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We asked faculty for recommendations of papers (and books) that every graduate student in psychology should read. This is not intended to be a complete list of papers. Not by a long shot. In fact, it's limited to the kinds of papers that graduate students might miss in the regular course of their research. We don't include important review papers, experimental findings, or theories. You'll find those on your own. The papers we list below are intended to be pretty general in that they inform the way we think about our science and how we do our science in the most general way. 

This list is admittedly idiosyncratic. And it's short. To be clear, the mere fact that a paper is listed here should not imply any kind of universal endorsement by the entire faculty of its relevance or importance. These are individual recommendations compiled in one place. 

Some of these were originally written for a specific scientific audience, but their impact has been felt more widely. As an example, Marr's classic Vision book is certainly a must-read for anyone doing research in vision. But it's his classic first chapter on levels of analysis (computational, algorithmic, implementational) that puts his book on this particular list. Those metatheoretical ideas have currency in all areas of psychology and neuroscience, not just vision. 

Abelson, R.P. (1995). Statistics as Principled Arguments. Psychology Press.

Campbell, D.T., & Stanley, J.C. (1966). Experimental and Quasi-experimental Designs for Research. Chicago: Rand McNally.

Chomsky, N. (1959). Review of Skinner (1957). Language, 35, 26-58.

Cronbach, J.L., & Meehl, P. (1955). Construct validity in psychological tests. Psychological Bulletin, 52, 281-302.

Fodor, J. A. (1983). Modularity of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Garner, W. R., Hake, H. W., & Eriksen, C. W. (1956). Operationism and the concept of perception. Psychology Review, 63, 149-159.

Gould, S. J., & Lewontin, R. C. (1979). The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian program: A critique of the adaptationist programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 205, 281-288. 

Kuhn, T.S. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press.

Lashley, K. S. (1951). The problem of serial order in behavior. In L. A. Jeffress (Ed.), Cerebral mechanisms in behavior (pp. 112–131). New York: Wiley.

Marr, D. (1982). Vision: A Computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information. New York: Freeman. (Chapter 1: The Philosophy and the Approach.)

Medawar, P. B. (1988). The Limits of Science. Oxford University Press.

Meehl, P. (1967). Theory-testing in psychology and physics: A methodological paradox. Philosophy of Science, 34, 103-115.

Mook, D.G. (1983). In defense of external invalidity. American Psychologist, 38, 379-387. 

Nisbett, R. & Wilson, T. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84, 231-259.

Platt, J.R. (1964). Strong inference. Science, 146, 3642. 

Plomin, R., & Daniels, D. (1987). Why are children in the same family so different from one another? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 10, 1-60.

Rozin, P. (1976). The evolution of intelligence and access to the cognitive unconscious. In J. A. Sprague & A.N. Epstein (Eds). Progress in Psychobiology and Physiological Psychology, Volume 6.

Sperry, R.W. (1969). A modified concept of consciousness. Psychological Review, 76, 532-36.

Teller, D.Y. (1984). Linking propositions. Vision Research, 24, 1233-46.