Goals of Psychology

1-Description: how people think, feel and act in specific situation. Psychologists try to observe the behavior of interest, (collection of data)

2-Explanation: why and how that behavior happened based on the different psychological perspectives.

3-Prediction: The ability to say in advance how someone is likely to act.

4-Control: The ability to control organisms behavior. - It is to learn to control undesirable behavior by teaching better methods of self-control and ways to deal with situations and relationships.

Specialities in Psychology

Clinical psychologyCounseling psychologySchool or Educational psychologyExperimental & Physiological psychologyIndustrial and Organizational psychologySocial psychologyDevelopmental psychologyCommunity psychology

1-Clinical and counseling psychology:

*Deals with diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorder. (psychotherapy).

*Counseling helps normal people with milder problems of social and emotional adjustment like marriage and family life.

2-Educational and school psychology:Specialize in analyzing and improving formal education, * concerned with aspects of educational process as:- Factors affect performance in the classroom? Importance of motivation? Using of reward and punishment. - Size of classroom &interaction between students and teachers- Designing and administering tests of various kinds.

3-Experimental psychology: -Experimental psychologists frequently use animals rather than human as their experimental subjects. studies basic processes e.g. (hearing, perception, learning, and communication).

4-Industrial and Organizational Psychology:-Concerns with all aspects of behavior that relate to the work place. -One aspect: How work can be made more satisfying and more productive.-A major issue facing industrial and organizational psychologists now is findings ways to help working women deal with stress of handling their dual responsibilities at home and at office.

5-Social psychology:factors especially presence of other people, that affect personal response, thinking , motivation and behavior in a given social situation. - Show that behavior that not just the results of personality traits.

6-Developmental psychology: - describe and explain the systematic changes that occur in people throughout the life cycle.-How thinking , perception, memory, intelligence, language, problem solving, motivation, and social interaction change as people grow older.

Schools of Psychology

Schools of thought in the evolution of modern psychologyschool of thought a group of psychologists who become associated ideologically with the leader of a movementThey tend to:use the same methodology, research the same topics, have the same theoretical frameworks

StructuralismWilhelm WundtDefinition: School of Psychology that stresses the basic units of experience and combinations in which they occur.

Wilhelm Wundt: Physiologist and PhilosopherFounded the first experimental psychology laboratory in 1879Leipzig Lab. He asked his subjects to drop balls from a platform or listen to a metronome (figure below) and report their own sensations. Wundt and his followers were analyzing their sensations which they thought were the key to analyzing the structure of the mind.Main concern was with techniques used for uncovering natural laws of the human mindHE WAS IN SEARCH FOR THE BASIC UNIT OF THOUGHT.

Structuralism--TitchenerStudent of the Leipzig labViewed that human conscious experience could be understood by breaking it down into components: Physical sensations (lights & sounds) Affections of feelings Images (memory and dreams) Psychologys role is to identify these elements.

Titcheners approach: Train subjects in introspection and reporting techniquesINTROSPECTION: looking inside oneself and try to describe whats going onunderstanding oneself. Trained observers introspected and reported what they experienced Try to formulate general theories based on their subjects reports.

FunctionalismWilliam JamesDefinition: Theory of mental life and behavior that is concerned with how an organism uses its perceptual abilities to function in its environment. Influenced by Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection in the 19th century.

Functionalism was concerned not with the structure of the mind, but with the purposes of consciousnesswhat the mind does and why. Functionalists wanted to see how people use information to adapt to their environment.

William James: first American-born psychologist, he Universityconcluded that pre-sensations without associations simply did not exist.

FunctionalismWilliam JamesFor functionalists, the mind resembles a computer, and to understand its processes, you need to look at the software- what it does- without having to understand the hardware.

FunctionalismWilliam JamesJAMES SUGGESTED THAT WHEN WE REPEAT SOMETHING SEVERAL TIMES, OUR NERVOUS SYSTEMS ARE CHANGED SO THAT EACH TIME WE OPEN A DOOR, IT IS EASIER TO OPEN THAN IT WAS LAST TIME.

Gestalt PsychologyDefinition: School of Psychology that studies how people perceive and experience objects as whole patternsApproaches structuralism from a different angle. Example: When we see a tree, we see just that, a tree, not a series of branches. Founded in Germany about 1912 by Max Wertheimerand his colleagues Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler.

Gestalt means form or configuration.They maintained that the mind should be thought of as resulting from the whole pattern of sensory activity and the relationship and organization within this pattern.Gestalt psychologists in their opposition to structuralism pointed that mental experiences depends on the patterning and organization of elements and is not simply due to the compounding of elements.

BehaviorismJohn Watson Definition: School of psychology that studies only observable and measurable behavior. John Watson: You cannot define conscious any more than you can define a soul. You cannot locate or measure consciousness, and therefore it cannot be the object of scientific study. Studies observable, measurable behavior and nothing more. There are three important characteristics of behaviorism:Watson argued that complex human and animal behavior is made up almost entirely of conditioned responses.Watson emphasis on learned , rather than unlearned behavior. He denied the existence of inborn, or innate , behavioral tendencies.Watson held that there are no essential differences between human and animal behavior.

PsychoanalysisSigmund FreudMedical Doctor/Neurologist Studied hypnosis and found the unconscious Published The Interpretation of Dreams Believed that much of our behavior is governed by hidden motives and unconscious desires. A crucial point about these motives and desires, according to this theory, is that they are hidden from the awareness of the individual, i.e., they are unconscious.It is the expression of this unconscious drives which shows up in behavior and thought. Believed that childhood experiences determined adult personality.

PsychoanalysisNeo-FreudiansCarl JungAlfred AdlerErik Erikson Karen Horney Believed in the basics of psychoanalysis

BehaviorialB.F. Skinner Agreed with Watson that psychology should be only observable and measurable behaviorBIG DIFFERENCE: He used reinforcement Reinforcement: anything that follows a response and makes that response more likely to occur.

Example: Behavior: you get an A on the first Psych test Reinforcer: Your parents give you $100 Result: You strive to get an A on all other Psych tests, hoping for the same reinforcer.

Humanistic PsychologyDefinition: School of psychology that emphasizes nonverbal experience and altered states of consciousness as a means of realizing ones full human potential. Goal: To ensure mental healthiness of individuals and develop therapeutic techniques. Psychologists: Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers

Cognitive PsychologyDefinition: School of psychology devoted to the study of mental processes generally. Goal: To explore the mental processes involved in judgment, decision making, and other aspects of complex thought.

BiologicalFocuses on how our biology and biochemistry influences behaviorNeurobiology is essential- study the brain!The field contributes to the understanding of many medical disorders as well-Parkinsons, Huntingdons and Alzheimers disease, Autism, substance abuse

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