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The Science of Psychology

     Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Behavior is any action that other people can observe. While cognitive activities (mental processes) include thoughts, memories, dreams and perceptions. Psychology is a social science. Social sciences study the structure of the human society and the nature of the individuals who make up society. Psychologists are most interested people’s emotions. Emotions can affect an individual’s behavior or mental processing. Many psychologists are interested in research. They look for the factors that lead to certain behaviors or mental processes. Others consult, meaning that they give therapy to people wanting to change their behavior to be able to meet their goals.

       People have always been interested with what is going on in our minds, so psychology has been around since ancient times. In Ancient Greece Plato who was a student of Socrates recorded a phrase that would influence psychology for many years. This phrase was “Know thyself.” Socrates believed that we could learn a lot about ourselves by using what psychologists now call introspection. Introspection means “looking within” and it consists of examining our thoughts and emotions. Aristotle who was a philosopher and Plato’s student raised many questions of the human mind that are still discussed today. Aristotle showed how experiences remind us of past experiences, how the face of a loved one brings so much security and how thought can lead to ideas as we dream or day dream. He stated the laws of associationism which are still of massive importance to psychology today. Ancient Greece was a time of prosper for science yet other eras were not. In the Middle Ages people believed that mental problems were caused by “demonic possession”. “Tests needed to be done to prove a person was possessed, like chaining them up and throwing them in a lake. If they floated, they were possessed and burned at the stake. If they sank they were innocent but they would drown.

(Woman in the Middle Ages being put in the Water-float test for “witchcraft”)

       The 1800s were the birth of modern psychology. Most historians believe that psychology became a science in the year 1879. Wilhelm Wundt was one of the era’s great psychologists. He was the founder of structuralism which is divided into objective sensations and subjective feelings. Objective sensations are what we perceive from the outside world and subjective feelings included emotional responses and mental images. William James was a professor at Harvard University and he was one of the founders of functionalism who studied how mental processes help organisms adapt to their environment. John B. Watson was the founder of the school of behaviorism and strongly believed that psychology was the study of observable behavior. B.F. Skinner was a Harvard University psychologist who strongly believed in behaviorism. He added to it by introducing reinforcement which stated that humans learn to behave in certain ways because they are reinforced to. Sigmund Freud was the most famous of the early psychologists and was the founder of psychoanalysis which looks at the unconscious motives that determine human behavior.

(Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis)

       There are many modern perspectives of psychology and these perspectives approach different topics. One of them is the biological perspective, which looks for the connection between biology and behavior. The evolutionary perspective studies the evolution of mental processes and behavior and how some behavior is hereditary. Cognitive perspective emphasize on the role of thoughts on behavior. It has roots based on structionalism and on Socrates’ “Know thyself.” The humanistic perspective emphasizes that we humans have the great capacity to make choices. That we are not mechanical and that humans also have the capacity for self fulfillment and importance of consciousness. The psychoanalytic perception stresses that there is a big influence of unconscious forces on human behavior. Many of these psychologists follow Freud’s ideas. Finally the learning perspective stresses that experience affects behavior. They emphasize of the importance of the environmental influences on a person. The social learning theory states that people can change their environment or make a new one.

       One of the most interesting perspectives is Sociocultural perspective studies the connection of ethnicity, gender, culture and socioeconomic status to behavior and mental processes. Ethnicity is a kind of diversity that unites people who are members of the particular ethnic group by common cultural heritage, race, language or history. Gender roles are also widely studied by sociocultural theorists. People’s behavior and aspirations can be affected by gender roles because of the complexity of cultural expectations and social roles. Sociocultural perspective is one of the best perspective because it also has features of the other two main social sciences; anthropology which studies cultures and sociology which studies society.