Psychology is a scientific discipline that uses the scientific method to investigate psychological phenomena, and for arriving at scientific truths in regard to the causes and treatments for psychological and behavioral disorders and problems.
Therefore, psychology uses the scientific method to study mental processes and behaviors. Also, when psychologists conduct research they embrace scientific values when gathering and analyzing data quantitatively is by using statistics. No comments:. Post a Comment Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment. All types of logical thinking are limited by the limitations of the human mind.
During recent years the relation between psychological science and logic is very close. During the empirical phase of the development of psychological science it has been more concerned with experiments. However, recently it has been making use of the concepts and techniques of symbolic logic for theoretical systematization of psychological science. Philosophy has two parts epistemology and ontology.
Psychology enquires into the nature of knowing, feeling, and willing. It deals with knowing as a fact, and the nature and development of knowledge of an individual mind. It is concerned with the validity of knowledge. Psychology assumes the possibility of knowledge and merely traces its growth and development in an individual mind. But Epistemology enquires into the conditions under which knowledge is possible, and deals with the validity of knowledge.
Thus Psychology is the basis of Epistemology. It enquires into the nature of knowing as a fact. Epistemology, on the other hand, enquires into the validity of knowledge. In order to enquire into the validity of knowledge, we should know how we actually know. Locke tried to solve the problems of epistemology by the psychological analysis of the process of knowing.
But Kant tried to solve them by the critical method, and tried to find out the a priori conditions of knowledge, which are its presuppositions. Psychology is related to Ontology or Metaphysics. Psychology deals with knowing as a fact. Metaphysics or Ontology deals with the ultimate nature of the self, the external world, and God. Psychology is not concerned with God at all. Metaphysics proves the reality of the self, the world, and the knowledge of the world by the self.
Metaphysics tests the validity of the fundamental assumptions of psychology. Psychology originated from philosophy like every other science. However, as psychology developed as an autonomous science, it got itself separated from philosophy. Recently it has discovered that there are certain theoretical problems in psychological science which are of speculative nature.
These speculative problems of psychological science fall within the range of philosophy. Psychology deals with the behaviour pattern of an individual in relation to the environment which is physical as well as social. The external world or light, sound, taste, smell, heat, cold, etc. Parents, relatives, friends, enemies, playmates, companions and all the people with whom an individual comes into contact and interacts constitute his social environment.
The individual mind grows and develops through interaction with the society. He develops his personality through social intercourse. There is constant interaction between the individual and the society. Sociology deals with the nature, origin, and development of society. It investigates into manners, customs and institutions of a society in all its stages of development from the savage to the civilized state.
Hence, psychology is intimately related to sociology. It is concerned with the study of the bonds which inter-relate individuals in society.
The nature of inter-personal relationships has become quite intelligible through investigations in the field of psychology. It is obvious, then, that there is considerable overlapping between the provinces of psychology and sociology. However, in spite of the fact that there is close relation between psychology and sociology there are certain points of difference between the two.
Psychology is primarily concerned with the experience and behaviour of an individual. For example, for Jonathan and Elisabeth, the names of the teas would have been Jonoki and Elioki. The participants were then shown 20 packets of tea that were supposedly being tested.
Eighteen packets were labelled with made-up Japanese names e. The experimenter explained that each participant would taste only two teas and would be allowed to choose one packet of these two to take home. One of the two participants was asked to draw slips of paper to select the two brands that would be tasted at this session. Then, while the teas were being brewed, the participants completed a task designed to heighten their need for self-esteem, and that was expected to increase their desire to choose a brand that had the letters of their own name.
Specifically, the participants all wrote about an aspect of themselves that they would like to change. After the teas were ready, the participants tasted them and then chose to take a packet of one of the teas home with them.
After they made their choice, the participants were asked why they chose the tea they had chosen, and then the true purpose of the study was explained to them. Furthermore, the decisions were made unconsciously; the participants did not know why they chose the tea they chose. Once we learn about the outcome of a given event e. Of course, both of these contradictory outcomes cannot be true.
The problem is that just reading a description of research findings leads us to think of the many cases we know that support the findings, and thus makes them seem believable. The tendency to think that we could have predicted something that has already occurred that we probably would not have been able to predict is called the hindsight bias. All scientists, whether they are physicists, chemists, biologists, sociologists, or psychologists, use empirical methods to study the topics that interest them.
Empirical methods include the processes of collecting and organizing data and drawing conclusions about those data.
The empirical methods used by scientists have developed over many years and provide a basis for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data within a common framework in which information can be shared. We can label the scientific method as the set of assumptions, rules, and procedures that scientists use to conduct empirical research.
Although scientific research is an important method of studying human behaviour, not all questions can be answered using scientific approaches. Statements that cannot be objectively measured or objectively determined to be true or false are not within the domain of scientific inquiry. Scientists therefore draw a distinction between values and facts. Because values cannot be considered to be either true or false, science cannot prove or disprove them.
Nevertheless, as shown in Table 1. For instance, science may be able to objectively measure the impact of unwanted children on a society or the psychological trauma suffered by women who have abortions. The effect of imprisonment on the crime rate in Canada may also be determinable. This factual information can and should be made available to help people formulate their values about abortion and incarceration, as well as to enable governments to articulate appropriate policies.
Values also frequently come into play in determining what research is appropriate or important to conduct. Although scientists use research to help establish facts, the distinction between values and facts is not always clear-cut.
Sometimes statements that scientists consider to be factual turn out later, on the basis of further research, to be partially or even entirely incorrect. Although scientific procedures do not necessarily guarantee that the answers to questions will be objective and unbiased, science is still the best method for drawing objective conclusions about the world around us.
When old facts are discarded, they are replaced with new facts based on newer and more correct data. Although science is not perfect, the requirements of empiricism and objectivity result in a much greater chance of producing an accurate understanding of human behaviour than is available through other approaches.
The study of psychology spans many different topics at many different levels of explanation , which are the perspectives that are used to understand behaviour. The same topic can be studied within psychology at different levels of explanation, as shown in Table 1. Studying and helping alleviate depression can be accomplished at low levels of explanation by investigating how chemicals in the brain influence the experience of depression.
At the middle levels of explanation, psychological therapy is directed at helping individuals cope with negative life experiences that may cause depression. And at the highest level, psychologists study differences in the prevalence of depression between men and women and across cultures. These sex and cultural differences provide insight into the factors that cause depression. The study of depression in psychology helps remind us that no one level of explanation can explain everything.
All levels of explanation, from biological to personal to cultural, are essential for a better understanding of human behaviour. Understanding and attempting to alleviate the costs of psychological disorders such as depression is not easy because psychological experiences are extremely complex. The questions psychologists pose are as difficult as those posed by doctors, biologists, chemists, physicists, and other scientists, if not more so Wilson, A major goal of psychology is to predict behaviour by understanding its causes.
Making predictions is difficult, in part because people vary and respond differently in different situations. Individual differences are the variations among people on physical or psychological dimensions.
For instance, although many people experience at least some symptoms of depression at some times in their lives, the experience varies dramatically among people. Some people experience major negative events, such as severe physical injuries or the loss of significant others, without experiencing much depression, whereas other people experience severe depression for no apparent reason.
Other important individual differences that we will discuss in the chapters to come include differences in extraversion, intelligence, self-esteem, anxiety, aggression, and conformity.
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