Goals of

Psychology

1-Description: how people think, feel and act in

specific situation. Psychologists try to observe
the behavior of interest, (collection of data)

2-Explanation: why and how that behavior

happened based on the different psychological
perspectives.

3-Prediction: The ability to say in advance how

someone is likely to act.

4-Control: The ability to control organisms

behavior.
- It is to learn to control undesirable behavior by
teaching better methods of self-control and ways
to deal with situations and relationships.

Specialities in
Psychology

Clinical psychology
Counseling psychology
School or Educational psychology
Experimental & Physiological psychology
Industrial and Organizational psychology
Social psychology
Developmental psychology
Community psychology

1-Clinical and counseling psychology:

*Deals with diagnosis and treatment of
psychological disorder. (psychotherapy).
*Counseling helps normal people with milder
problems of social and emotional adjustment
like marriage and family life.

2-Educational and school psychology:

Specialize in analyzing and improving formal
education,
* concerned with aspects of educational process as:
- Factors affect performance in the classroom?
- Importance of motivation?
- Using of reward and punishment.
- Size of classroom &interaction between students
and teachers
- Designing and administering tests of various kinds.

3-Experimental psychology:
-Experimental psychologists frequently use
animals rather than human as their
experimental subjects.
studies basic processes e.g. (hearing, perception,
learning, and communication).

4-Industrial and Organizational Psychology:

-Concerns with all aspects of behavior that relate
to the work place.
-One aspect: How work can be made more
satisfying and more productive.
-A major issue facing industrial and
organizational psychologists now is findings
ways to help working women deal with stress of
handling their dual responsibilities at home and
at office.

5-Social psychology:
factors especially presence of other people,
that affect personal response, thinking ,
motivation and behavior in a given social
situation.
- Show that behavior that not just the results of
personality traits.

6-Developmental psychology:
- describe and explain the systematic changes
that occur in people throughout the life cycle.
-How thinking , perception, memory,
intelligence, language, problem solving,
motivation, and social interaction change as
people grow older.

Schools of
Psychology

Schools of thought in the evolution

of modern psychology
school of thought
a group of psychologists who become
associated ideologically with the leader of a
movement
They tend to:
use the same methodology,
research the same topics,
have the same theoretical frameworks

StructuralismWilhelm Wundt

Definition: School of Psychology that

stresses the basic units of experience and
combinations in which they occur.
Wilhelm Wundt:
Physiologist and Philosopher
Founded the first experimental psychology
laboratory in 1879Leipzig Lab.
He asked his subjects to drop balls from a platform or
listen to a metronome (figure below) and report their own
sensations. Wundt and his followers were analyzing their
sensations which they thought were the key to analyzing
the structure of the mind.

Main concern was with techniques used for

uncovering natural laws of the human mind
HE WAS IN SEARCH FOR THE BASIC
UNIT OF THOUGHT.

Structuralism--Titchener
Student of the Leipzig lab
Viewed that human conscious experience could be
understood by breaking it down into components:
Physical sensations (lights & sounds)
Affections of feelings
Images (memory and dreams)
Psychologys role is to identify these elements.
Titcheners approach:
1.Train subjects in introspection and reporting
techniques
2.INTROSPECTION: looking inside oneself and try
to describe whats going onunderstanding oneself.
3.Trained observers introspected and reported what
they experienced
4.Try to formulate general theories based on their
subjects reports.

FunctionalismWilliam James
Definition: Theory of mental life and behavior that is concerned
with how an organism uses its perceptual abilities to function in
its environment.
Influenced by Charles Darwin and his theory of natural
selection in the 19th century.
Functionalism was concerned not with the structure of the
mind, but with the purposes of consciousnesswhat the mind
does and why.
Functionalists wanted to see how people use information to
adapt to their environment.
William James: first American-born psychologist, he University
concluded that pre-sensations without associations simply
did not exist.

FunctionalismWilliam James
For functionalists, the mind
resembles a computer, and to
understand its processes, you
need to look at the softwarewhat it does- without having to
understand the hardware.

FunctionalismWilliam James
JAMES SUGGESTED THAT
WHEN WE REPEAT
SOMETHING SEVERAL
TIMES, OUR NERVOUS
SYSTEMS ARE CHANGED
SO THAT EACH TIME WE
OPEN A DOOR, IT IS EASIER
TO OPEN THAN IT WAS LAST
TIME.

Gestalt Psychology
Definition: School of Psychology that studies
how people perceive and experience objects
as whole patterns
Approaches structuralism from a different
angle. Example: When we see a tree, we see
just that, a tree, not a series of branches.
Founded in Germany about 1912 by Max
Wertheimerand his colleagues Kurt Koffka
and Wolfgang Kohler.

 Gestalt means form or configuration.

They maintained that the mind should be
thought of as resulting from the whole
pattern of sensory activity and the
relationship and organization within this
pattern.
Gestalt psychologists in their opposition
to structuralism pointed that mental
experiences depends on the patterning
and organization of elements and is not
simply due to the compounding of
elements.

BehaviorismJohn Watson
Definition: School of psychology that studies
only observable and measurable behavior.
John Watson:
You cannot define conscious any more than you can define a
soul.
You cannot locate or measure consciousness, and therefore it
cannot be the object of scientific study.
Studies observable, measurable behavior and nothing more.
There are three important characteristics of behaviorism:
Watson argued that complex human and animal behavior is made up
almost entirely of conditioned responses.
Watson emphasis on learned , rather than unlearned behavior. He denied
the existence of inborn, or innate , behavioral tendencies.
Watson held that there are no essential differences between human and
animal behavior.

PsychoanalysisSigmund Freud

Medical Doctor/Neurologist
Studied hypnosis and found the unconscious
Published The Interpretation of Dreams
Believed that much of our behavior is governed
by hidden motives and unconscious desires.
A crucial point about these motives and
desires, according to this theory, is that they are
hidden from the awareness of the individual, i.e.,
they are unconscious.
It is the expression of this unconscious drives
which shows up in behavior and thought.
Believed that childhood experiences
determined adult personality.

PsychoanalysisNeo-Freudians

Carl Jung
Alfred Adler
Erik Erikson
Karen Horney

Believed in the basics of

psychoanalysis

BehaviorialB.F. Skinner
Agreed with Watson that psychology should be
only observable and measurable behavior
BIG DIFFERENCE: He used reinforcement
Reinforcement: anything that follows a
response and makes that response more likely
to occur.

Example:
Behavior: you get an A on the first
Psych test
Reinforcer: Your parents give you $100
Result: You strive to get an A on all
other Psych tests, hoping for the same
reinforcer.

Humanistic Psychology
Definition: School of psychology that
emphasizes nonverbal experience and
altered states of consciousness as a
means of realizing ones full human
potential.
Goal: To ensure mental healthiness of
individuals and develop therapeutic
techniques.
Psychologists: Abraham Maslow and
Carl Rogers

Cognitive Psychology
Definition: School of psychology devoted
to the study of mental processes
generally.
Goal: To explore the mental processes
involved in judgment, decision making,
and other aspects of complex thought.

Biological
Focuses on how our biology and
biochemistry influences behavior
Neurobiology is essential- study the brain!
The field contributes to the understanding
of many medical disorders as well
-Parkinsons, Huntingdons and
Alzheimers disease, Autism, substance
abuse