Psychology's Formal Beginings

The Nature of Psychology

Psychology is the scientific study and practical application of observable behavior and mental processes of organisms. Psychology differs from other social sciences such as: Sociology, History, or Economics, because psychology specifically deals with the study of an individual. The other social sciences will study groups, or history. Psychology is less a science of reported findings, it attempts asks and answers questions using observable behavior and what can be determined as mental processes of the subject. The symbol for psychology is the Greek letter "psi" (Ш). The subject matter of psychology is, affect, behavior, and cognition. The affect for psychology is the actual mental processes that make up: moods, feeling, and emotional state. An example for affect would be feeling sad about something happening. Behavior includes the actually actions and responses of organisms. Behavior can include the way we act in any given situation, for example when we get up in the morning. The order in the way we prepare ourselves for going out into public can be categorized as our behavior. Cognition is the actual mental events and the processes that result from them. Memories of an event are a great example of an organism's cognition. The components and corresponding faces of psychology include the body of knowledge which is considered the teaching face, set of investigative methods or research face, and array of techniques the therapy face. The goals of psychology are: to explain behaviors, to describe behaviors, to predict behavior, and to modify inappropriate behaviors. Explaining behaviors would be a question similar to "Why does this happen?", and example of how describing behavior could be accomplished would be asking "What causes this behavior, where does it come from?". Predictions can be elaborated on by asking "When will the behavior occur?". An example of a behavioral modification question is "What can be changed in the environment to alter this behavior?". A specialized subfield of psychology that most interests me is, Forensic Psychology, because it would be appealing to me to understand a potential criminal mind and to make the determination if the criminal was sane at the time the crime was committed or if he/she was operating with full judgment. In studying the 9/11 attack on America, a Forensic Psychologist would be used to determine if the terrorist operating the plane that hit the twin towers was mentally sane, and if they would be able to stand trial for there crimes. The Psychoanalytic/psychodynamic perspective deals with the unconscious, a possible explanation for obesity would be that the individual has an unconscious notion to eat when they are upset. Behavioral perspective or "learning perspective" focuses on how people learn to behave a certain way, a behavioral psychologist would explain obesity by suggesting that consuming too much food was learned and that's why the individual is obese. The cognitive perspective deals with information processing or how it is stored and retrieved; obesity would be explained by looking at the judgment to eat more food. Biological perspective focuses on the body's events and the effect on behaviors, thoughts, and feelings, genetic pre-disposition would be considered when looking at obesity, "Does it run in the family?". The humanistic emphasizes on individual potential, and assumes that all people are essentially good, obesity would be considered from a self-esteem perspective, and does the individual have such low self-esteem that food is consumed at rapid and abnormal rates.

Importance of Psychology

Psychology is important because it is relevant in our daily lives and it has practical applications in the real world. Psychology could be used to explain why an individual is sleep deprived, and it also would be able to explain what effects that sleep deprivation would have on the individual. Drug abuse could be understood better, and what effects the drug abuse has on the body. Intuition is immediate information without an objective medium. Intuition will not help to give information on behavior because it is a biased opinion formed from a person's overconfidence of their "gut feeling". Common sense is sound rational thinking in our barely perceptible mode of consciousness. Common sense is a behavior usually used to help us avoid negative maneuvers; it cannot be used to aid determining behavior because it is an assumed quality and not a concrete fact or set of rule. Overconfidence is a human behavior that lends us to be self-predicting on what will be done. In actuality this overconfidence is only correct about 30% of the time when used for a specific behavior, which makes it a poor judge or aid in behavior study. Believing one would have seen an outcome after it has already happened is hindsight bias. Hindsight bias would only help determine behavior that has already happened in the past, even though we cannot predict what would have taken place. Pseudopsychologies are phenomena that don't have any real basis in fact, ESP or telekinesis is a type of parapsychology which falls under pseudopsychology. Pseudopsychologies do not help explain or describe behavior, without turning to more unconventional and not widely accepted methods and explanations.

Formal Beginnings

The first psychological laboratory was located at the University of Leipzig, Germany. The lab was started by Wilhelm Wundt in 1879. The first formal psychological laboratory in the US was stabled at the John Hopkins