Welcome Dear Reader!

I hope you find this textbook to be a useful and engaging resource for your journey of self-discovery. Understanding human relations is a valuable skill for anyone entering into the job market. The aim of this textbook is to aid readers in understanding their own behaviors and the behaviors of others with the intent of engaging in positive interactions in personal and professional spaces.

I was motivated to develop this textbook as a resource for my Psychology of Human Relations courses as I was unable to find a free open educational resource (OER) already available in human relations that emphasized the practical application of psychological concepts and also addressed the ways in which culture and diversity impact human relations, to help students engage in positive interactions with others in their personal and professional lives. With the rising costs of textbooks making education less affordable, I believe it is imperative to find ways to aid students in being able to further their education. Thus, I was excited to receive support from Open Oregon Educational Resources to edit together this textbook from several existing OER resources that had insights to offer from the disciplines of Psychology, Business, Communication, and Sociology. Thank you for choosing to develop your human relations skills! The information in this textbook is digitally and freely accessible and will undergo regular updates to remain current and relevant. Please reach out to me (stevy.scarbrough@umpqua.edu) with any feedback that may help improve this textbook and make it more accessible for readers.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Best,
Stevy

Textbook Organization

This textbook contains 10 chapters to fit the format of the Oregon quarter system, with each term consisting of 10 weeks of instruction and a final exam week. While the chapter order is designed to flow from learning about the self to learning about how to interact with others, the chapters can be taught in a different order from how they are organized. The first two chapters, Self- Concept and Cultural Diversity, provide a solid foundation of concepts related to knowing the self and understanding differences. I would recommend that these two chapters are taught first as all other chapters tie back to these in different ways. Chapters 3-6 focus on learning about the self through behavioral change, personality, emotions, and perception. Chapters 7-10 focus on learning about interacting with others through interpersonal communication, stress, conflict resolution, and workplace success. Accompanying activities are included for each chapter in the appendix. All activities have been developed by me and hold a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. You are welcome to use and remix them for non-commercial purposes as long as you make them available to everyone as well.

You can open the pdf version of the Textbook if you want to view it in a book page format or want to print out a physical copy to read: Psychology of Human Relations Textbook