Psychology

Psychology is the study of mind and behavior.[1] Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans
and nonhumans, both conscious and unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such
as thoughts, feelings, and motives. Psychology is an academic discipline of immense scope,
crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. Biological psychologists seek an
understanding of the emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social
scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups.

Psychologists are involved in research

on perception, cognition, attention, emotion, intelligence, subjective experiences, motivation, brain
functioning, and personality. Psychologists' interests extend to interpersonal
relationships, psychological resilience, family resilience, and other areas within social psychology.
They also consider the unconscious mind.[4] Research psychologists employ empirical methods to
infer causal and correlational relationships between psychosocial variables. Some, but not
all, clinical and counseling psychologists rely on symbolic interpretation.

History

The ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, China, India, and Persia all engaged in the philosophical
study of psychology. In Ancient Egypt the Ebers Papyrus mentioned depression and thought
disorders.[17] Historians note that Greek philosophers, including Thales, Plato,
and Aristotle (especially in his De Anima treatise),[18] addressed the workings of the mind.[19] As early
as the 4th century BC, the Greek physician Hippocrates theorized that mental disorders had physical
rather than supernatural causes.[20] In 387 BCE, Plato suggested that the brain is where mental
processes take place, and in 335 BCE Aristotle suggested that it was the heart.

Women in psychology
1900 - 1949
Women in the early 1900s started to make key findings within the world of psychology. In
1923, Anna Freud,[60] the daughter of Sigmund Freud, built on her father's work using
different defense mechanisms (denial, repression, and suppression) to psychoanalyze children. She
believed that once a child reached the latency period, child analysis could be used as a mode
of therapy. She stated it is important focus on the child's environment, support their development,
and prevent neurosis. She believed a child should be recognized as their own person with their own
right and have each session catered to the child’s specific needs. She encouraged drawing, moving
freely, and expressing themselves in any way. This helped build a strong therapeutic alliance with
child patients, which allows psychologists to observe their normal behavior. She continued her
research on the impact of children after family separation, children with socio-economically
disadvantaged backgrounds, and all stages of child development from infancy to adolescence.
Functional periodicity, the belief women are mentally and physically impaired during menstruation,
impacted women’s rights because employers were less likely to hire them due to the belief they
would be incapable of working for 1 week a month. Leta Stetter Hollingworth wanted to prove this
hypothesis and Edward L. Thorndike's theory, that women have lesser psychological and physical
traits than men and were simply mediocre, incorrect. Hollingworth worked to prove differences were
not from male genetic superiority, but from culture. She also included the concept of women’s
impairment during menstruation in her research. She recorded both women and men performances
on tasks (cognitive, perceptual, and motor) for three months. No evidence was found of decreased
performance due to a woman's menstrual cycle.[61] She also challenged the belief intelligence is
inherited and women here are intellectually inferior to men. She stated that women do not reach
positions of power due to the societal norms and roles they are assigned. As she states in her
article, "Variability as related to sex differences in achievement: A Critique",[62] the largest problem
women have is the social order that was built due to the assumption women have less interests and
abilities than men. To further prove her point, she completed another experiment with infants who
have not been influenced by the environment of social norms, like the adult male getting more
opportunities than women. She found no difference between infants besides size. After this research
proved the original hypothesis wrong, Hollingworth was able to show there is no difference between
the physiological and psychological traits of men and women, and women are not impaired
during menstruation.
Major schools of thought
Biological
Psychologists generally consider biology the substrate of thought and feeling, and therefore an
important area of study. Behaviorial neuroscience, also known as biological psychology, involves the
application of biological principles to the study of physiological and genetic mechanisms underlying
behavior in humans and other animals. The allied field of comparative psychology is the scientific
study of the behavior and mental processes of non-human animals.[99] A leading question in
behavioral neuroscience has been whether and how mental functions are localized in the brain.
From Phineas Gage to H.M. and Clive Wearing, individual people with mental deficits traceable to
physical brain damage have inspired new discoveries in this area.[100] Modern behavioral
neuroscience could be said to originate in the 1870s, when in France Paul Broca traced production
of speech to the left frontal gyrus, thereby also demonstrating hemispheric lateralization of brain
function. Soon after, Carl Wernicke identified a related area necessary for the understanding of
speech

