Psychology-introduction

Transcript 1.1 Part 1

Hello and welcome to the Psychology faculty. I’d like to start by asking a basic question: 'What is
psychology?'. If we look carefully, we can find clues to the definition in the origin of the word itself.
So let's have a look at the two main parts; psych and ology. Some of you may already know that
psyche is a Greek word, but does anyone know what it means? Yes, psyche means spirit or soul or
mind. And ology comes from the Greek logos meaning speech or theory. So psychology literally
means “theory of the mind”. As a matter of interest, the word mind has several forms which aren’t
particularly associated with psychology; for example mindful, mindless minder. But in psychology,
the adjective we use to refer to the mind is ‘mental’, which comes from the Latin word ‘mens’,
meaning “mind”

Transcript 1.2 Part 2

As we're looking at words, let's examine for a moment how they can change their meaning in
different situations. It probably happens in your own language. Let me give you an example. In
everyday English, when we say an animal is in danger of extinction we mean that there are very
few alive and they may all disappear forever. But when we refer to extinction in psychology, we
mean that, in the process of conditioning a response has disappeared because the stimulus has
been removed. Is there any connection between these two meanings? Yes, there is. Both uses of
the word refer to disappearing. But in the everyday sense, we are referring to the physical
disappearance of a species. In psychology, though, extinction is the disappearance of a response
because a stimulus has been removed.
Somehow, when we are learning our first language, we get a feeling for the basic meaning of
words, which helps us to understand the same word in a new context. When we are learning
another language, it is very important to find the basic meaning of a word because the direct
translation in one context may not be the correct translation in another. For example, can you
use the word for sympathetic in your language in the context of sympathetic nervous system,
meaning the part of the nervous system that prepares the organism to face danger?
Transcript 1.3 Part3

So, let's look at my original question in a little more detail. What is psychology? Well, there are several
different branches of psychology. Social psychology is one. Social psychology studies the way people
behave in groups. Then there's neuropsychology, which concentrates on the physiological processes
that affect human behaviour ... Can you think of any others? There's developmental psychology,
which studies how people's minds develop throughout their lives. Educational psychology is a sub-
branch of developmental psychology. The branch that focuses on different types of individual is
personality psychology. And last but not least, there's clinical psychology, which specializes in
diagnosing and treating mental disorders. Although these specialist fields focus on various aspects of
psychology, they all involve the study of the human mind. But psychology is not only about the mind,
it's also about behaviour.
Transcript 1.4 Part 4
So far we've looked at the origin of the word psychology, the ways in which we use ordinary
words in a special sense and some of the different fields of psychology. Above all, we've
established that psychology is about the mind. But is that all it's about? No. It's also about
behaviour. As I mentioned before, all the different specialist areas of psychology involve
analysis. But how do we go about analyzing the mind? Well, we do this by analyzing behaviour.
For example, forensic psychologist will draw up the mental profile of a criminal by studying the
traces they leave at a crime scene. A neuropsychologist will establish the effect of different stimuli
on an individual by observing how they respond during laboratory experiments. Whenever a
psychologist studies people's behaviour, there is always a scientific basis for their analysis. So to
answer the question 'What is psychology?', we can say that it is 'the scientific analysis of human
behaviour and the mind'.