Untitled Quiz

General Psychology and Life Skills (PsyL 1011)

• Course offered in October 2021
• Topics include the essence of psychology, definition of basic concepts, psychology's goals and historical background, various psychology perspectives including branches, and research methods.

Chapter One: Essence of Psychology

• Definition of Basic Concepts
• Goals of Psychology
• Historical Background of Psychology
• Theoretical Perspectives in Psychology
• Branches of Psychology
• Research Methods in Psychology

1.1 Definition of Psychology and Related Concepts

• Brainstorming Questions:
  • What comes to mind when hearing "psychology"?
  • Have you heard anything related to psychology?
  • What was its content about?
  • Did you appreciate it? Why?
  • What do you expect from the course?

Defining Key Terms

• Psychology is derived from Greek words "psyche" (mind, soul, spirit) and "logos" (study, knowledge, discourse).
• Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and the underlying mental processes.
• Science in psychology uses scientific methods and empirical data to study behavior and mental processes.
• Behavior can be overt (observable, such as actions and facial expressions) or covert (unobservable, such as thinking, feelings, and memory).

What Makes Psychology Different from Other Behavioral Sciences?

• Psychology focuses on individual behaviors, unlike fields like sociology and anthropology, which study group behaviors.
• Psychology examines all dimensions of human behavior, unlike other sciences that focus on only one or a few dimensions.

1.2 Goals of Psychology

• Psychology as a science has four goals:
  • Description: detailing individual behavior
  • Explanation: understanding and identifying the causes of behavior
  • Prediction: determining future behavior
  • Control: modifying or changing undesirable behavior to desirable behavior.

1.3 Historical Background and Major Perspectives in Psychology

• Psychology is a relatively new field.
• It started as a science in 1879 at the University of Leipzig, Germany, with Wilhelm Wundt's establishment of a psychology laboratory.
• Wundt developed objective introspection to scientifically analyze mental experiences.
• Before Wundt, the study of subjective experiences was part of philosophy.

Schools of Thought

• A school of thought is a system of thinking about human behavior.
• Psychology has gone through different stages of development, generating various schools of thought: old and modern.

1.3.1 Five Early Schools of Psychology

• Structuralism:
  • View: Study of the structure of the mind.
  • Founder: Edward Titchener
  • Goal: Analyze basic elements of mental processes (sensations, images, and feelings).
  • Method: Introspection (inward observation).
• Functionalism:
  • View: Study of the function of the mind.
  • Founder: William James
  • Goal: Investigate adaptive functions of mental processes in the real world.
  • Method: Methods other than introspection (like questionnaires and mental tests).
• Gestalt Psychology:
  • View: Study of the whole mind (perceptions); not just its parts.
  • Founders: Max Wertheimer and colleagues
  • Goal: Examine patterns of sensory activity and their relationships.
  • Method: Interpreting or perceiving sensory experience.
• Behaviorism:
  • View: Study of observable behaviors; not mental processes.
  • Founder: John B. Watson.
  • Goal: Observing the environmental effect on behavior.
  • Method: Observation and experiments.
• Psychoanalysis:
  • View: Investigation of unconscious mental processes.
  • Founder: Sigmund Freud.
  • Goal: Uncovering hidden wishes, conflicts, and motivations.
  • Method: Clinical case studies (e.g., hypnosis, free association, dream analysis).

1.3 Modern Schools (Perspectives) of Psychology

• Psychodynamic perspective:

  • Emphasis: Unconscious dynamics (inner forces, conflicts) in shaping personality and behavior.
  • Origins: Freud, with various other psychodynamic theories existing today.

• Behavioral perspective:

  • Emphasis: Learning experiences and environmental factors in shaping behavior.
  • View: The mind as a "black box" (treating the mind as less useful to understand behavior), in which the environment is all that matters.

• Humanistic perspective:

  • Emphasis: Human values, experiences, free will, and individual uniqueness.
  • Goal: Helping people express themselves creatively and achieve their fullest potential (self-actualization).

• Cognitive perspective:

  • Emphasis: Mental processes (reasoning, memory, language, problem-solving).
  • Goal: Understanding how thoughts and explanations influence behavior and choices.

• Biological perspective:

  • Emphasis: The body's impact on behavior, feelings, and thoughts (brain, chemicals).
  • Processes: How the body and especially the brain influence psychological processes (learning, emotions).

• Sociocultural perspective:

  • Emphasis: Social and cultural factors in human behavior.
  • Understanding how cultures shape behavior, values, and feelings.

1.4 Branches/Subfields of Psychology

• Psychology has various specializations following graduation:
  • Developmental, Personality, Social, Cross-Cultural, Industrial, Forensic, Educational, Health, Clinical, Counseling.

1.5 Research Methods in Psychology

• Research: Scientific method to gain knowledge and solve problems
• Scientific method: Testing ideas via systematic observation, experiments, and analysis.
• Hypothesis: Tentative proposition about the relationship between variables.
• Theory: Integrated set of principles explaining aspects of experience.
• Steps in scientific research: Defining the problem, forming hypothesis, testing hypothesis, drawing conclusions, and reporting results.

1.5.1 Major Types of Research Methods

• Descriptive research:
  • Naturalistic observation: Observing subjects in their natural environment, studying behavior. Limitations: observer effect and observer bias.
  • Case study: In-depth study of one individual, providing extensive data about that specific individual, but findings may not be generalized to others.
  • Surveys: Collecting data from a large group of people for broad comparisons, but require a proper representative sample.
• Correlational research:
  • Studying the relationship between variables without manipulating them.
  • Correlation implies a relationship but not causation (e.g., smoking and lung cancer correlation does not mean smoking causes lung cancer).
  • Relationships can be positive, negative, or zero.
• Experimental research:
  • Studying cause-and-effect relationships by manipulating an independent variable while holding other factors constant.
  • Includes independent variable (IV), dependent variable (DV), and randomly assigned groups (experimental/control).

1.6 Applications of Psychology

• Applied psychology utilizes psychological knowledge to solve real-world problems in diverse fields:
  • Mental health, organizational psychology, education, health, business, law.
  • Specific applications like clinical, counseling, industrial, legal, neuro, occupational, forensic, school, sports psychology, traffic and medical psychology.