Scope /Branches/

Subject Matter of
Psychology

Dr.Ameer Hassan
Scope of Psychology

Physiological Psychology
• Human being are biological organism
• Physiological function influence our
behaviour

Developmental Psychology
• Study about how people grow and change
throughout their life from prenatal stage to
old age
Personality Psychology

• Personality psychology focusing on

individual traits that differentiate the
behaviour of one peroson from that of
another person
Health Psychology

• This explore the relations between the

psychological factors and disease.
• Health maintenance and promotion of
behaviour related to good health such as
exercise, health habits
• Discouraging unhealthy bahaviours like
smoking, drug abuse and alcoholism.
Clinical Psychology

1. It deals with the assessment and

intervention of abnormal bahaviour.
2. Psychological disorders arise form a
peroson's unresolved conflicts and
unconscious motives
3. Clinical Psychologist are employed in
hospitals, clinics and private practice
Counselling Psychology

• This focuses primarily on educational,

social and career adjustment problms.
Educational Psychology

• Educational psychologists are concerned

with all the concepts of education.
• This includes the study of motivation,
intelligence, perosonality, use of rewards
and punishments, size of the class,
expectations, the personality traits,
effectiveness of the teacher, student and
teacher relationship etc..
• study about exceptional children
Social Psychology

• This studies the effect of society on the

thoughts, feelings ad 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 work largely in
colleges and universities and also other
organizations
Industrial and Organisational
Psychology
• Management and employee training
• Improve communication with the
organisation
• Counselling employees
• Reduce industrial disputes
• Working attitude
• Workers feel healthy
Experimental Psychology

• It is the branch that studies the processes

of sensing, perceiving, learning, thinking,
etc..by using scientific methods.
• Experimental psychologists often do
research in lab by freequently using
animals as their experimental subjects.
Environmental Psychology

• It focuses on the relationship between

people and their physical and social
surroundings
• Density of population
• Noise pollution
• Influence of overcrowding upon lifestyle
Psychology of Women

• This concentrates on psychological factors

of womens behaviour and development
• It focus on broad range of issues such as
discrimination against women
• The possibility of structural differences in
the brain of men and women
• Effect of hormones on behaviour
Sports and Exercise Psychology

• Role of motivation in sports

• Importance of training
• Muscle development
• Coordination of eye and hand
Cognitive Psychology

• It studies thinking, memory, language

development, perception, imagination and
othe mental processes in order to deep
into the higher human mental functions
like insight, creativity and problem solving
Forensic Psychology

• Forensic psychology is the use of

psychological practices and principles and
applying them to the legal system, mainly
in court.
Animal Psychology

• Comparative psychology or animal

psychology is a multidisciplinary field
designed to study the behaviours and
cognitive processes of non humnan
animals
• The relationship between human and
animals
Behavioural Psychology

• Behavioural psychology is the study of

how our behaviours relate to our mind
• Studies observable behaviour
Cross cultural Psychology

• Cross cultural psychology is the scientific

study of human behaviour and mental
processes, including both their variability
and invariance, under diverse cultural
conditions.
• Cultural variance in behaviour and
language
Positive Psychology

• Positive psychology is the scientific study

of what makes life most worth living.
• Scientific study of positive human
functioning
• Positive psychology is the new domain of
the psychology
• Positive psychology is concerned with the
good life , greatest value of life
Political Psychology

• Political psychology is an interdiciplinary

academic field dedicated to understanding
politics, politicians and political behaviour
from psychological perspective.
• Psyhological attempts to political
behaviour
Parapsychology

• Telepathey
• Psychokinesis
• ESP
Neuropsychology

• Neuropsychology is a branch of
psychology that is cocerned with how the
brain and rest of the nervous system
influence a persons cognition
Evalutionary Psychology

• The term evolutionary psychology stands

for any attmpt to adopt an evolutionary
perspective on human behaviour
You may be interested
to know that what
psychologists study?
• Psychologists address a wide range of issues related
to mental and behavioural functioning.

• The knowledge so generated provides not only basic

understanding, but also helps people to understand
personal and social problems.

• This kind of effort is known as application.

• Human beings are biological as well as socio-

cultural beings one who is growing and developing.

• Psychologists study how the biological system works

and socio- cultural basis shape human behaviour.
• Contemporary psychologists study these
processes from a life span perspective.

• The scope of modern psychology is very wide.

• Modern psychology studies general, abnormal,

child, adult, geriatric behaviour as well as
animal behaviour.

• There are certain behaviours which can not be

studied with human beings as a subject such
behaviour are studied on animal subjects.
• Behaviour is of two types :
1.Overt
2.Covert

Both types of behaviour are studied in psychology.

• Apart from external variables there are certain organismic

variables that affect human behaviour. These variables are
also studied in psychology.

• Intervening variables are also studied.

Various problems related to behaviour are subject matter of

psychology. Some of them are as follows -:
• SENSATION-
Visual senstivity
Visual Acuity
After Image
Colour Vision
Colour Mixing
Colour Contrast

Auditory senstivity

Pitch
Loudness
Masking of Tones
Over Tones
Localization of Sound
PERCEPTION AND ILLUSION-

• Figure and Ground

• Perceptual Organization
• Figural after-effect
• Perceptual Illusion
• Perceptual constancies
• Distance Perception
• Perception of Movement
• Time Perception
ATTENTION

• Span of Attention
• Division of Attention
• Distraction
• Selective Attention
• Sustained Attention
MOTOR RESPONSES AND WORK

• Simple Reaction Time

• Complex Reaction Time
• Performance
FEELINGS AND EMOTION

• There are three aspects of feelings

Cognitive
Affective
Conative
MOTIVATION
• Hunger

• Thirst

• Sexual behaviour

• Social Motives
LEARNING
• Practice
• Classical Conditioning
• Instrumental Conditioning
• Discrimination Learning
• Vicarious Learning
• Aversive Conditioning
• Verbal Learning
• Concept Learning
MEMORY AND
FORGETTING
• Retention
• Recall
• Recognition
• Sensory memory
• Short term memory
• Long term memory
• Semantic memory
• Forgetting
 BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF
BEHAVIOUR
• Genes

• Chromosomes

• Nervous system

• Endocrine Glands
SOLVING THINKING AND
PROBLEM BEHAVIOUR

• Verbal Puzzles

• Construction Problems
 INTELLIGENCE
• Psychologists try to explain Individual
differences on the basis of intelligence.

• The factors affecting intelligence are studied.

• The factors leading to development of

Intelligence are also studied.
PERSONALITY

• Individual differences are explained on

basis of personality.

• Different types of personalities are studied.

• The factors affecting personality are also

studied.
 ABNORMALITY
• The behaviour that are more or less in degree
than normal behaviour are also studied in
psychology.

• Some people have bizarre behaviour such

kind of behaviour is studied.

• Treatment of abnormal behaviour with the

help of various therapies is also studied.