INTRODUCTIO

TO
PSYCHOLOGY
• Definition: Psychology is the science of
human and animal behaviour.
• Clifford T. Morgan 1961

• Present Definition: Psychology is the science

of human and animal behaviour that also
includes the study of mental processes that
influence overt behaviour.
• Scientific Perspective
• Psychology tries to find out about the world we live in and
ourselves.
• Some of our beliefs are based on faith.
• Some are based on tradition.
• Some are credited to common sense.
• Some iunsights have been taken from art, literature, poetry
and drama.
• These are the commonsense explanations of human
behaviour but approach of a psychologist iss to aavoid these
and try to understand human behaviour by applying methods
of the science. To do this:
• Attempt to isolate the factors that influence the behaviour.
• Develop theories and laws about the behaviour of interest.
• Psychology as Science
– Theory: A set of assumptions concerning the causes of
behaviour, including statements how theese causes
work . Theories are evaluated and may be retained or
rejected.
– Science: An organized body of knowledge
gained through application of scientific method.
– Sientific Method: Method of acquiring knowledge
involving observing a phenomenon, formulating
hypotheses, further observing and experimenting and
refining and retesting the hypothesis.
– Hypothesis: A tentative explanation of a
phenomenon that can bee tested andd then either
supported or rejected.
• What Psychology Studies
– Psychology studies behaviour. Behaviour is the actions
and responses of the organisms which are the focus of
psychological research and theory. Behaviour is
observable, publically verifiable and measureable it is
what the organisms do.
– Psychology also studies mental processes. Initially
psychology was termed as the science of mental
processes. Mental processes are of two types:
cognitions and affects.
– Cognitions: These are mental events such as
perceptions, beliefs, thoughts, and memories that
comprise part of the subject of psychology.
– Affects: Mental processes that involve feelings,
mood or emotional state and that comprise part of
the subject of psychology.
• Roots of Psychology
– Rene Descartes: He liked to think about thinking.
He pondered how human mind and body produced
the process of thinking. He thought of human body as
a kind of machine. He thought that being a machine
body was subject to physical laws and these laws
could be discovered. This philosophical doctrine is
called mechanism. He ,however, following the
doctrine of dualism believed that humans had a body
and also a mind therefore the mind could also be
explored through knowable laws because mind and
body interacted with each other. This is known as
interactive dualism because body and mind are two
separate entities but they interact with each other.
• Mechanism: Philosophical doctrine that human body is like
a machine subjected to simple physical laws which can be
identified.
contd……..
 • Dualism: Philosophical doctrine that suggests that
humans possess both body and mind.
• John Locke: He proposed that human mind
at the time of birth was totally empty like a
blank slate and it was the experience which
filled the mind with knowledge and ideas. His
line of argument is known as empiricism.
– Empiricism: A philosophical doctrine stating that
source of mental life is experience and
observation.
Structuralism
• Wilhem Wundt: He was a scientist-philosopher interested in
psychological processes like sensation, perception, attention, word
association, and emotions. Opened the first laboratory in 1879. He is
credited with establishing psychology as a science. His interest was in the
scientific study of the mind and its operations. His approach is called
structuralism. Method used to dissect the mental activities into its
components was introspection.
– Structuralism: School of psychology founded by Wundt that
studied the mind by attempting to break mental activity into its
component parts.
– Introspection: Method used to study the mind which involves
describing mental responses to conscious experience in great detail.
Functionalism
• William James: American philosopher worked with
Wundt. He defined psychology as Science of mental
life. He argued that psychology should not concern
itself with the structure of mind but with its
functioning. His reason was that he considered
consciousness to be dynamic which could not be
broken into components. He thought it to be dynamic,
a stream of events, personal, changing and continuous.
His approach was named as Functionalism.
– Functionalism: School of psychology suggested by William
James which studied the adaptive functions of the mind
and consciousness.
Behaviourism
• This school of psychology was founded by John b.
Watson. He felt that if psychology had to become
a mature productive science it had to give up its
preoccupation with consciousness and mental life
and concentrate instead on behaviour that can be
observed and measured. Following Watson
Skinner was another psychologist who worked on
behaviourism studying the animal behaviour and
ways to predict their behaviour.
• Behaviourism: School of psychology founded by
Watson that emphasized the study of overt
observable behaviour and not the mind.
Psychoanalytic Psychology
• A physician in Vienna, Sigmund Freud was
intrigues by what were called “nervous
disorders”. He was not a laboratory scientists. His
findings mostly came from observation of
patients and himself. He argued that we are often
subject to forces which we are not aware of. Our
feelings, actions and thoughts are often
influenced by our unconscious mind and many of
our behaviours are based on our instincts.
– Psychoanalytic Psychology. It is the school of
psychology that emphasizes innate strivings and
unconscious mind.
Humanistic Psychology
• The approach called Humanistic pioneered by
Carl Rogers arose as a reaction to Behaviourist
and Psychoanalytic approaches. He argued that
individual or the self should be main concern of
psychology instead of stimuli in the environment
or observable behaviour. He argued that caring,
intention, concern, will, love and hate are real
phenomenon and worthy of study whether these
can be observed or not. Carl Rogers and
Abraham Maslow were his major followers.
– Humanistic School: An approach that proposed that
individual or the self should be the central concern of
psychology.
Gestalt Psychology

• This approach was developed by German psychologists

led by Max Werthemier. This approach came to be
known as Gestalt Psychology. This approach focuses on
perception ie how we select and organise information
from the outside world. Gestalt can not be easily
translated in English it roughly means “configuration”
“whole” or “totality”. In general terms if you can see
the big picture, if you can see the forest and not just
trees you have formed the gestalt.
– Gestalt Psychology: The approach that focuses on
perception and how we select and organize information
from the outside world is known as gestalt psychology
Key Principles in Psychology
• Our biological nature and our psychological nurture
interact to make us what we are. How much of us who
we are(affect, behaviour and cognition) is the result of
inheritance or biological nature? How much of us who
we are reflects the influence of environment,
experience or nurture.
• No two persons are alike. Not only is each organism
different from all others, but no organism the same
from one point in time to another.
• Our experience of the world may reflect something
other than what is actually “out There”. This classic
notion has a name Phenomenology. It has to do with
the events as they are experienced and not as they
actually are. WE can say that there are two types of
realities in the world: objective and subjective reality.
• For many questions in psychology there are no simple
answers. In answering many questions there are some grey
areas which can not be explained. For example the issue of
the driving force in our personality. Different theories might
have different explanations for the same phenomenon. For
example a very important and most debilitating mental
disorder has different explanations:
– Part of answer is genetic.
– Part of answer is biochemical.
– Part of the answer is environmental/situational.
• Psychology is relevant to our daily lives. Biologists,
chemists, physicists, geologists and even astronomers can
claim influencing our lives but none of these as profoundly
as does psychology. People can go without thinking physics
or biology but not without thinking psychologically. We
have to consider, sensations, emotions, perceptions etc