Course: MDE 154 - Psychology

Senior Lecturer: Yelnura N. Autalipova

LECTURE 1
INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY

Unit Structure:
1. The object, subject and objectives of psychology
2. Fields of psychology
3. The structure of mental phenomena
4. Psychological approaches of personality
5. Glossary
6. References
7. Self-assignment work

1. The subject, tasks and objectives of psychology

The object of psychology is a person's psyche; the object is the basic laws of the generation and functioning of psychic
reality. The subject of psychology is the mental phenomena in human life. Mental phenomena are understood as internal,
subjective human experience, a fundamental property, which is the direct representation of the subject. It means that we not only
see, feel, desire and think, but also know that we see, feel, desire and think, i.e. mental processes take place in us and open up
directly to us. Our inner world is like a big stage where various events occur, and we are both actors and spectators.
Most advances in psychology are recent, dating back about 150 years, but their origins lie with ancient Greece and Persia
philosophers. Many approaches and fields of study have been developed that give psychologists a toolkit to apply to the real
world. As society has changed, new applications have also arisen to meet people's needs.
The word 'psychology' has its" "origin in two Greek words' psyche' and 'logos.' The word 'psyche' in the Greek language
refers to 'spirit' or 'soul', and the word 'logos' refers to 'discourse' or 'study'.
Thus, according to the historical background, the I stage of formation of psychology was a science of the soul. This
definition of psychology was given over two thousand years ago. The objective was to explain all the incomprehensible
phenomena in a person's life by the presence of a soul.
II stage was the study of psychology as the science of consciousness. It arose in the 17th century in connection with the
development of natural sciences. The ability to think, feel, the desire was called consciousness. The main method of study was
considered to person's observation of one's (introspection) and the description of facts.
At the III stage, psychology was the study as a science of behavior. It arose in the XX century: during this time, the task of
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psychology was to set up experiments and observe what can be directly seen, namely: behavior, actions, reactions of a person (the
motives that cause actions were not taken into account).
IV stage - nowadays, psychology is a science that studies objective laws, manifestations and mechanisms of the psyche.
The history of psychology as an experimental science begins on a December day in 1879, when the first experimental
laboratory was founded by the German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) in Leipzig in Germany. Wundt believed that
introspection was a way to scientifically study our conscious thoughts, feelings, experiences, and sensations. Soon, in 1885,
Vladimir Bekhterev (1857-1927) organized a similar laboratory in Russia. Since then, the growth of psychology has covered a
long journey. Wundt’s student English psychologist Edward Bradford Titchener (1967-1927) took Wundt's experimental
technique, known as introspection, and used it to focus on the structures of the human mind. American psychologist William
James (1842-1910) was the first educator to offer a psychology course in America. He acquired the name, “father of American
psychology”, and was one of the most influential thinkers of the 19th century. James’ student American psychologist Mary
Whiton Calkins (1863-1930) was the 14th President of American Psychological Association (APA) and the first woman to serve
in that office. Also, she earned her PhD at Harvard under William James.
Two early schools of science in psychology were structuralism and functionalism.
Scientific school Major proponents School of thoughts Key tenets
Structuralism 1875 - 1920’s Wilhelm Wundt, Grandville Psychology first became a Focus on identifying and
Stanely Hall, Edward Tichener science in its own right, examining components of
examining elements of conscious experience. E.g.
consciousness. Based on sensation, perception, feelings
natural sciences; experimental.based on introspection and
self-observation.
Funcionalism 1842-1945 William James, James McKeen Based on Charles Darwin’s Focus on examining patterns of
Raymond Cattell, John Dewey natural selection. Interested in development and mental
the function of consciousness testing in children and tested
and how people adapted to general behavioral differences.
their natural environment.
Fostered developmental
behaviourism and applied
psychology.

