Definition of Psychology Scope of Psychology Historical Origins of Psychology Different Psychological Perspectives Major Subfields of Psychology

1. INTRODUCTION TO
PSYCHOLOGY
CHAPTER 1

2. THE SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY
1. BRAIN DAMAGE & FACE RECOGNITION
PROSOPAGNOSIA- While Damaging particular portion of the right side of Brain
Face recognition are localized in particular parts of brain.

3. THE SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY (Contd.)
2. ATTRIBUTING TRAITS TO PEPOLE; SOCIAL JUDGEMENTS
Fundamental Attribution Error: A mistake while judging the behavior of others.

4. Fundamental Attribution Error
Situational
Factors
Personality
Traits

5. THE SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY (Contd.)
3. CHILDHOOD AMNESIA
- Failed to recall events from 1ST Three years of life.

6. THE SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY (Contd.)
4.OBESITY – Tendency to eat too much
- Genetic Factors
- Environmental Influences
- History of Deprivation ; Diabetes, Rats.

7. THE SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY (Contd.)
5.EFFECTS OF MEDIA VIOLENCE ON CHILDREN’S AGGRESSION
- Cathartic Effect; reduce aggression by allowing to express vicariously.
- Research Evidence Contrast with the Cathartic Effect
- i.e. watching violent vs non-violent cartoons.

8. THE HISTORICAL ORIGIN OF PSYCHOLOGY
1. The Nature-Nurture Debate
Nature-nurture debate centers on the question of whether human capabilities
are inborn or acquired through experience.
The nature view holds that human beings enter the world with an in-born
store of knowledge and understanding of reality.
This stored knowledge and capabilities could be accessed through reasoning
and introspection.
Supported by Descrates providing examples of God, the shelf, geometric
axioms, perfections and infinity are supposed to be innate/born.
The root of modern information processing perspectives on the mind

9. THE HISTORICAL ORIGIN OF PSYCHOLOGY
(CONTD.)
 The Nature view holds that knowledge is acquired through experiences and
interactions with the world.
 Highly supported by 17th century English Philosopher John Locke describing
human mind as the tabula rasa, a blank state on which experience “writes”
knowledge and understanding as the individual matures.
 This perspective gave birth to associationists psychology.
 Mind is filled with ideas that enter by way of the senses and then become
associated through principles such as similarity and contrast.
 Now a days most psychologists take an integrated approach analyzing how
nature and nurture combine to shape human behavior.

10. THE HISTORICAL ORIGIN OF PSYCHOLOGY
(CONTD.)
HUMAN
PSYCHOLOGY
ACQUIREDINHERENT

11. THE HISTORICAL ORIGIN OF PSYCHOLOGY
(CONTD.)
2. THE BEGINNING OF SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY
- Scientific psychology was born in late 19th century, when Wilhem Wundt
established the first psychological laboratory at the University of Leipzig in
Germany in 1879.
- With the core belief that mind and behavior, like planets or chemicals could
be subject of scientific analysis.
- Vision was his main research area.
- He also worked on attention, emotion and memory along with coworkers.
- Wundt relied on introspection to study mental processes.
- Introspection refers to observing and recording the nature of one’s own
perceptions, thoughts and feelings.

12. THE HISTORICAL ORIGIN OF PSYCHOLOGY
(CONTD.)
3. STRUCTURALISM & FUNCTIONALISM
- Structuralism was introduced by E.B. TITCHENER, a Cornell University
psychologist
- Refers to The analysis of mental structures- to describe human psychology
- Analytic nature of psychology

13. THE HISTORICAL ORIGIN OF PSYCHOLOGY
(CONTD.)
- Functionalism was introduced by William James, from Harvard university
- Felt that analyzing the elements of consciousness was less important than
understanding its fluid, personal nature
- Functionalism focuses on studying how the mind works to enable an organism
to adapt to and function in its environment
- Emphasized on observing actual behavior
- Both Structuralism & Functionalism regarded psychology as the science of
conscious experience

14. THE HISTORICAL ORIGIN OF PSYCHOLOGY
(CONTD.)
4. BEHAVIORISM
- Developed by John B. Watson reacted against idea that conscious experience
was the province of psychology.
- Argued that nearly all behavior is the result of conditioning and the
environment shapes behavior by reinforcing specific habits.
- The Conditioned response was viewed as the smallest unit of behavior, from
which more complicated behaviors could be created.
- Introduce Stimulus – response (S-R) Psychology

15. THE HISTORICAL ORIGIN OF PSYCHOLOGY
(CONTD.)
5. GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY
- Gestalt Psychology was appeared in Germany in 1912
- German word means “form” or “Configuration” initiated by Max Wertheimer
and his colleagues.
- Gestalt Psychologists’ primary interest was perception and they believed that
perceptual experiences depend on the patterns formed by stimuli and on the
organization of experiences.
- What we actually see is related to the background against which an object
appears.
- Gestalt Psychology contributes much on perception of motion, how people
judge size and the appearance of colors under changes illumination.

16. THE HISTORICAL ORIGIN OF PSYCHOLOGY
(CONTD.)
 6.Psychoanlysis
- Both a theory of personality and method of psychotherapy originated by
Sigmund Freud around the turn of the 20th century.
- The key idea is the concept of unconscious- the thoughts, attitudes,
impulses, wishes, motivations and emotions of which we are unaware
- Childhood’s unacceptable (forbidden or punished) wishes are driven out of
conscious awareness and become part of the unconscious, where they
continue to influence thoughts, feelings and actions.
- Unconscious thoughts are expressed in dreams, slips of tongue and physical
mannerisms.

