Dit document is een samenvatting van het boek "Psychology" dat gebruikt wordt voor het eerste deeltentamen van het vak "Inleiding in de psychologie" tijdens het 1e jaar van de universitaire studie Pedagogische Wetenschappen
Inleiding in de psychologie: Boek “Psychology”
Chapter 1: Introducing psychology
Psychology an overview:
Psychology is the science that studies behaviour and mental processes and seeks to apply
that study to the service of human welfare. Psychologist either focus on what goes wrong or
what goes right in behaviour and mental processes. Positive psychology is the aspect of the
field where psychologists explore factors that lead people to be happy and satisfied with
their lives. When psychologists choose a certain aspect of the field, they enter one of
psychology’s subfields
Biological psychology:
Biological psychologists analyse the biological factors (e.g. brain and biological processes in
body) that influence behaviour and mental processes. They are also called physiological
psychologists.
Cognitive psychology:
Cognitive psychologists (or experimental psychologists) study mental abilities and mental
processes regarding human thought or cognition. They study someone’s sensation,
perception, memory, intelligence, thinking, creativity etc. One of the applications of this
subfield is engineering psychology, in this aspect psychologists study human factors in the
use of equipment and help designers create better versions.
Developmental psychology:
Developmental psychologists seek to know how behaviour and mental processes change
over a lifetime. What causes the changes and what kind of effects do they have?
Personality psychology:
Personality psychologists study the characteristics that make individuals similar or different
from one another.
Clinical, counselling, community and health psychology:
Clinical and counselling psychologists conduct research on the causes and treatment of
mental disorders and abnormal behaviour. They want to enlarge our understanding of
genetic and environmental forces that shape disorders.
Community psychologists work to ensure psychological services to those who need it but do
not tend to seek it. They also try to prevent disorders by changing social systems
Health psychologists study the relationship between behaviour and the effect it has on
health and illness and the other way around.
Educational psychology:
Educational psychologists study methods by which instructors teach and students learn and
who apply their results to improve the methods. School psychologists research academic
problems and set up programs to improve students’ achievement.
Social psychology:
Social psychologist study how people influence each other’s behaviour and mental
processes, individually and in groups
,Industrial and organizational psychology:
These psychologists study ways to improve efficiency, productivity and satisfaction among
workers and employers. This is done to promote positive organizational behaviour.
Quantitative psychology:
Quantitative psychologists develop and use statistical tools to analyse research data that is
collected in all of the psychology subfields. These tools help evaluate the quality of the
experiments.
Other subfields:
Sport psychologists explore the relationships between athletic performance and
psychological variables (e.g. motivation and emotion). Forensic psychologists deal with
issues regarding mental competence/psychology and the law. Environmental psychologists
study the effect of the physical environment on behaviour and mental processes.
Linkages within psychology and beyond:
Many fields within the psychology overlap each other. Even when psychologists mainly work
in one subfield, they are still likely to draw on and contribute to knowledge in other
subfields.
A brief history of psychology:
The science of psychology is relatively new but the roots can be traced back through
centuries. Especially Greek philosophers were interested in psychological topics and whether
it was possible to study such things scientifically. Empiricism, a theory that states that
knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience and observation, was very
important for the development of scientific psychology. We were born with minds like a
blank slate which is formed by what we experience throughout life, this influences our
behaviour and mental processes.
Wundt and the structuralism of Titchener:
In 1879 Wilhelm Wundt opened the first formal psychology research laboratory at the
University of Leipzig to research the perceptual processes. In the beginning psychologists
mostly focused on sensory and perceptual processes through which the human knowledge
was claimed to flow through. Fechner and Wundt both tried to find a relationship between
our sensation/experience and our perception of it. However, Wundt his focus was more on
consciousness, he wanted to describe the basic elements of it and how they relate to one
another. Consciousness is the awareness of external stimuli and our own mental activity.
Wundt used introspection, which means looking inward, to observe conscious experience.
He used for example quality and intensity. Titchener a student of Wundt added clearness as
an extra result of element of sensation. He called his approach structuralism because he
wanted to define the structure of consciousness.
Gestalt psychologists:
Gestalt psychologists were against Wundt’s efforts to break down consciousness and
experience. Their idea was that the whole shape of consciousness is not the sum of its parts.
To understand consciousness we have to study the whole concept not just few of its parts.
For example a movie is boring when the images appear at a particular rate.
, Freud and psychoanalysis:
Sigmund Freud focused on the unconscious. He presumed that all behaviour and mental
processes have physical causes somewhere in the nervous system. He for example
concluded that some of people’s physical problems were caused by deep seated problems
that people had pushed out of consciousness and were motivated by psychological
processes. Freud his theories and treatment are called psychoanalysis.
William James and functionalism:
William James rejected Wundt’s approach and Titchener’s structuralism. James was more
interested in how mental events that make up our consciousness aid in adapting to our
environment. This approach is called functionalism which focuses on the role of
consciousness in guiding people’s abilities to make decisions, solve problems etc.
John B. Watson and behaviourism:
Watson agreed that observable behaviour of animals and humans is the most scientific
information for psychology. That is also why argued that mental events should be ignored
because psychology should only be based on what behaviour actually can be seen in
response to known stimuli. His view is called behaviourism, he recognized that
consciousness exists but you are not able to study it because it is private and there is no
scientific method that can make it observable. Skinner worked out the term “operant
conditioning”, in which behavioural changes can be manifested by either punishing or
rewarding the shown behaviour.
Psychology today:
Psychologists of today grew uncomfortable about ignoring mental processes that might ben
important to understand behaviour. Especially with new technology it is now actually
possible to view some of the mental processes with precision and scientific objectivity.
Approaches to the science of psychology:
Still there are many ways to approach or do research on behaviour and mental processes. By
this psychologists may explain the same behaviour and mental processes in a different way.
Biological approach:
Behaviour and mental processes are largely shaped by biological processes. You can think
about differences in hormones, genes, brain activity etc.
Evolutionary approach:
Behaviour and mental processes of animals and humans are affected by evolution through
natural selection (survival of the fittest). Think about cooperation, aggression, mate selection
preferences for the best offspring. It empathizes the inherited and adaptive aspects of
behaviour and mental processes.
Psychodynamic approach:
Our behaviour and mental processes reflect constant and mostly on the unconscious
psychological struggles deep within us. It emphasizes the interplay of unconscious mental
processes in determining human thought, feelings and behaviour.
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