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This study describes the image of psychology held by university students, and compares the attitudes of both sexes. It also investigates the students ‘ change in attitude towards psychology after taking an introductory course in the subject. A measure of attitudes towards psychology and an questionnaire concerning the image of psychology were given to 78 male and 161 female students of Sultan Qaboos University. An analysis of the subject index of Psychological Abstracts was carried out to formulate the contemporary image of psychology as reflected by the literature. The results showed that the students’ image of psychology is close to the real image of the discipline.

Furthermore, their attitudes were generally positive, and factor analysis of the attitude scale items produced four dimensions: desire for systematic study of psychology, general interest in psychology, importance of psychology as a discipline, and uses of psychology in practice. There were significant differences between the sexes in favor of females. The results also tentatively suggest that no observable change in attitude was seen after a course in psychology.