WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY | EASY ANSWERS - DEFINITIONS, SHORT NOTES, DISTINGUISH BETWEEN

SHORT NOTES

Basic areas of modern psychology:

Biological psychology – studies animal behavior and compares it with human behavior. Psychologists in this field study the ways in which the nervous system and other organs provide the basic for behavior.

Sensation and perception – This specially is concerned with how the sense organ operates. Operation of sense organs is sensation and interpretation of sensory organs is called perception.

Learning and memory – The ways in which we learn and remember new information, new skills, new habits, and new ways of relating to other people are studied in this specialty.

Cognition – Psychologists in this are concerned with intelligent action e.g., thinking, planning, decision making.

Development Psychology – This field of psychology is concerned with changes that take place in people during their life span. It is also the changes occurring from time of conception to death.

Motivation and emotion – Psychologist study the needs and states that activate and guide behavior such as hunger, thirst, sex, the need for achievement, the nature of the feelings and mood that color experience.

Personality – focuses on the more or less consistent ways of behaving that characterize our personality.

Social psychology – It studies the influence of other people on our behavior, the behavior of people in groups, intimate relationships and attitudes towards others.

Sociocultural psychology – In this area psychologists focus on the ethnic and cultural factors, gender identity, sexual orientation.

 

Applied areas of modern Psychology:

(Personal problem / correct abnormal behavior)

Clinical Psychology – Clinical psychologists try to understand and treat personal problems and correct abnormal behavior in a clinical set up.

Counseling psychology – Specialists in this field help people with their personal / school problems and with their career choices.

Industrial – Organizational Psychology – This field focuses on ways to train and motivate workers on ways to promote job satisfaction and good relationships among workers.

Educational and School Psychology – Educational psychology is concerned with the ways children learn in the classroom and the construction of the psychological and educational concepts. School psychology consults with teachers and about children who are experiencing learning behavior problems and they test children to see whether they could benefit from the special education programs.

Health psychology – specialists in this field focus on the ways of coping up with stress and trying to bring out the effect of stress. They seek to prevent health problems such as heart diseases by teaching people to relax, exercise and control their diets.

 

Ethic of research with animal subjects:

There are a number of reasons why psychologists study animal behavior.

Some studies conducted on animals would not be possible on humans.

Experiments conducted on animals can eb better controlled than experiments done on humans.

A great deal of information ca be learnt by comparing the behavior of animals of different species:

a.    Health: All animal subjects must be cared for in a manner that ensures good health.

b.    Necessity: Studies of animals are considered to be ethical only when they are necessary to significantly advance the understanding of human behavior and mental process.

c.    Humane treatment: Every effort must be made to minimize the discomfort of the animal subject. Necessary surgery must be performed under anesthesia and the animal’s death must be as painless as possible. Studies that inflict pain or stress are considered essential to worthwhile scientific aims.

Although we must be very careful not to assume automatically what is learnt about animal behavior will apply to human behavior, much useful research has been learned from animal research.

The use of animals in research has received a great deal of public attention in recent years due to the activities of animal rights groups.

 

Ethics of Research on Human Participants

Psychology depends heavily on research conducted with human participants for its database. More complete discussion of these issues can be found in the American Psychological Association (A.P.A.) Ethical Principles in the Conduct of Research with human participants.

Freedom from pressure – It is not ethical to pressurize an individual into participating in an experiment. Students in college courses for e.g., cannot be required to participate, they must be given an alternative way to meet any course requirements.

Inform Consent – The experimenter must give potential participants a full description of the experiment in a language they can understand before they are asked to participate. Its not ethical to allow individual to participate in an experiment without knowing what they are getting into. Once the experiment has begun, it must be made clear to the participants that they are fully free to change their minds and withdraw from the experiment without penalty, embarrassment and so on.

Limited deception – Sometimes it is necessary to conduct experiments without the participants knowing the true purpose of the study.

Adequate debriefing – Research participants have a right to know the results of the study. Current practice dictates that all persons are provided with a summary of the study in a language they understand. If the results are not immediately available, they have a right to receive it when it is available.

Confidentiality - Researchers have an obligation to keep everything that they learn about the research participants absolutely confidential. In addition, data must be stored without names attached in most cases to protect future abuses of the information.

 

Contemporary perspectives in psychology

Biological perspective – Relation between our biological systems and behavior. Cajal identified neurons (brain cells) understand the role played by our brain in emotion, motivation, reasoning, etc., role of heredity, role of drugs on the brain chemicals.

Socio-cultural perspective – Here, psychologists emphasize that cultural, ethnic identity and gender are the three key factors that should be taken into consideration in order to understand a person.