Behaviorist
Main articles: Behaviorism, Psychological behaviorism, and Radical behaviorism

Skinner's teaching machine, a mechanical invention to

automate the task of programmed instructionDuration: 3 minutes and 21 seconds.3:21Subtitles
available.CCThe film of the Little Albert experiment
A tenet of behavioral research is that a large part of both human and lower-animal behavior is
learned. A principle associated with behavioral research is that the mechanisms involved in learning
apply to humans and non-human animals. Behavioral researchers have developed a treatment
known as behavior modification, which is used to help individuals replace undesirable behaviors with
desirable ones.
Early behavioral researchers studied stimulus–response pairings, now known as classical
conditioning. They demonstrated that when a biologically potent stimulus (e.g., food that elicits
salivation) is paired with a previously neutral stimulus (e.g., a bell) over several learning trials, the
neutral stimulus by itself can come to elicit the response the biologically potent stimulus elicits. Ivan
Pavlov—known best for inducing dogs to salivate in the presence of a stimulus previously linked with
food—became a leading figure in the Soviet Union and inspired followers to use his methods on
humans.[38] In the United States, Edward Lee Thorndike initiated "connectionist" studies by trapping
animals in "puzzle boxes" and rewarding them for escaping. Thorndike wrote in 1911, "There can be
no moral warrant for studying man's nature unless the study will enable us to control his acts."[30]: 212–
5
From 1910 to 1913 the American Psychological Association went through a sea change of opinion,
away from mentalism and towards "behavioralism." In 1913, John B. Watson coined the term
behaviorism for this school of thought.[30]: 218–27 Watson's famous Little Albert experiment in 1920 was at
first thought to demonstrate that repeated use of upsetting loud noises could
instill phobias (aversions to other stimuli) in an infant human,[14][108] although such a conclusion was
likely an exaggeration.[109] Karl Lashley, a close collaborator with Watson, examined biological
manifestations of learning in the brain.[100]
Clark L. Hull, Edwin Guthrie, and others did much to help behaviorism become a widely used
paradigm.[36] A new method of "instrumental" or "operant" conditioning added the concepts
of reinforcement and punishment to the model of behavior change. Radical behaviorists avoided
discussing the inner workings of the mind, especially the unconscious mind, which they considered
impossible to assess scientifically.[110] Operant conditioning was first described by Miller and Kanorski
and popularized in the U.S. by B.F. Skinner, who emerged as a leading intellectual of the behaviorist
movement.[111][112]
Noam Chomsky published an influential critique of radical behaviorism on the grounds that
behaviorist principles could not adequately explain the complex mental process of language
acquisition and language use.[113][114] The review, which was scathing, did much to reduce the status of
behaviorism within psychology.[30]: 282–5 Martin Seligman and his colleagues discovered that they could
condition in dogs a state of "learned helplessness", which was not predicted by the behaviorist
approach to psychology.[115][116] Edward C. Tolman advanced a hybrid "cognitive behavioral" model,
most notably with his 1948 publication discussing the cognitive maps used by rats to guess at the
location of food at the end of a maze.[117] Skinner's behaviorism did not die, in part because it
generated successful practical applications.[114]
The Association for Behavior Analysis International was founded in 1974 and by 2003 had members
from 42 countries. The field has gained a foothold in Latin America and Japan.[118] Applied behavior
analysis is the term used for the application of the principles of operant conditioning to change
socially significant behavior (it supersedes the term, "behavior modification").
Cognitive
Main article: Cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology involves the study of mental processes, including perception, attention,
language comprehension and production, memory, and problem solving.[120] Researchers in the field
of cognitive psychology are sometimes called cognitivists. They rely on an information
processing model of mental functioning. Cognitivist research is informed by functionalism and
experimental psychology.

Starting in the 1950s, the experimental techniques developed by Wundt, James, Ebbinghaus, and
others re-emerged as experimental psychology became increasingly cognitivist and, eventually,
constituted a part of the wider, interdisciplinary cognitive science.[121][122] Some called this development
the cognitive revolution because it rejected the anti-mentalist dogma of behaviorism as well as the
strictures of psychoanalysis.

