Introduction to Psychology

1
Introduction to Psychology
2
What is Psychology?

• Scientific study of the individual
• Scientific study of behaviour and mental
  processes
• Attempts to understand human beings and other
  species

3
Subdivisions of Psychology

• Developmental psychology
• Studies human mental and physical growth from
  conception to death
• Physiological psychology
• Investigates the biological basis of human
  behavior
• Experimental psychology
• Conducts research on basis of psychological
  processes like learning, memory, sensation,
  perception etc
• Personality psychology
• Personality psychologists study the differences
  among individuals

4
Subdivisions of Psychology

• Clinical and counseling psychology
• Clinical psychologists are interested primarily
  in the diagnosis, cause, and treatment of
  psychological disorders.
• Counseling psychologists are concerned primarily
  with normal problems of adjustments in life.
• Social psychology
• Social psychologists study how people influence
  one another
• Industrial and Organizational psychology
• Psychology applied to the workplace

5
Major Schools of Thought

• Structuralism
• Structuralism was concerned with identifying the
  units of conscious experience.
• Physical sensation, Feelings, Image
• Wlhelm Wundt
• Bradford Titchener
• Functionalism
• Functionalism was concerned with the ongoing use
  of conscious experience.
• Consciousness cannot be broken into elements.
• Pure sensation without associations-simply do
  not exist
• William James

6
Major Schools of Thought

• Psychodynamic
• Focused on the unconscious determinants of
  behavior.
• Human beings are not so rational and they are
  motivated by unconscious instincts urges.
• Freud developed a method of therapy called
  psychoanalysis.
• Personality develop in series of critical stages
  during first few years of life.
• Sigmund Freud
• Behaviorism
• Behaviorism is only concerned with behavior that
  can be observed and measured..
• John B. Watson
• B.F. Skinner

7
Major Schools of Thought

• Gestalt
• The Gestalt movement was concerned with the
  perception of form.
• Against structuralism view. (series of still
  pictures)
• Tendency to see pattern, to distinguish an object
  from its background, to complete picture from
  cues.
• Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, Kurt Koffka
• Existential and Humanistic
• Existentialism is concerned with alienation and
  apathy in modern life.
• Search for sum meaning in this world and guide
  toward inner sense of identity
• Playwright, jean Paul startre
• Humanism is concerned with helping people realize
  their full potential.

8
Major Schools of Thought

• Cognitive Psychology
• Concerned with memory, thinking, language,
  learning, decision making (mental process)
• Expanded the concept of behavior to include
  thoughts, feelings, and states of consciousness
• Mental processes can and should be studied
  scientifically.
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Concerned with the evolutionary origins of
  behaviors and mental processes
• Their adaptive value and the purposes they
  continue to serve
• Reproductive success all species are genetically
  programmed to produce offspring.

9
Enduring Issues

• Person-situation
• Hereditary-environment
• Stability-change
• Diversity
• Mind-body