Psychology Module 1

What is Psychology?

• The study of the brain and how it works in coordination with physical and psychological

The different works of Psychologists

• Basic research

• Clinical

• Application

Basic Research

• The attempt to understand the fundamentals of the mind and behaviour

Behaviourism - The thought that psychology should be an objective science that studies behaviour rather than the mental processes, rejected in 1960s by 2 groups

Basic Fields of Psychology

• Abnormal - Understanding how and why unusual and maladaptive behavioural, emotional, and thought patterns develop

• Behavioural Genetics - Linking individual different in behaviour to genetic factors

• Cognitive - Understanding mental processes, and how people process information in general

• Comparative - Studying, non-human animal behaviour, often (not always) looking for commonalities with humans

• Developmental - Describing and understanding how and why behaviour changes across the lifespan

• Behavioural neuroscience - Linking specify behaviour patterns to underlying physical component or activities in the brain

• Personality - Understanding how and why people differ, and how these differences may influence behaviour

• Social - Studying how people understand themselves ad others, and how behaviour can be influenced by other people

Aristotle blank slate = Tabula rasa

Dualism - The mind and body are separate entities (Rene Descartes)

Behaviour - The subjective emotions someone feels

Applied Psychology

• The solving of practical problems

The usual goal of this is to change behaviour in order to solve practice problem for example resolving mental health issues

Can be broken down into

• Applied Research - discovering new and more effective ways to solve specific problems

• Applied Practice - the application of the techniques to the problems themselves

  • Translational Research - the effort to translate basic findings into practical solutions

The Major Fields of Applied Psychology

• Consumer behaviour - understanding the decisions consumers make about products and services

• Educational - Improving learning in classroom and other educational settings

• Forensic and Legal - Applying psychological principles to features of the legal system

• Human factors - Designing products or processes in ways that improve usefulness or comfort for the people using them

• Health - Improving long-term physical health and healthcare by applying psychological principles

• Industrial and Organizational - Helping organizers improve member performance, motivation, or other role-related outcomes

• Political - Understanding the role of psychology in the political process, and the role of politics in psychology

• School - Using psychology to improve the academic and social experiences of children in school

Clinical Psychology

• Focuses on identifying, preventing, and reliving distress or dysfunction that is psychological in origin

Different Types of Clinician

• Clinical Psychologist - Identifying, preventing, and relieving distress or dysfunction that is psychological in origin (Ph.D or Psy.D)

• Psychiatrists - Identifying, preventing ,and relieving distress or dysfunction that is psychological in origin. As medical doctors they attempt to determine wether symptoms could be the result of physical illness as well (MD)

• Counseling Psychologists - Helping people deal with ongoing life crises or situations, or transitions from one situation to another (Ph.D or Ed.D)

Clinical Psychology is a form of Applied Psychology

translational research is the bridge between Basic research and applied practice

History of Psychology

• Nature vs Nurture

Evolutionary Psychology - Believes that evolution has played a great part in shaping thought in psychology. (Charles Darwins theory of evolution is a very big player)

Psychology as a Science

• Established the first psychological lab in 1879 in Germany

Structuralism - Breaking the mind down into its fundamental pieces

• introspection - trained participants self reports of their thoughts, feelings, and mental images

• Systematic Introspection - simply considered the experiences of one individual.\, standardizing the way conscious experiences were reported so ones experience could be compared to another’s

Functionalism - the idea that we must understand the function of behaviour or mental process to understand how its parts work together

Behaviouralism - Stated behaviour should be the only area of study, nothing to do with mental/conscious experience

The Cognitive Revolution

• A major shift away from the strict behaviourism

Development of Psychology in the Clinic

• Psychoanalysis - A way to help clients gain further insight to their unconscious mind, feelings and behaviour

Humanities and Positive Psychology

• Humanistic psychology - The approach that emphasizes the ability for humans to make their own choices and realize their own potential

The focus is on the positive aspects of human condition, including creativity, choice, and the potential for growth, thus done by the shift of focus form the unconscious mind and onto the capacity for change humanistic psychologist aimed to give control back to the clients

—> Positive psychology - the focus is on not what went wrong with human function but instead studying how humans can flourish and lead to positive outcomes

Modern Approaches to Psychology

• Eclectic approach - the use of different psychological approaches in order to treat the situation at hand in the most effective way possible

Ultimate and Proximate Explanations -The phenomenon that there are multiples ways for explaining a cause

• Ultimate explanation - attempts to address the reason WHY a psychological phenomenon occurs appealing to its role in the process of evolution

• Proximate explanation - attempt to describe an immediate cause of a psychological phenomenon

Functional explanations are proximate explanations that seek to identify a specific problem a the cause of a psychological phenomenon

Process-oriented explanations are proximate explanations that focus non how a specific mental or physical process explains a psychological phenomenon

Evolutionary Influences

• Evolutionary psychology - The study of psychology from a biological perspective, it proposes that many mental processes have come from the process of natural selection to solve adaptive problems

Cultural Influences

The influence of culture as the shared set of beliefs, attitudes, behaviours, and customs belonging to specific groups or community of people

• Intersectional Approach - Examining how multiple social identities interact at the level of an individual person to alter their experiences

Biological Influences - have a process oriented level of explanation on psychology generally point

Cognitive Influences

• Primarily process - oriented explanations about mental processes