Perspectives in Psychology

Psychology is the study of people’s minds and behavior. Many psychologists defined and have
presented different looks towards the interests and explanations of human behavior. Reasoning
this, many perspectives in psychology emerged.
Starting from Aristotle to the modern definition of psychology, no single view has
emerged as the correct way of viewing human behavior and mental processes. Nowadays
viewpoints of founders of psychology have blended so much that they no longer exist as a
separate school of thought. The major perspectives in psychology that emerged are cognitive,
behavioral, psychodynamic, humanistic, biological, socio-cultural, and evolutionary.
Cognitive Perspective
One of the important psychological perspectives is the cognitive perspective of
psychology. It focuses on the processing, organizing, storing, and retrieving of information and
is concerned with the higher mental processes such as thinking, memory, etc.
The cognitive perspective is the newly developed area explaining human behavior
developed during the 1960s. The foremost contributors to this perspective are George Miller
(1920), Jerome Bruner (1915), and Ulrich Neisser (1928). Cognition covers the higher
intellectual process as perceiving, believing, thinking, remembering, knowing, deciding and so
on. The word “Cognito” means “I think”. Cognition is a mental process in which the information
is obtained, processed, transferred, stored, retrieved, and used. It examines thinking, how we
know and understand words, solve problems, make decisions, uses language, communicate our
thoughts to others.
For example, if someone stops us on a highway, and if we perceive him to need help (his
car is broken), we might stop offering assistance and remember that someone once helped us in a
similar situation.
On the other hand, if we think that he is planning to rob at gunpoint or remember a bad
accident with a similar situation, we would not assist him. This suggests cognition helps to
analyze the situation. From this perspective, cognition plays a vital role in guiding behavior.
Behavioral Perspective
Another, one of the importance of psychological perspectives is the behavioral
perspective of psychology. It is based on observable behavior without giving importance to
mental processes such as thinking, which emphasizes that learning plays a key role in controlling
and influencing all behaviors.
The behavioral perspective of psychology suggests only shown behaviors are observable
and not mental processes. It was J.B. Waston who had introduced the idea of behaviorism, the
work of Ivan Pavlov that influences him. Watson, then opined that human behavior can be
measured through observable behavior, and not by the study of mind or consciousness. He
formed and practiced these principles for animals which were later opened for humans.
Later, these psychology perspectives were followed by the B.F. Skinner, one of the
greatest contemporary psychologists. Skinner uses behavior in a very simple way. He used to
cure diseases and change the behavior of animals in a variety of settings. The principles of
Skinner’s are also used to train dolphins, seals, and other animals found in the circus or at home.
Psychodynamic Perspective
Sigmund Freud developed the psychodynamic technique, used to study abnormal
behavior. Freud felt the root of psychological problems are motives of sexual and aggressive
nature which stay at the unconscious level of the mind.
The term psychodynamic is used because these unconscious motives and conflicts
influence our behavior even though we do not know they exist. They are revealed in disguised,
symbolic ways such as in dreams, in slips of the tongue, and sometimes in psychological
problems. Freud also focused on early childhood and emphasized that early experiences have
major influences on personality development. The psychodynamic perspective is widely known
for treating maladaptive behavior by bringing the unconscious causes of distress to the conscious
level.
Humanistic Perspective
It emphasizes the psychological health of human beings, through psychotherapy, focusing
on the individual’s free will, values, and goodness of people.
The humanistic perspective of psychology was developed by Abraham Maslow, Carl
Rogers, and Viktor Frankl during the 1950s and 1960s. This perspective has a very different
view on human beings compared to psychoanalysis and behaviorism psychology perspectives.
This perspective focuses on freedom in controlling human behavior. According to them,
each person is a unique individual and experiences the world differently. One of the most
important humanistic principles is that all human beings have a basic powerful inborn tendency
to grow and improve to their fullest potential, and a desire to take control of their own lives.
Humanistic psychologists are the “least scientific” of all perspectives of psychology. The
principle they focus on is very difficult to investigate scientifically because it characterizes by
philosophical aspects of human life.
Physiological or Biological Perspective
It mainly focuses on the physiology involved in all forms of behavior and mental
processes. Uses research tools to investigate the functioning of the brain and nerve impulses and
focuses mainly on the role of heredity in normal and abnormal behavior patterns.
Every human behavior is related to physiological changes within the body. The working
relationship between the body, behavior, and mental processes is the focus of the biological
perspective. The physiological perspective describes the role of nerve cells in different aspects of
an individual’s behavior in emotion, reasoning, problem-solving, intelligence, speaking, etc. In
recent years, physiological psychologists are focusing on the influence of heredity on personality
characteristics and abilities. They are also concentrating on behavior genetics to determine how
much genes and environmental influence individual differences.
Karl Lashley especially focused on the continuous activity of the brain and its interaction
with the environment and a dynamic composite of the interacting systems. Lashley emphasized
fatigue, lower motivation, and poor recall as the three factors that are especially important in
forgetting.
Evolutionary Perspective
It focuses on how natural selection favors traits that promote the continuation of one’s
genes. How does evolution influence behavior tendencies and how that behavior or structure aids
in adapting to the environment?
An evolutionary perspective is based on the work developed by Charles Darwin (1859)
who popularized the theory of evolution almost 150 years ago. The evolutionary perspective
focuses on the role of the physical structure and behavior play in the adaption process of an
organism to the environment.
Darwin, in his theory of evolution, popularized three basic components variance, inheritance,
and selection.
 Variation refers to the fact that organisms belonging to a given species vary in different
ways. Every human being has individual differences, differing in shape, size, intelligence,
personality, health, and so on.
 Inheritance refers to the fact that some of these variations can be passed from generation
to generation
 Selection refers to the particular behavior the organisms have adapted to best suit their
environment.
Socio-Cultural Perspective
The main focus point of socio-cultural perspective is, how behavior and thinking vary
across diverse cultures.
The way human beings socialize and develop from their early life to old age is explained
through a perspective in psychology known as the socio-cultural perspective. Socio-cultural
psychology explains how our personality, beliefs, attitude, skills, and values are shaped by our
culture ethnicity, gender, religion, and other important socio-cultural factors.
Socio-cultural aspects are concerned with how people interact, are interdependent, and
inter-coordinate with each other to influence and to be influenced by each other.
Conclusion
These 7 perspectives of psychology are recognized as appropriate means to understand
human different characters, need, styles, evolution, and many things. By comprising one or two
perspectives one can be able to understand why and how humans behave the way they do.
These perspectives are effective ways to understand different problems of people which
can be beneficial to different scholars, researchers, psychologists, and students.
However, it cannot be said that these 7 perspectives are only the perspectives of
psychology. Rather the psychologists today are increasingly involved in researching many more
possible perspectives and in the future there may much more perspectives that additionally help
to understand people, us, or human nature in a better way.