psychology

• Learn how psychologists study and analyze human behavior.
• Understand the various theories describing human behavior.
• Develop critical thinking skills and prepare to be cautious and analytical consumers of information.

Introduction

In this section, you will learn about the foundations of Psychology. You will also find out how and why Psychology employs the scientific method of study. By combining your readings with these lectures, you will be able to compare and contrast some of the theories of human behavior, and to develop certain critical thinking skills that will be useful throughout this course of study.

What is Psychology?

We can define or explain psychology in many ways. For the purposes of this course, we can define it as a way of asking questions, as opposed to accepting one set of findings. To be more specific, however, we can state that psychology is the scientific study "of behavior and mental processes." It is concerned with the effects of biology and experience on behavior. In fact, psychologists often argue over the importance of the two forces of biology and experience in shaping behavior. This is often referred to as the "nature versus nurture" debate.

There is basic and applied psychology; where basic psychology acts to build the base of a body of knowledge and applied psychology works with the pragmatic practical problems encountered in everyday life.

There are many ways to research Psychology. The practitioners of this science include clinical psychologists, who study and treat people, as well as psychiatrists, who are medical doctors and who also provide psychotherapy.

Why Study Psychology?

Using the scientific approach to studying human behavior enables us to arrive at more reliable answers to questions about how we function. One of the key tools in this process is the use of critical thinking. Consider the following:

The Limits of Human Intuition

Our intuition is often wrong, even when it comes to physical reality. Here are some examples, which will require you to rely on your intuition/logic to arrive at an answer.

1. If you roll a basketball and a hoop down the same slope, which one will get to the bottom first?
2. If you drop a rock and piece of wood at the same time, which one will hit the ground first?
3. If we see ourselves in a convex mirror will the image we see be smaller or larger?

These examples show that we tend to be overconfident about what we know. Most people will answer with a show of confidence. But as confident as we may be, most of us don't have enough science background to really answer these questions correctly. And if we rely on our intuitions alone, we are very likely to be wrong. The only real way to answer any of these questions is to try it out; in other words, collect some data.

We tend to be especially overconfident in our ability to explain human behavior. Our overconfidence seems to stem from our experience of being human, and observing our friends and family. However, it's even more important to collect data in Psychology than in other sciences, because we are never objective observers of our own or other people's behaviors in our every day lives. We are usually observing someone else in relationship to ourselves, and that leads to biased judgments.

Another reason collecting data in psychology is so important is that we all tend to benefit from new knowledge when explaining someone's behavior. When we know more about someone, we think we could have predicted that they would act like that. For instance, when we hear that a child molester was molested himself when he was a child, we often say, "Well, of course! That makes perfect sense." But we probably couldn't have predicted that this particular molested child would grow up to molest a child; we're only able to explain it after the fact. Nevertheless, we feel as though we could have predicted that he'd become a molester, once we've discovered he was molested. What needs to be done to answer the question definitively is to collect some predictive data. Someone must formulate the hypothesis that people who were molested as children are more likely to molest a child themselves. Then, they must look at groups of people who were molested as children and compare them with groups of people who were not to determine whether there are higher rates of perpetrating molestation among those who were molested. Only in that way can we determine for sure that there's a link (of course, this study has been done, and there's a clear link). The point is, we must collect data to predict human behavior, not just look at behavior that has already occurred and try to explain why it happened.

Using the scientific method of asking questions, you begin with a theory from which you formulate a hypothesis followed by research and observations. The results of this formula are that you then take those observations and revisit the theory, re-hypothesize and confirm or deny that with additional research and observations. Some of the types of research methods include Case Studies, Surveys and Natural Observation. Once data is collected, it is then reviewed for any correlations. Correlations, in this sense, are predictors of measured factors. The next section covers how correlations are interpreted.