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 Psychology is one of the prevalent subjects among social sciences today. It studies all shades of experiences, mental
processes and behaviours. A comprehensive analysis of all these aspects provides a scientific understanding of human nature. In
the following lecture sections, we will try to understand all the components which collectively define psychology.
In scientific words, psychology is a systematic and scientific study of mental processes, experiences and behaviours -
both overt and covert.
Study of experience. An experience results from living through the event and bringing the lessons and knowledge.
Psychologists study a variety of human experiences, which are mainly personal or private. They may range from experiences of
dream-conscious experiences at different stages of life and experiences when the consciousness is altered through meditation or
psychedelic drugs. The study of such experiences helps the psychologist understand the individual's personal world.
Study of mental processes psychology tries to investigate the activities happening in the brain, which is primarily non-
physiological. It is the process of cognition, emotions and volition in the mind. These mental processes include perception,
learning, remembering, thinking etc. These are internal mental activities that are not directly observed but inferred from the
behavioural actions of the person. For example, we can say our thinking display certain activities related to finding a solution to a
difficult problem assigned.
Study of behaviour. Behavior includes simple reflexes (e.g. eye blinking), actions, and reactions that can be directly seen and
observed through naked eyes or are measured through equipment. They are generally exhibited verbally or nonverbally (e.g.
facial expression) when an individual reacts to a stimulus in a given situation.
Thus in psychology, the main unit of investigation is the individual human being and the person's experience, mental
processes and behaviours.
Task 1. Writing assignment. Fill in the blanks:
1. The word “Psychology” has its origin in two Greek words___________________ and__________________.
2. The main unit of investigation in psychology is the individual ___________________ __________________.
3. Wilhelm Wundt established the first experimental __________________.
4. Psychology is the study of___________________,___________________ and__________________.
5. The object of psychology is___________________.
6. The subject of psychology is_________________ ___________________.
7. IV stage - psychology is a science that studies objective ___________________,___________________
and__________________ of the psyche.

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 2. Fields of psychology

During the Psychology journey of a hundred years, psychology has grown in many directions as a field of inquiry. There are
several specialized fields with focused areas of application that have developed. The emergence of different fields in psychology
indicates the importance and relevance of these areas in our daily life. Fields of psychology mean the relationship of psychology
with other sciences.
In this section, we will briefly learn about some of these fields.
Abnormal Psychology: This branch of psychology tries to describe, assess, predict and control those categories of
behaviours that are considered unusual and non- normative. It also deals with various types of psychological disorders that affect
the individual's mental health. It's possible to assesses abnormality in the individual through standardized psycho-diagnostic tools
and suggests problem-specific treatment.
Cognitive Psychology: It deals with the acquisition, storage, transformation and application of information the individual
uses to understand and interpret events happening around us.
Educational Psychology: This field of psychology is mainly concerned with academic performance. It studies the role of
various factors which influence learning processes in a classroom setting. It focuses on assessing the students' aptitude, skills, and
intellectual potential and evaluating their performance. An educational psychologist also helps students to overcome learning
difficulties.
Environmental Psychology: This field is concerned with studying the impact of the physical environment on human
behaviour. It studies the effects of noise, heat, humidity, pollution and crowding on human performance. It also focuses on the
impact of the physical environment on the psychological health of individuals.
Health Psychology: This field focuses on the impact of various psychological factors (e.g. stress) on the onset progress and
treatment of illness. It also deals with various lifestyle diseases such as hypertension, coronary heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
Organizational Psychology: This field is concerned with applying psychological principles and models to study the
selection and performance of employees in organizational settings. It also studies leadership motivation, job satisfaction and
performance appraisal.
Developmental Psychology: This field is concerned with studying various physical and psychological factors that influence
the systematic changes that the individual experiences across the different age stages of life.
In addition to the fields mentioned above, several new areas have emerged. These fields are sports psychology, military
psychology, aviation psychology, forensic psychology, peace psychology, neuropsychology, political psychology, feminist
psychology and positive psychology.

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Task 2. Writing assignment. Answer the following questions:
1. Give the main key characteristics of four different fields of psychology.
2. Explain and give arguments about which field of psychology interests you the most? Give reasons.
3. Make a table lists within the field of psychology with a description of typical activities each (Table 1):

Table 1. Fields of psychology

Field Activities
For example: Teaching and learning in educational system
Educational psychology

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2. The structure of mental phenomena