17. THE HISTORICAL ORIGIN OF PSYCHOLOGY
(CONTD.)
7. Later Development in the 20th Century Psychology
 Information Processing Theory: Viewed human as the processors of
information and provided more dynamic approach to psychology.
 Psycholinguistics: Theorizing about mental structures required to comprehend
and speak language.
 Neuropsychology: Discoveries about the brain and nervous system revealed
clear relationships between neurological events and mental processes.

18. CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVES
Psychological Perspective
Refers to a particular approach, a way of looking at topics within psychology.
Any topic in the psychology can be approached from different perspectives.

19. Five Perspectives within Psychology
Biological Behavioral Cognitive
Psychoanalytic Subjectivist

20. CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVES (Contd.)
 1. The Biological Perspective
- An orientation toward understanding the neurobiological processes that underlie
behavior and mental processes.
- Human brain contains well over 10 billion nerve cells and an almost infinite
number of interconnections between them.
- In principle, all psychological events can be related to the activity of the brain
and nervous system.
- The biological approach to the study of human beings and other species attempts
to relate overt behavior to electrical and chemical events taking place inside the
body.
- The biological approach to depression tries to understand this disorder in terms of
abnormal changes in levels of nuerotransmitters, which are chemicals produced in
the brain that make communication between nerve cells possible.

21. CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVES (Contd.)
 2. The Behavioral Perspective
- An orientation toward understanding the observable behavior in terms of
conditioning and reinforcement.
- Focuses on observable stimuli and responses and regards all behavior as a
result of conditioning and reinforcement.
- Regarding obesity, some people may overeat (a specific response) only in the
presence of specific stimuli (such as watching television).
- Regarding aggression, children are more likely to express aggressive responses
when such responses are rewarded (the other child withdraws) than their
responses are punished (the other child counterattacks).

22. CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVES (Contd.)
 3. Cognitive Perspective
- An orientation toward understanding mental processes such as perceiving,
remembering, reasoning, deciding, and problem solving and their relationship
to behavior.
- Cognitive psychologists have often relied on an analogy between the mind and
a computer. Incoming information is processed in various ways: it is selected,
compared, combined with other information already in memory, transformed,
rearranged and so on.

23. CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVES (Contd.)
 4. The Psychoanalytic Perspective
- Developed by Sigmund Freud
- An orientation toward understanding behavior in terms of unconscious
motives stemming from forbidden and aggressive impulses.
- The basic assumption of psychoanalytic perspective is that behavior stems
from unconscious processes, meaning beliefs, fears, and desires that a person
is unaware of that nonetheless influence behavior.
- Freud believed that many of the impulses that are forbidden or punished by
parents, and society during childhood are derived from innate instincts.
- Forbidding them merely forces them out of awareness into the unconscious
later manifest in our behavior.

24. CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVES (Contd.)
 5. The Subjectivist Perspective
- An orientation toward understanding behavior and mental processes in terms
of the subjective realities people actively construct.
- Drawn from Gestalt Psychology, human behavior is the function of perceived
world not the objective world.
- To understand human social behavior, this view holds, we must grasp the
person’s own “definition of the situation”, which is expected to vary by
culture, personal history and current motivational state.
- This perspective is open to cultural and individual differences and to the
effects of motivation and emotion.

25. MAJOR SUBFIELDS OF PSYCHOLOGY
 1. Biological Psychology: also known as physiological psychologist looks for
the relationship between biological processes and behavior.
 2. Experimental Psychology: conduct research from a behaviorist or
cognitive perspective and use experimental methods to study how people
react to sensory stimuli, perceive the world, learn and remember, reason, and
respond emotionally.
 3. Developmental Psychology: concerned with human development and the
factors that shape behavior from birth to old age.
 4. Social & Personality Psychology:
 Social psychologists: are interested in how people perceive and interpret their
social world and how their beliefs, emotions, and behaviors are influenced by
the real or imagined presence of others.

26. MAJOR SUBFIELDS OF PSYCHOLOGY
(Contd.)
 Personality Psychologists: study the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that define
an individual’s personal style of interacting with the real world
 5. Clinical & Counseling Psychology:
 Clinical Psychologists: largest group of psychologists. Apply psychological
principles to the diagnosis treatment of emotional and behavioral problems. i.e
mental sickness, drug addiction, conflict.
 Counseling Psychologists: perform many of the same functions as clinical
psychologists, although they often deal with less serious problems. i.e. student
counseling.
 6. School & Educational Psychology:
 School Psychologists: work with children to evaluate learning and emotional
problems. Combine courses related to child development, education and clinical
psychology.

27. MAJOR SUBFIELDS OF PSYCHOLOGY
(Contd.)
 Educational Psychology: work in university where they do research on
teaching methods and help train teachers.
 7. Organization & Engineering Psychology:
 Organization Psychologists: known as industrial psychologists typically
work for a company. Work for recruiting suitable human resources for a
particular job and designing structures that facilitate collaboration and
team work.
 Engineering Psychologists: try to improve their relationship between
people and machine. Work for improving human-machine interaction
providing better performance, safety and comfort.

28. What We Have Learned
 Definition of Psychology
 Scope of Psychology
 Historical Origins of Psychology
 Different Psychological Perspectives
 Major Subfields of Psychology