tales of music and the brain by Oliver Sacks
Neuromarketing: Understanding the buy buttons in your customer's brain by Renvoise & Morin
The neuroscientist who lost her mind by Barbara Lipska
Patient HM by Luke Dittrich
Permanent Present Tense: The unforgettable life of the amnesiac patient, H.M. by Suzanne Corkin
Spark: the revolutionary new science of exercise and the brain by John Ratey
The Sports Gene by David Epstein
The Tale of Dueling Neurosurgeons: The history of the human brain as revealed by the true stories of trauma, madness, and recovery by Sam Kean
When Brains Dream: Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep by Antonio Zadra
Clinical and health psychology
Brain on fire - my month of madness by Susannah Cahalan
Crazy like us by Ethan Watters
Future Tense: Why Anxiety Is Good for You by Tracy Dennis-Tiwary
The great pretender by Susannah Cahalan (the story of the Rosenhan study)
Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker (the story of a family with schizophrenia)
Mad in America by Robert Whitaker
The Man who mistook his wife for a hat by Oliver Sacks
Night falls fast – Kay Redfield Jamison
Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness by Richard Thaler
Shrinks - the untold story of psychiatry by Jeffrey Lieberman and Ogi Ogas
The Skeleton Cupboard: The making of a clinical psychologist by Tanya Bryon
Cognitive psychology
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Drive by Daniel Pink
Forever today by Deborah Wearing
Influence by Robert Cialdini
The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals about our Power to Change Others by Tali Sharot
The invisible gorilla by Chabris & Simon
I Think You'll Find it's a Bit More Complicated than That - by Ben Goldacre
Mistakes were made, but not by me by Carol Tavris
Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
Out of my skull: The psychology of boredom by James Danckert and John Eastwood
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
The Shallows: how the internet is changing the way we think by Nicholas Carr
Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahnemann
Criminal psychology
The Dark Side of the Mind: True Stories from my life as a forensic psychologist by Kerry Daynes
Picking Cotton: Our memoir of injustice and redemption by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton
The psychopath test by Jon Ronson
Why they kill: the discoveries of a maverick criminologist by Richard Rhodes
Zero degrees of empathy: A new theory of human cruelty by Simon Baron-Cohen
Developmental psychology
The Big Disconnect by Catherine Steiner Adair
In the shadow of the Holocaust: the second generation by Aaron Hass
Love at Goon Park by Deborah Blum
Nurture shock by Bronson & Merryman
Quiet: The Hidden Power Of Introverts by Susan Cain
Surviving Survival: The art and science of resilience by Laurence Gonzales
The Survivor's Club by Ben Sherwood
When breath becomes air by Paul Kalanithi
Research methods
Numbers rule your world: The hidden influence of probabilities and statistics on everything you do by Kaiser Fung
Research in psychology: A practical guide to methods and statistics by Colin Dyer
Research methods and statistics in psychology by Hugh Coolican
Social research methods by Alan Bryman
Social psychology
Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides by Geoffery Cohen
Cultural DNA: The psychology of globalization by Gurnek Bains
Everyone loves a good train wreck: why we can’t look away by Eric Wilson
The geography of bliss: one grump’s search for the happiest places in the world by Eric Weiner
Originals: How Non-Conformists move the world by Adam grant
Outliers: the story of success by Malcolm Gladwell
The Psychology of Pandemics: Preparing for the Next Global Outbreak of Infectious Disease by Steven Taylor
Social Psychology: Revisiting the Classic Studies by Joanne Smith and S Alexander Haslam
The spirit catches you and you fall down by Anne Fadiman
Taste matters: why we like the foods we do by John Prescott
Whistling Vivaldi: How stereotypes affect us by Claude Steele
You are not so smart by David McRaney - a focus on social psychology topics