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 The psyche manifests itself in mental processes, states, and properties.
I. A mental process is the process of cognition, emotions and volition in the mind.
It formed in the course of the individual's interaction with the environment. It is considered in dynamics, in action, in
development. By that are included in more complex types of mental activity.
1. While studying behaviour it is one of the essential tasks for psychologists to understand the cognitive processes which
collectively influence a particular behaviour. So through cognitive, humanity processes reflects the surrounding world. There are
eight types of cognitive processes in psychology. These cognitive psychological processes are:
Sensation is the cognitive function that allows us to reflect on objects and phenomena through the senses. It refers to our
awareness about various stimuli we encounter in different modalities such as vision, hearing, touch and taste.
Perception - is the cognitive function that allows us to make out the meaning of information. In the case of perception, we
process information and make out the meaning of the stimuli available to us. For example, we look at a pen and recognize it as
an object used for writing.
Attention - is the cognitive function that allows us to selectively focus on a particular stimulus among many stimuli available
to us. For instance, while listening to a lecture in the classroom, we attend to the teacher's words and try to ignore the other
stimuli present in the class, such as noise from the window.
Memory - is the cognitive function that allows us to code, store, and recover information from the past. The information we
process and learn is registered and stored in the memory system. Memory also helps us quickly retrieve the stored data when
required for use—for example, writing the answers in the examination after studying the course.
Thinking - is the cognitive function in which ideas, images, mental representations, or other hypothetical elements of
thought are experienced or manipulated by transforming available information. In the case of thinking, we use our stored
knowledge to solve various tasks, such as remembering, imagining, problem-solving, daydreaming, free association, concept
formation, and many other processes.
Speech - is the cognitive function, as a system of human sounds, written signs, and symbols used to represent, process, store
and transmit verbal information. Speech is the major acquisition of humankind.
Imagination - is the cognitive function, as the creative ability that allows us to form images, ideas, and sensations in the
mind based on past perception in the absence of direct sensory data, often by combining fragments of previous sensory
experiences into new syntheses.
Representation - is the cognitive function that allows us to reflect on objects or phenomena that are not perceived at the
moment.
Learning - is the cognitive function that allows us to acquire new knowledge and skills through experience and practice. The
acquired knowledge and skills further bring a relative change in our behavior and facilitate our adjustment in varied settings. For
example, we learn the language, ride a bicycle, and apply mathematical skills to solve various problems.
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 2. Emotion - it reflects the surrounding world. American Psychologist Paul Ekman proposed seven basic emotions: sad, joy,
anger, surprise, fear, disgust, contempt. The specific significance of the event determines the particular quality of the emotion.
Emotion typically involves feeling but differs from having an overt or implicit engagement with the world—one of the critical
differences in the term. Emotion (unconscious) is a short-term mental phenomenonа, feeling (conscious) is a long-term mental
phenomenonа.
3. Will (volition) - it is a conscious management of behavior and activities; this is expressed by the ability to make decisions
and overcome internal and external difficulties on the way to achieving the aim. Any voluntary action has its one's motive (cause)
that motivates (directs) and gives motivation (energy) to be active on the way to achieving the aim.

II. Mental state is the condition or status of an entity or system at a particular time. It is characterized by relative stability, or
when conditions change, they can be dynamic and changeable. Emotional states include anxiety, frustration, stress, affect etc.

III. Mental properties are typical characteristics of a person's peculiarities, such as character, temperament, ability, and
skill.

Task 3. Writing assignment. State whether the following statements are True or False:
a. Speech helps to transmit verbal information.
b. In sensation, stimuli are stored in the brain.
c. In thinking, we use stored knowledge to solve various tasks.
d. In attention, we attend to all the stimuli present in the environment.
e. In learning, we acquire new skills through training and experience.