Definition of culture – The patterns of behavior beliefs and values that are shared by a group of people.

Definition of ethnic group – A group of persons who are descendants from a common group of ancestors.

Definition of ethnic identity – Each person’s sense of belonging to a particular ethnic group and sharing that groups belief, attitudes, skill, music, ceremonies, etc.

Definition of gender identity – One’s views of oneself as male or female.

Two aspects of this prospective are important namely:

It promotes cultural relativity (promotes thinking of different cultures in relative terms rather than judgmental terms). It says that cultures are simply different rather than being inferior or superior.

It reminds us that not all members of a given culture, ethnic group or gender are alike, there are more differences within the same group than between different cultures.

 

DISTINGUISH BETWEEN

Ethnic group and ethnic identity

Ethnic group – A group of persons who are descendants from a common group of ancestors.

People belonging to a particular ethnic group share the group’s belief, attitudes, skill, music, ceremonies, etc. They also share similar racial characteristics by knowing the person’s race, we will be able to know his ethic group. E.g., when a person is born and brought up in India but later decides to migrate to Australia, he then adopts the culture, values, behaviorism of the Australians. Therefore, India becomes his ethnic group.

Ethnic identity – Each person’s sense of belonging to a particular ethnic group and sharing that groups belief, attitudes, skill, music, ceremonies, etc.

e.g., When an individual has a particular ethic group but adopts that of another that becomes his ethnic identity. When the individual migrates to Australia, Australia becomes his ethnic identity. It can be changed simply by adopting the values, rituals, norms, etc. of another ethnic group.

 

Basic and applied area of modern psychology

Basic area of modern psychology – Those who work in basic areas conduct research on psychological processes such as emotion, thinking, learning, prejudice, etc. by using scientific methods.

e.g., Bio-psychological studies animal behavior and compares it with human behavior

e.g., Sensation and perception studying of the sense organs and their interpretations.

e.g., Social psychology studies the influence of society on behavior.

e. g., learning and memory – The ways in which we learn and remember new information, new skills, new habits and new ways of relating to other people are studied in this specialty.

Applied area of modern psychology – Those who work in applied areas (use knowledge from the basic areas to solve and prevent significant human problems such as marital difficulties, emotional instability, job dissatisfaction, etc.)

e.g., Clinical psychology diagnoses and treats psychological disorders.

e.g., Counseling psychology helps people with personal, school or career problems.

e.g., Industrial – organizational psychology studies problems of workers.

e.g., Educational and school psychology is concerned with school or college syllabus. School psychology helps to identify the problem children.

e.g., health psychology studies the effect of stress and trying to prevent health problems by certain techniques.

 

 

DEFINITIONS

Clinical Psychology – Clinical psychologists try to understand and treat personal problems and correct abnormal behavior.

Counseling psychology – Specialists in this field help people with personal or school problems and career choices.

Industrial and organizational Psychology – This field focus on ways to match employees to jobs, to train and motivate workers and to promote job satisfaction and good relationships among workers.

Educational and school psychology – Educational psychology is concerned with ways children learn in the classroom and with the construction of psychological and educational tests. School psychologists consult with teachers about children who are experiencing learning or behavior problems and they test children to see whether they benefit from special educational programs.

Health psychology – Specialists in this field focus on the ways in which pressures, conflicts, hardships and other factors may contribute to poor health. They seek to prevent health problems such as heart diseases by teaching people to relax, exercise and control their diet and to stop high-risk behaviors such as smoking.

Psychology – Today psychology is defined as the science of behaviors and mental processes.

A science: Control and Observation

Behavior: Persons overt actions that others can directly observe.

Mental processes: (Covert) Private thoughts, emotions, feelings, thinking, reasoning, etc.

 

Goals of psychology –

Describe – the information gathered through scientific research helps us to describe psychological phenomena accurately and completely.

Predict – able to predict future behavior.

Explanation – We understand behavior and mental processes when we can explain them. Explanations are theories and not facts.

Influence – Psychologists hope to influence behavior in beneficial ways i.e., therapy

Ethnic identity – Each person’s sense of belonging to a particular ethnic group and sharing that groups belief, attitudes, skill, music, ceremonies, etc. is called ethnic identity.

Ethnic group – A group of persons who are descendants from a common group of ancestors. People belonging to a particular ethnic group share the group’s beliefs attitudes, skill, music ceremonies etc., and racial characteristics.

Gender identity – Gender identity refers to one’s view of oneself as male or female. As boys and girls interact with their parents, siblings, teachers, and friends they learn what it means to be male or female in their society. For e.g., males traditionally have been taught to be strong and assertive whereas females have been taught to eb mature and gentle.