What is psychology

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY?

Based on:Psychology Course Companion; John Crane, Jette HannibalResearch Methods and Statistics in Psychology; Hugh Coolican

• Why do people buy so many self-help books,

goes do psychics and read horoscopes?

• What do these people have in common with

psychology student?

• People use psychology every day.

• When we explain human actions in terms of

beliefs, motives, love or childhood

experiences, we are using common-sense

psychology or naive psychology or folk

psychology.

• Common – sense psychology is not the same

as scientific psychology.

• People use psychological ideas and terms

without knowledge what it really means, for

exemple:

– „repressing” bad memories,

– talking about somebody big „ego”,

– saying that they have depression.

Milgram’s (1966) famous experiment

into conformity

• Before carrying out the research, Milgram had asked

other psychologists whether he should go ahead with

the experiment. He was told that nearly all participants

would withdraw before causing any ‘pain.’

• Approx 70% people gave ‘electric shocks’ to what they

believed was another test subject, at a level high

enough to kill them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcvSNg0HZwk&list=FLucLI1DMDsqBvHJ-SK3INYA&index=53&feature=plpp

The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority

Stanley Milgram August 15, 1933 – December 20, 1984

DEFINITION OF PSYCHOLOGY

Scientific study of mental processes and

behavior and how these are effected by

internal processes and the environment

• Scientific - it means systematic and controlled

study of human behavior with the hope of

establishing cause-and-effect relationships

and describing behaviour.

• Mental processes – attention, memory,

emotion and attitudes

• Behaviours – aggression, helping, sleeping

• Internal processes - hormones, genes

• Enviroment – nurture, social influence,

culture

NATURE vs NURTURE

BIOLOGY vs ENVIROMENT

Working with tekst

• Look at page 8 (Psychology Course Companion; John

Crane, Jette Hannibal) and read „research in

psychology” (in frame)

• Answear these questions:

1. What was tested?

2. Who were the subjects, and how many?

3. How was eksperyment conducted? (method)

4. What was the conclusion?

Working in groups

• How would you test the theory that

heat makes people more agressive?

• Write down your ideas.

testing proposals1. Let people solve difficult problems in a hot room then in a cold room.

Measure their blood pressure during excercises.

2. One group of people solve problems in a hot room and a diffrent group

solve them in a cool room. Stop the exercise and invite them into one

room for a coffee break. Assess agression from observation.

3. Observe amount of horn-hooting by drivers in a city on hot and cold

days.

4. Check public records for a number of crimes involving agression

committed in hot and cold seasons in the same city.

5. Measure people aggression with an aggression scale in a hot and cold

days.

The diversity of psychology

• Multidisciplinary science.

• Psychologists use a number of data collection

methods

• They study variety of topics

• List three topics that you think could be

investigated using information and

understanding from diffrent areas of

knowledge, and explain why.

Psychologists

LEVELS OF ANALYSIS IN PSYCHOLOGY

• BIOLOGICAL LEVEL – PHYSIOLOGY & GENETETICS

• COGNITIVE LEVEL – MENTAL PROCESSES: MEMORY, THINKING,

PERCEPTION & ATTENTION

• SOCIOCULTURAL LEVEL – HOW ENVIRONMENT AND CULTURE

AFFECT BEHAVIOUR OR THINKING

Various levels of analysis

the exemple: GENDER differences• BIOLOGICAL LEVEL – genetic make-up (XX or XY chromosomes) &

hormones (testosterone & estrogen)

• COGNITIVE LEVEL – schema theory: forming mental representations of

what it means to be either a girl or a boy. Representation guide

behaviour.

• SOCIOCULTURAL LEVEL – social theory learning – people learn gender

behaviour by watching how other people of their own sex behave

Why men and women are different and why they

have different opportunities around the world?