Albert Bandura helped along the transition in psychology from behaviorism to cognitive psychology.
Bandura and other social learning theorists advanced the idea of vicarious learning. In other words,
they advanced the view that a child can learn by observing the immediate social environment and
not necessarily from having been reinforced for enacting a behavior, although they did not rule out
the influence of reinforcement on learning a behavior.

Technological advances also renewed interest in mental states and mental representations.
English neuroscientist Charles Sherrington and Canadian psychologist Donald O. Hebb used
experimental methods to link psychological phenomena to the structure and function of the brain.
The rise of computer science, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence underlined the value of
comparing information processing in humans and machines.
A popular and representative topic in this area is cognitive bias, or irrational thought. Psychologists
(and economists) have classified and described a sizeable catalog of biases which recur frequently
in human thought. The availability heuristic, for example, is the tendency to overestimate the
importance of something which happens to come readily to mind.[124]
Elements of behaviorism and cognitive psychology were synthesized to form cognitive behavioral
therapy, a form of psychotherapy modified from techniques developed by American
psychologist Albert Ellis and American psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck.
On a broader level, cognitive science is an interdisciplinary enterprise involving cognitive
psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists, linguists, and researchers in artificial intelligence, human–
computer interaction, and computational neuroscience. The discipline of cognitive science covers
cognitive psychology as well as philosophy of mind, computer science, and neuroscience.
[125]
Computer simulations are sometimes used to model phenomena of interest.

Social
Main article: Social psychology

See also: Social psychology (sociology)

Social psychology is concerned with how behaviors, thoughts, feelings, and the social environment
influence human interactions.[126] Social psychologists study such topics as the influence of others on
an individual's behavior (e.g. conformity, persuasion) and the formation of beliefs, attitudes,
and stereotypes about other people. Social cognition fuses elements of social and cognitive
psychology for the purpose of understanding how people process, remember, or distort social
information. The study of group dynamics involves research on the nature of leadership,
organizational communication, and related phenomena. In recent years, social psychologists have
become interested in implicit measures, mediational models, and the interaction of person and social
factors in accounting for behavior. Some concepts that sociologists have applied to the study of
psychiatric disorders, concepts such as the social role, sick role, social class, life events, culture,
migration, and total institution, have influenced social psychologists.

Psychoanalytic
Main articles: Psychodynamics and psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a collection of theories and therapeutic techniques intended to analyze the

unconscious mind and its impact on everyday life. These theories and techniques inform treatments
for mental disorders.[128][129][130] Psychoanalysis originated in the 1890s, most prominently with the work
of Sigmund Freud. Freud's psychoanalytic theory was largely based on interpretive
methods, introspection, and clinical observation. It became very well known, largely because it
tackled subjects such as sexuality, repression, and the unconscious.[57]: 84–6 Freud pioneered the
methods of free association and dream interpretation.
Psychoanalytic theory is not monolithic. Other well-known psychoanalytic thinkers who diverged
from Freud include Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Erik Erikson, Melanie Klein, D.W. Winnicott, Karen
Horney, Erich Fromm, John Bowlby, Freud's daughter Anna Freud, and Harry Stack Sullivan. These
individuals ensured that psychoanalysis would evolve into diverse schools of thought. Among these
schools are ego psychology, object relations, and interpersonal, Lacanian, and relational
psychoanalysis.

Psychologists such as Hans Eysenck and philosophers including Karl Popper sharply criticized
psychoanalysis. Popper argued that psychoanalysis was not falsifiable (no claim it made could be
proven wrong) and therefore inherently not a scientific discipline,[133] whereas Eysenck advanced the
view that psychoanalytic tenets had been contradicted by experimental data. By the end of the 20th
century, psychology departments in American universities mostly had marginalized Freudian theory,
dismissing it as a "desiccated and dead" historical artifact.[134] Researchers such as António
Damásio, Oliver Sacks, and Joseph LeDoux; and individuals in the emerging field of neuro-
psychoanalysis have defended some of Freud's ideas on scientific grounds.

