Introduction to PsychologyChapter 1

The word “Psychology” was derived from two Greek words, namely psyche and logos. Psyche means soul and logos means study or science, so the literal meaning of the term psychology is the study of soul.

Psychology is defined as:

A science is a body of systematized knowledge that is gathered by carefully observing and measuring the events. As the psychology uses experiments and observations, which others can repeat, this also can be considered as a science.

It is often used to solve the “real-life” problems.

Behavior includes anything a person or animal does that can be observed in some way, unlike mind or thoughts or feelings. Behavior is the avenue through which internal mental events can be studied.

The goals of psychology are as follows:

Psychology has its own scope. Indeed, the scope of psychology is as wide and varied as human activities are. But, it can be seen from the number of branches of psychology, the work of psychologist and how the principles are applied for the benefit of man.3

Following are the different branches of psychology:

Some applied fields of psychology are as follows:

Clinical psychologists are also doctors who diagnose psychological disorders and treat them by means of psychotherapy. Many people are confused about the differences between clinical psychologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

The work of counseling psychologist is quite similar to that of clinical psychologist, but they work with people who have milder emotional 4and personal problems. They may use psychotherapy and tests to measure aptitudes, interests and personality characteristics.

School psychologist deals with the learning difficulties of students and trying to remedy them. The school psychologist collects information from students and his/her parents. Some other school psychologists are involved in vocational and other forms of counseling. They are the school counselors.

Experimental psychology tries to understand the fundamental causes of behavior. Experimental psychologists do basic research, studying such fundamental processes as learning and memory, thinking, sensation and perception, motivation and emotion.

It is a subfield of psychology in which psychological principles are applied to practical problems of work and commerce. The first application to the problems of industry and organization was the use of intelligence and aptitude tests in selecting employees. Nowadays, they use psychology:

The primary focus of social psychology is on understanding how other people affect individuals. It includes the study of ways in which we perceive other people and how those perceptions affect our behavior towards them. Social psychologists have developed and perfected techniques for measuring attitudes and opinions, e.g. survey of political opinions, consumer's attitudes.

It tries to understand complex behavior by studying their beginnings and the orderly ways in which they change with time. Since, changes in behavior occur rapidly in the early years of life, child psychology, the study of children's behavior comprises a large part of developmental psychology. But, it studies the adolescence, adulthood and the old age changes also. The developmental psychologists are often concerned with children who have behavior problems or psychological disorders.

In general, it can be said that community psychologist applies psychological principles, ideas and points of view to solve social problems and help individuals adapt to their work and living groups, e.g. hostility among groups in the community, bad relations between the police and community members, distress due to lack of employment, etc.

In the history of psychology, differences of opinion were represented by schools of psychology—groups of like-minded psychologists, which formed around influential teachers who argued for one viewpoint or another.

The following are the different early schools of psychology:

The goal of the structuralism was to find the units or elements, which makeup the element. They thought that first step must be a description of basis, or elementary, units of sensation, image and emotion which comprise it.

The German word gestalt means form or configuration and the gestalt psychologist maintained that mind should be thought of as resulting from the whole pattern of sensory activity and the relationship and organization within this pattern.

It proposed that psychology should study what mind and behavior do. Specifically, functionalist felt that mind and behavior are adaptive—they enable an individual to adjust to a changing environment. They did experiments on functions like learning, memory, reasoning and motivation, etc.

Watson rejected mind as a subject of psychology and insisted that psychology be restricted to the study of behavior—the observable activities of people and animals. Three characteristics of behaviorism include:

Freud said that what we do and think results from urges or drives, which seek expression in behavior and thought, i.e. it is the expression of the unconscious drives which shows up in behavior and thought. (Key idea—unconscious motivation).

Today, except for modern versions of behaviorism and psychoanalysis, the old schools of psychology have disappeared. Various modern perspectives are as follows:

Following are the different methods of psychology:

Others methods which are also used in psychology are as follows:

In this method, the experimenter:

There are two types of experimental method, which are as follows:

Laboratory experiment: Laboratory experiment contains following components:

Subject → No independent variable → Behavior measured

Subject → Independent variable → Behavior measured

Field experiment: These experiments are performed, in natural settings, in the field to avoid artificiality and demand characteristics. In this, dependent variables are measured usually without the subject's knowledge about their participation.

It is a research method in which various aspects of behavior are carefully observed in the settings where such behavior naturally occurs. It studies people's reactions to the naturally occurring events in natural settings.

There are two types of observation method, which are as follows:

Indirect observation: Motion pictures, verbal reports and most sophisticated video pictures and audio recordings can be validated 11and compared with actual behavior through observation. For example, motion pictures of newborn babies reveal the details of movement patterns.

Direct observation: It can be of three types, which are follows:

Laboratory observation: Behavioral scientist creates a standard setting, which stimulates behavior of interest and allows exact unbiased measurements to be made. Because subjects are exposed to the same situation, it is relatively easy to compare their responses. Participants or subjects may know the presence, but they rarely know precisely why they are being studied. For example, mother's behavior towards the first and later born children.

Naturalistic observation: Viewing behavior in a natural setting. For example, the observer sitting on a park bench pretending to be absorbed in a book, can observe people's reactions to a beggar requesting money.

Participant observation: In this, they join the activities that are being watched and consequently being mistaken by the subjects as member of their own group.

Close contact with the subjects.

Observers may unknowingly influence the subject's behavior.

It means looking within or to look into one's own self, i.e. one's own thoughts, feelings and experiences at the time of living through 12the experiment in a given situation at the given time and to a given stimulus.

It is the most popular method and is quite useful in collecting both quantitative and qualitative information.

For example,

Case study or case history is a scientific method of research in which detailed information about the individual is collected or gathered either from the person, his relatives, friends or associates or from any other available records to develop general principles about behavior. Most case histories are prepared by reconstructing the biography of a person according to remembered events and records. So, the use of retrospective method may result in distortions of events or oversights, but it is often the only available method.14

It is one of the research methods in which large numbers of people answer questions about aspect of their views or their behavior attitudes. An adequate survey requires a valid and reliable questionnaire, carefully selected population sample, trained interviewers and appropriate methods of data analysis and interpretation. For example, political opinion and consumer preferences.

It is a scientific method that decides the relationships between two variables. A distinction between experimental and correlational methods is in order. In an experimental study, one variable is systematically manipulated to determine its effect on some other variables. Similar cause-effect relationships cannot always be inferred from correlational studies.