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 4. Psychological approaches
Psychological approaches mean a narrow study of the psyche and psychological phenomena by various psychological
concepts to describe personality's behaviour, experience, and mental processes. The main approaches are briefly described below.
Biological Approach: This approach focuses on biological structures and phenomena such as the brain, genes, hormones,
endocrine system and neurotransmitters to understand behaviour dynamics. Its primary focus is on the role of different brain parts
in regulating feelings, memories, emotions and other aspects of behaviour. Similarly, the impact of over-secretion or under-
secretion of various hormones in governing behaviour is studied as one of the sub-disciplines; behaviour genetics investigates the
genetic determinants of behaviour. Moreover, this approach looks for the physiological basis of human behaviour.
Psychoanalytic Approach: The father of the psychoanalytic approach, Sigmund Freud, focused on the unconscious
describing the individual's present state. He studied the mind in terms of hierarchical arrangements of experiences in the form of
different layers of consciousness (e.g. conscious, preconscious, and unconscious). Freud explored the nature and quality of the
unconscious through analysis of dreams, slips of the tongue, neuroses, psychoses, works of art, and rituals. He assumed that
majority of human behaviours are triggered by unconscious motivation. Thus, to understand human behaviour, the analysis of
unconscious mental contents is considered most important.
Humanistic Approach: Contrary to Freud, the father of the humanistic approach, Carl Rogers emphasized conscious
experiences of the present situation, the role of interpersonal experiences across the course of life, and people’s capacity to grow
toward psychological maturity. This approach assumes that a person is an active and self-actualizing and chooses to decide his
behaviour. As a part of the self-actualizing process, a person seeks to maintain a unity between self and experience. However,
because of past experiences with conditional positive or negative regard, human may deny or distort the incidents that threaten
one’s self-system. A self-system can be changed in the therapeutic setting through genuineness, unconditional positive regard, and
empathic understating of the client’s problem by the psychologist-therapist.
Behaviorist Approach: The unit of analysis for this approach is explicit, objective and overt behavior and its relationship
with environmental stimulation. The father of behaviorism John B. Watson emphasized accurate analysis of behaviour. He
advocated that the association between stimulus and response largely governs behaviour, and the behaviour can be shaped in the
desired direction by manipulating this association.
Cognitive Approach: The cognitive approach emerged as an alternative to the mechanistic paradigm of behaviourism. This
approach mainly focuses on the study of the information processing capacity of the individual in terms of perception,
remembering, thinking, language, reasoning, problem-solving and decision making, which are called higher mental processes. It
proposes that we look out for information in the world and our behaviour depends upon how we process this information. This
approach relies on computational models and assumes that behavior and mental processes are possibly understood by treating
information processing.

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 Task 4. A) Writing assignment. Fill in the blanks:
1. ———————— ——————— focuses on the role of different parts of brain in regulating feelings, memories, emotions
and other aspects of behaviour.
2. Focus of the ———————— — ——————— is on the information processing capacity of the individual.
3. ———————————— ————————— assumes that the person is active and self-actualizing agent and has a choice
in deciding his behaviour.
4. According to the ——————— ————— ———————————— majority of human behaviours are triggered by
unconscious motivation.
5. The unit of analysis for the —————————— ————————— is explicit, objective and overt behaviour and its
relationship with environmental stimulation.
B) Writing assignment. Make a table list within the psychology approaches with keywords (Table 2):
Table 2. Psychological approaches
Approach Keyword
For example: unconscious
Psychoanalytic approach

5. Glossary
Psychology is a systematic and scientific study of mental processes, experiences and behaviors.
Mental phenomena are understood as internal, subjective human experience, a fundamental property, which is the direct
representation of the subject.
Consciousness is the upper level of the mental life of which the person is aware as contrasted, as a quality or state or fact of
being conscious of an external object, state and characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought.
Behaviour is the way in which someone conducts or behaves.
Psyche is the totality of elements forming the mind.
Abnormal psychology is the field of psychology that tries to describe, assess, predict and control those categories of
behaviours that are considered unusual and non- normative.

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 Cognitive psychology deals with studying of the acquisition, storage, transformation, and application of information to
understand and interpret events around individuals.
Educational psychology is the field of psychology mainly concerned with academic performance and learning processes.
Environmental psychology is the field of psychology that is concerned with studying the impact of the physical environment
on human behaviour.
Health psychology is the field of psychology that focuses on the impact of various psychological factors (e.g. stress) on the
onset progress and treatment of illness.
Organizational psychology is the field of psychology that is concerned with applying psychological principles and models to
study the selection and performance of employees in organizational settings.
Developmental psychology is the concerned with studying various physical and psychological factors that influence the
systematic changes that the individual experiences across the different age stages of life.

Task 5. Make the glossary from the lecture. Learn the glossary.

6. References:
1. David G. Myers (2013). Psychology, 10th Edition. Printed in the USA, Publisher: Hardcover, 864 pages.
2. Andy Schmitz (2012). Beginning Psychology (v. 1.0). Unnamed Publisher, 822 pages.
3. Dr. Regan A. R. Gurung and Dr. Aaron Richmond (2016). General Psychology: An Introduction: Instructor Manual. Diener
Education Fund, 426 pages.
4. Irving B. Weiner (2013). Handbook of psychology, 2nd Edition. Printed in the USA, 280 pages.
5. Richard A. Griggs (2014). Psychology: A Concise Introduction (4th Edition). Publisher: Worth Publishers, 432 pages.
6. Rice University. Textbook (2014). Psychology. OpenStax College, 765 pages.

7. Self-assignment work:
Task 1, task 2, task3, , task 4, task 5

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