Introduction to Psychology

Course Instructor: Ushna Arif

 WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY

SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY

Topics to be
APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
Covered
GOALS OF PSYCHOLOGY

HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY
What do you think
“psychology” means?
Psychology is:

“A scientific study of *mental processes

and behaviors”

*Mental processes: memory, emotion,

perception, imagination, thinking and
reasoning.
 SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY

• Biological studies
• Personality development / Human traits and attributes
• Environment
• Family and Relationships
• Experimental studies
• Personal and community wellbeing
• Professional development / Career counselling
• Organization
• Education
• Sports
• Media
Applied Psychology
• Uses principles of psychology to apply them in the real world and
solve real-world problems

• Examples:
• Using psychological interventions to treat mental health concerns
• Using knowledge of human behaviour to resolve conflicts in
teams
• Using behavioural interventions to help children perform better
in academics
Goals of psychology:

Explain behaviour: Developing

Describe behaviour: Using data
and using theories to explain
collection methods to gather
different factors that contribute to
information on people’s
different personalities and
personalities and behaviours
behaviours

Change behaviour: Using

Predict behaviour: Making
scientific methods to bring
predictions based on the data
improvements / changes in
collected
behaviours
History of Psychology
 Nature vs Nurture – a debate on “whether human capabilities are
inborn or acquired through experience”
 Early philosophers like Decartes believed that an inborn store of
knowledge and understanding could be accessed through careful
reasoning and introspection
 Nurture view suggests that knowledge is acquired through experiences
and interactions with the world
 According to 17th century English philosopher John Locke, at birth the
human mind is a “tabula rasa,” a blank slate on which experience
‘writes’ knowledge and understanding as the individual matures
 Later, associationists argued that the mind is filled with ideas that enter
through one’s senses and then become “associated” through principles
such as “similarity and contrast” (Current research on memory and
learning is related to early association theory)
 Current view of psychology includes a more integrated approach i.e.,
acknowledges heredity or processes in the brain as well as experiences,
that affect thoughts, feelings, and behaviour
Scientific History of Psychology
1879
First psychological laboratory
established
4TH – 5TH CENTURIES B.C.
Philosophical and biological
perspectives of psychology

19TH CENTURY
Structuralism and Functionalism

20TH CENTURY
1920 Information-Processing theory,
Behaviorism, Gestalt Psychology Psycholinguistics, and
and Psychoanalysis Neuropsychology
Scientific history of psychology explained
 Philosopher Hippocrates, the ‘father of medicine’, made many important observations about how the brain
controls various organs of the body. These observations set the stage for what became the biological
perspective in psychology

 Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychological laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany in 1879

 Structuralism studied the analysis of mental structures, while Functionalism studied how the mind works to
enable an organism to adapt to and function in its environment

 Behaviourism, the most influential school of thought at the time, argued that nearly all behaviour is a result of
conditioning and the environment shapes behaviour by reinforcing specific habits

 Behaviourists tended to discuss psychological phenomena in terms of stimuli and responses, giving rise to the
term “stimulus–response (S–R) psychology”
Scientific history of psychology explained
 Gestalt psychologists’ primary interest was perception. (Perception of motion, how people judge size, the appearance of colours
under changes in illumination, and more)

 Gestalt psychologists’ interests led them to perception-centered interpretations of learning, memory, and problem solving that
helped lay the groundwork for current research in cognitive psychology

 Psychoanalysis is both a theory of personality and a method of psychotherapy originated by Sigmund Freud

 At the center of Freud’s theory is the concept of the unconscious – the thoughts, attitudes, impulses, wishes, motivations, and
emotions of which we are unaware

 Information-processing models viewed human beings as processors of information and provided a more dynamic approach to
psychology than behaviourism

 Linguist Noam Chomsky stimulated the first significant psychological analyses of language and the emergence of the field of
psycholinguistics
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the end