Introduction to Psychology

• Psychology comes from the Greek words Psyche, meaning "soul" or "mind", and Logos, meaning "the study of" or "knowledge".
• Psychology was initially defined loosely as the study of the mind.

Contemporary Definitions of Psychology

• Psychology explores behavior and mental processes, scientifically.
• Behavior refers to any action by an organism that can be overt or covert.
• Overt behaviors are observable actions like talking, dancing, eating and writing.
• Covert behaviors are unobservable actions like thinking, dreaming, and feeling.
• Mental Processes are private experiences such as thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, and beliefs which informs ones inner life as individuals.
• Mental processes aren't directly observable but can be inferred from actions.

What Psychology Isn't

• Scientific psychology isn't mind reading, magic, tricks, mysticism, or fortune telling.
• Instead, scinetific psycholgy focuses on the "whats," "hows," and "whys" of human behaviour.

Para and Pseudo Psychology

• Para psychology and Pseudo Psychology are outside psychology's scope, and don't rely on scientific methods.
• Para psychology literally means "beyond psychology."
• Pseudo Psychology is considered 'false Psychology' due to unscientific methods.

Pseudo Psychology Examples

• Characteristics include being unsubstantiated, false or fake psychology
• Relies on the physical features of an individual to predict his/her future
• Graphology, palmistry, and phrenology are examples.
• Graphology is the belief that handwriting analysis determines personality and predicts job success.
• Unlike graphology, forensic psychology focuses on verifying signatures and handwritings.
• Palmistry is the reading of palm lines to predict personality and future outcomes.
• Phrenology believes bumps on the head and skull shape determine personality and intelligence.

Parapsychology

• Involves studying interactions between living organisms and their environment, claiming to transcend physical laws.
• The field does not rely on the five senses.
• Processes within parapsychology are called Extra Sensory Perception (ESP).
• ESP is the unproven ability to communicate or gain information without sensory input.
• Examples of ESP include telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis.

Examples of Types of ESP

• Telepathy enables mind-to-mind communication without normal senses.
• Clairvoyance is the knowledge of hidden objects or events across space or time, lacking prior data.
• Precognition involves awareness of future events without prior factual knowledge.
• Psychokinesis means mind over matter, where an individual influences animate and inanimate objects by will power alone.

Goals of Psychology

• Psychology's main goals encompass the following:
• Describe
• Explain/Understand
• Predict
• Control

Describing Phenomena

• Naming/classification is central to understanding things.
• Description involves detailed observation of a behaviour or event, its circumstances, and who's affected.
• Requires accurate portrayal to identify existing variables and measure their extent.

Explaining and Understanding

• Requires understanding the phenomenon's causes.
• Explanation is creating theories.
• Explanation is building the theory, while theory is forming a set of ideas that explain a phenomena.
• Explanation turns observations into meaningful patterns.

Prediction

• Entails anticipating events, based on understanding underlying causes.
• Predictions of future events relies on using theoretical understanding of events and behaviour.
• Knowledge of causes like unemployment, road accidents, and depression can anticipate events, helping to adapt behaviour.

Control

• Focuses on transforming undesirable behaviours to desirable ones.
• It helps people gain mastery and control using psychological knowledge, rather than manipulating them.

Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. It encompasses both overt behaviors (observable actions) and covert behaviors (unobservable actions). Mental processes include thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, and are inferred from actions.