Existential-humanistic
Main articles: Existential psychology and Humanistic psychology

Humanistic psychology, which has been influenced by existentialism and phenomenology,

[137]
stresses free will and self-actualization.[138] It emerged in the 1950s as a movement within
academic psychology, in reaction to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis.[139] The humanistic
approach seeks to view the whole person, not just fragmented parts of the personality or isolated
cognitions.[140] Humanistic psychology also focuses on personal growth, self-identity, death,
aloneness, and freedom. It emphasizes subjective meaning, the rejection of determinism, and
concern for positive growth rather than pathology. Some founders of the humanistic school of
thought were American psychologists Abraham Maslow, who formulated a hierarchy of human
needs, and Carl Rogers, who created and developed client-centered therapy.
Later, positive psychology opened up humanistic themes to scientific study. Positive psychology is
the study of factors which contribute to human happiness and well-being, focusing more on people
who are currently healthy. In 2010, Clinical Psychological Review published a special issue devoted
to positive psychological interventions, such as gratitude journaling and the physical expression of
gratitude. It is, however, far from clear that positive psychology is effective in making people happier.
[141][142]
Positive psychological interventions have been limited in scope, but their effects are thought to
be somewhat better than placebo effects.
The American Association for Humanistic Psychology, formed in 1963, declared:
Humanistic psychology is primarily an orientation toward the whole of psychology rather than a
distinct area or school. It stands for respect for the worth of persons, respect for differences of
approach, open-mindedness as to acceptable methods, and interest in exploration of new aspects of
human behavior. As a "third force" in contemporary psychology, it is concerned with topics having
little place in existing theories and systems: e.g., love, creativity, self, growth, organism, basic need-
gratification, self-actualization, higher values, being, becoming, spontaneity, play, humor, affection,
naturalness, warmth, ego-transcendence, objectivity, autonomy, responsibility, meaning, fair-play,
transcendental experience, peak experience, courage, and related concepts.[143]
Existential psychology emphasizes the need to understand a client's total orientation towards the
world. Existential psychology is opposed to reductionism, behaviorism, and other methods that
objectify the individual.[138] In the 1950s and 1960s, influenced by philosophers Søren
Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger, psychoanalytically trained American psychologist Rollo
May helped to develop existential psychology. Existential psychotherapy, which follows from
existential psychology, is a therapeutic approach that is based on the idea that a person's inner
conflict arises from that individual's confrontation with the givens of existence. Swiss
psychoanalyst Ludwig Binswanger and American psychologist George Kelly may also be said to
belong to the existential school.[144] Existential psychologists tend to differ from more "humanistic"
psychologists in the former's relatively neutral view of human nature and relatively positive
assessment of anxiety.[145] Existential psychologists emphasized the humanistic themes of death, free
will, and meaning, suggesting that meaning can be shaped by myths and narratives; meaning can
be deepened by the acceptance of free will, which is requisite to living an authentic life, albeit often
with anxiety with regard to death.[146]
Austrian existential psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl drew evidence of meaning's
therapeutic power from reflections upon his own internment.[147] He created a variation of existential
psychotherapy called logotherapy, a type of existentialist analysis that focuses on a will to
meaning (in one's life), as opposed to Adler's Nietzschean doctrine of will to power or Freud's will to
pleasure.

*Scope of Psychology:

