Introduction to

Psychology

Ayesha Nawaz

Chapter 1
Introduction to Psychology
 What is Psychology?
• What is Psychology?
• Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes
• The scientific study of behavior and the mental process that is tested
through scientific research.
• The field is scientific in that approaches (should be systematic in approach)
to studies are done orderly and systematically in order to obtain objective
evidence.
 PSYCHOLOGY
• Psychologists study overt and covert behavior.
• The overt behaviors are observable behavior, while
covert behaviors include private mental processes that
cannot be directly observed or measured and must be
inferred from overt behavior.
• Examples of overt behaviours are; laughing, walking,
eating, gestures, facial expression etc and covert
behaviour include the following; Perceiving,
remembering, reasoning, thinking, creating, feelings etc
 GOALS OF PSYCHOLOGY
 Psychologists seek to do four things when studying
behaviors:
 Describe: What is the nature of the behavior? It gathers
information on studied behavior and present what is
known.
 Explain: Why does it occur? Creating a hypothesis
(educated guess) to understand why a behavior is
practiced.
 Predict: By studying past behaviors, future behaviors
can be predicted based upon theory
 Control behavior: What factors influence the behavior?
Influence- using what is known to influence future
behavior.
Psychologists AT WORK
 Subfields of Psychology
The Family Tree
• The Biological foundations of behavior
• Behavioral Neuroscience
• biological bases of behavior
• Sensing, perceiving, learning, and thinking
• experimental psychology
• process of sensing, perceiving, learning, and thinking
• cognitive psychology
• higher mental processes
• Developmental psychology
• how people grow and change from conception to death
• Personality psychology
• attempts to explain both consistency and change in a person’s
behavior over time
 Subfields of Psychology
The Family Tree
• Physical and Mental Health
• Health psychology
• relationship between psychological factors and physical
ailments or disease
• Clinical psychology
• study, diagnosis, and treatment of abnormal behavior
• Counseling psychology
• educational, social, and career adjustment problems
• Social psychology
• how people are affected by others
• Cross-cultural psychology
• psychological functioning of various cultures and ethnic
groups
 Subfields of Psychology
The Family Tree
• Newer specialty areas
• Evolutionary psychology
• Clinical neuropsychology
• Environmental psychology
• Forensic psychology
• Sport and exercise psychology
• Program evaluation
Functionalism
the function of mental activity and behavior

Gestalt psychology
“the whole is different from the sum of its
parts
 Contemporary Approaches
• Humanistic Psychology – Belief that each person has
freedom in directing his/her future an achieving
personal growth. Humans are not controlled by
environment, but by their own self concept. Humans
are not being controlled by unconscious or
environmental forces, we have free will, goals,
aspirations and other positive motives which should be
studied. It is influenced by Carl Rogers.
• Abraham Maslow – Humanist whose views differed
from behaviorists and psychoanalysts.