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Definition
Psychology is the science that seeks to understand behavior and mental processes, and to apply
that understanding in the service of human welfare. |
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Definition
Positive psychology
is a field of research that focuses on people’s positive experiences and characteristics, such as
happiness, optimism, and resilience |
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Definition
Biological or physiological psychologists use high-tech scanning devices and other
methods to study how biological processes in the brain and other organs affect, and are
affected by, behavior and mental processes. They study the processes that allow you to
maintain blood pressure, move, speak, cope with stress, fight disease, and perform
many other vital functions. |
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Definition
Developmental psychologists describe changes in behavior and mental processes and
try to understand the causes of these changes and their effects throughout the life span.
They study things such as the development of memory and other mental abilities as
well as parenting, evaluating day care, and preserving mental capacity in elderly
people. |
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Definition
Cognitive psychologists (sometimes called experimental) study mental processes
including sensation, perception, learning, memory, thinking, consciousness,
intelligence, and creativity |
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Definition
Personality psychologists focus on how people are similar and different. They use
tests, interviews and other measures to compare individuals on different characteristics |
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Definition
Clinical and counseling psychologists conduct research on the causes of behavior
disorders and try to help troubled people overcome these disorders. |
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Definition
Educational psychologists conduct research and develop theories about teaching and
learning. The results are applied to try to help students learn more efficiently and
improve teacher training |
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Definition
Social psychologists focus on how people think about, relate to, influence, and are
influenced by other people. Prejudice and persuasion are just two areas social
psychologists study. |
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Term
| Industrial/Organizational Psychology |
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Definition
Industrial-Organizational (I/O) psychologists try to improve the efficiency,
productivity, and satisfaction of workers and the organizations that employ them. |
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Term
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Definition
Quantitative psychologists develop and use statistical tools to analyze vast amounts
of data collected by their colleagues in many other subfields. These tools help to
evaluate the reliability and validity of psychological tests, to trace the relationships
between childhood experiences and adult behaviors, and even to estimate the relative
contributions of heredity and environment in determining intelligence |
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Term
| How do the different subfields link? |
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Definition
1. Because psychology’s subfields overlap, psychologists in different subfields are often
linked by their study of a common topic or a common issue. |
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Term
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Definition
knowledge based on
experience and observation rather than imagination or intuition. |
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Definition
| the goal to describe the structure of the mind in terms of the most primitive elements of mental experience. |
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Term
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Definition
Gestalt psychologists from
Germany, saw consciousness as a totality, arguing that it can best be understood
by observing it as a whole, not piece by piece. An example from the text notes
that movies are long strips of film containing thousands of still photographs, but
describing those photographs would not capture a person’s experience of
watching a movie. |
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Term
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Definition
| Psychoanalysis was developed by Freud, mainly dealing with the patient talking about their thoughts (such as dreams, free associations, etc.) and then the analyst induces the unconscious conflicts causing the patient's symptoms and character problems, and interprets them for the patient to create insight for resolution of the problems. |
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Term
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Definition
William James’s approach, functionalism,
focused on the role of consciousness in guiding people’s ability to make decisions,
solve problems, and the like. The emphasis was on how the ongoing “stream of
consciousness,” the ever-changing pattern of images, sensations, memories, and other
mental events, helps people adapt to their environments. This approach also
encouraged psychologists to measure individual differences in mental processes |
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Term
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Definition
Watson’s approach, behaviorism, relied on observations
of overt behavior and responses to various stimuli. Watson believed that learning is the
most important determinant of behavior and that through learning organisms are able
to adapt to their environments. |
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Term
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Definition
| tructuralism relied on a method called introspection. For example, one of Wundt's research assistants might describe an object such as an apple in terms of the basic perceptions it invoked (e.g., "cold", "crisp", and "sweet"). An important principal of introspection is that any given conscious experience must be described in it's most basic terms, so that a researcher could not describe some experience or object as itself, such as describing an apple as an apple. Such a mistake is a major instrospection faux pas and is referred to as the "stimulus error". Through introspection experiments, Wundt began to catalog a large number of basic conscious elements, which could hypothetically be combined to describe all human experiences. |
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Term
| The functional analysis of behavior |
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Definition
Behaviorism was championed further by B. F. Skinner. His functional analysis of
behavior explained how rewards and punishments shape, maintain, and change
behaviors through operant conditioning. An example from the text notes that a
functional analysis of behavior would explain that children’s tantrums may be
unknowingly encouraged by the attention they attract from caregivers. |
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Term
| Biological approach to psychology |
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Definition
The biological approach assumes that biological factors (e.g., hormones, genes, and
the activity of the central nervous system, especially the brain) affect behavior and mental processes. |
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Definition
Most psychologists are eclectic,
combining the features of several approaches. |
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Definition
The evolutionary approach emphasizes how behavior and mental processes emerge
as generation-to-generation adaptations to help organisms survive in their
environments, in other words, through natural selection. |
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Term
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Definition
The psychodynamic approach, based on Freud’s theories, sees constant unconscious
conflicts within each person as the main determinant of behavior and mental life. The
conflict is primarily between the impulse to satisfy personal desires and the need to
live by the rules of society |
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Term
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Definition
The behavioral approach, based on Watson’s ideas, sees behavior as primarily the
result of learning. A person’s learning history, especially the patterns of rewards and
punishments, influences behavior. People can change problematic behaviors by
unlearning old habits and developing new ones. |
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Term
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Definition
The cognitive approach emphasizes the importance of thoughts and other mental
processes. It also focuses on how people take in, mentally represent, and store
information; how they perceive and process that information; and how cognitive
processes are related to observable behavior |
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Term
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Definition
The humanistic approach (also called the phenomenological approach) sees behavior
as determined primarily by each person’s capacity to choose how to think and act
based on each individual’s unique perceptions. Humanists believe that people control
themselves, and that each person is essentially good, with an innate tendency to grow
toward her/his highest potential. Humanists do not search for general laws but try to
understand the perceptions and feelings of individuals. |
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