The field of psychology can be understood by various subfields of psychology making an attempt in
meeting the goals of psychology. 1. Physiological Psychology: In the most fundamental sense, human
beings are biological organisms. Physiological functions and the structure of our body work together to
influence our behaviour. Biopsychology is the branch that specializes in the area. Biopsychologists may
examine the ways in which specific sites in the brain which are related to disorders such as Parkinson’s
disease or they may try to determine how our sensations are related to our behaviour. 2. Developmental
Psychology: Here the studies are with respect to how people grow and change throughout their life from
prenatal stages, through childhood, adulthood and old age. Developmental psychologists work in a
variety of settings like colleges, schools, healthcare centres, business centres, government and non-profit
organizations, etc. They are also very much involved in studies of the disturbed children and advising
parents about helping such children. 3. Personality Psychology: This branch helps to explain both
consistency and change in a person’s behaviour over time, from birth till the end of life through the
influence of parents, siblings, playmates, school, society and culture. It also studies the individual traits
that differentiate the behaviour of one person from that of another person. 4. Health Psychology: This
explores the relations between the psychological factors and physical ailments and disease. Health
psychologists focus on health maintenance and promotion of behaviour related to good health such as
exercise, health habits and discouraging unhealthy behaviours like smoking, drug abuse and alcoholism.
Health psychologists work in healthcare setting and also in colleges and universities where they conduct
research. They analyse and attempt to improve the healthcare system and formulate health policies. 5.
Clinical Psychology: It deals with the assessment and intervention of abnormal behaviour. As some
observe and believe that psychological disorders arise from a person’s unresolved conflicts and
unconscious motives, others maintain that some of these patterns are merely learned responses, which
can be unlearned with training, still others are contend with the knowledge of thinking that there are
biological basis to certain psychological disorders, especially the more serious ones. Clinical psychologists
are employed in hospitals, clinics and private practice. They often work closely with other specialists in
the field of mental health. 6. Counselling Psychology: This focuses primarily on educational, social and
career adjustment problems. Counselling psychologists advise students on effective study habits and the
kinds of job they might be best suited for, and provide help concerned with mild problems of social
nature and strengthen healthy lifestyle, economical and emotional adjustments. They make use of tests
to measure aptitudes, interests and personality characteristics. They also do marriage and family
counselling, provide strategies to improve family relations. 7. Educational Psychology: Educational
psychologists are concerned with all the concepts of education. This includes the study of motivation,
intelligence, personality, use of rewards and punishments, size of the class, expectations, the personality
traits and the effectiveness of the teacher, the student-teacher relationship, the attitudes, etc. It is also
concerned with designing tests to evaluate student performance. They also help in designing the
curriculum to make learning more interesting and enjoyable to children. Educational psychology is used
in elementary and secondary schools, planning and supervising special education, training teachers,
counselling students having problems, assessing students with learning difficulties such as poor writing
and reading skills and lack of concentration. 8. Social Psychology: This studies the effect of society on the
thoughts, feelings and actions of people. Our behaviour is not only the result of just our personality and
predisposition. Social and environmental factors affect the way we think, say and do. Social psychologists
conduct experiments to determine the effects of various groups, group pressures and influence on
behaviour. They investigate on the effects of propaganda, persuation, conformity, conflict, integration,
race, prejudice and aggression. These investigations explain many incidents that would otherwise be
difficult to understand. Social psychologists work largely in colleges and universities and also other
organizations. 9. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: The private and public organizations apply
psychology to management and employee training, supervision of personnel, improve communication
within the organization, counselling employees and reduce industrial disputes. Thus we can say that in
organizational and industrial sectors not only the psychological effects of working attitude of the
employees are considered but also the physical aspects are given importance to make workers feel
healthy. 10. Experimental Psychology: It is the branch that studies the processes of sensing, perceiving,
learning, thinking, etc. by using scientific methods. The outcome of the experimental psychology is
cognitive psychology which focuses on studying higher mental processes including thinking, knowing,
reasoning, judging and decision-making. Experimental psychologists often do research in lab by
frequently using animals as their experimental subjects. 11. Environmental Psychology: It focuses on the
relationships between people and their physical and social surroundings. For example, the density of
population and its relationship with crime, the noise pollution and its harmful effects and the influence
of overcrowding upon lifestyle, etc. 12. Psychology of Women: This concentrates on psychological factors
of women’s behaviour and development. It focuses on a broad range of issues such as discrimination
against women, the possibility of structural differences in the brain of men and women, the effect of
hormones on behaviour, and the cause of violence against women, fear of success, outsmarting nature
of women with respect to men in various accomplishments. 13. Sports and Exercise Psychology: It
studies the role of motivation in sport, social aspects of sport and physiological issues like importance of
training on muscle development, the coordination between eye and hand, the muscular coordination in
track and field, swimming and gymnastics. 14. Cognitive Psychology: It has its roots in the cognitive
outlook of the Gestalt principles. It studies thinking, memory, language, development, perception,
imagery and other mental processes in order to peep into the higher human mental functions like
insight, creativity and problem-solving. The names of psychologists like Edward Tolman and Jean Piaget
are associated with the propagation of the ideas of this school of thought.