Psychology For Dummies

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As the approach views the individual as unique, it does not believe that scientific measurements of their behavior are appropriate. Critical Evaluation Strengths

Over the years, each of these metatheories has enjoyed its day in the sun, only to be put on the shelf when the next big thing came along. This revolving door of explanatory frameworks makes it tough to sort through the different metatheories and choose the best one for finding the answers you’re seeking. Where do you begin? Behaviorism emphasizes the role and influence of a person’s environment and previous learning experiences to understanding behavior. Behaviorists don’t traditionally focus on mental processes per se because they believe that mental processes are too difficult to observe and measure objectively. In the framework of behaviorism, the why of behavior can be explained by looking at the circumstances in which it occurs and the consequences surrounding someone’s actions. Classical conditioning and operant conditioning are ways of understanding behavior and they lead to behavior modification, a specific approach to modifying behavior, and helping people change that comes from the metatheory of behaviorism. (See Chapter 8 for details on some behavior-modification techniques that are based on classical and operant conditioning.) Cognitive But hey, if I can write an entire book on psychology, I think you can read an entire book on this stuff. Besides, I think you’ll like it. Psychology is a great subject. Enjoy! Part 1 Getting Started with Psychology IN THIS PART … These psychologists spend the majority of their time conducting research, and they often work in academic settings. Experimental psychology covers a wide range of topics, but individual researchers typically have a specialty such as social psychology or developmental psychology. Humanistic psychology: a more recent development in the history of psychology, humanistic psychology grew out of the need for a more positive view of human beings than was offered by psychoanalysis or behaviorism.Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes. In case you were wondering (and worried), I am not engaged in an actual build a human project. But I’d have a very solid foundation and a good blueprint to get started if I ever decided to try. Each of a person’s parts, processes, and sources of help represents a chapter or section of Psychology For Dummies, 2nd Edition. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is widely used in health and social work as a framework for assessing clients’ needs. Client-centered therapy aims to increase clients’ self-worth and decrease the incongruence between the self-concept and the ideal self. It focuses on the present rather than dwell on the past unlike psychoanalysis. This therapy is widely used e.g. health, education and industry.

The cognitive framework centers on the mental processing of information, including the specific functions of attention, concentration, reasoning, problem solving, and memory. Cognitive psychologists are interested in the mental plans and thoughts that guide and cause behavior and affect how people feel. Intelligence testing and information-processing theories are examples that fall within the cognitive metatheory. According to Rogers (1959), we want to feel, experience and behave in ways which are consistent with our self-image and which reflect what we would like to be like, our ideal-self. The closer our self-image and ideal-self are to each other, the more consistent or congruent we are and the higher our sense of self-worth.

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

Humanism views humans as fundamentally different from other animals, mainly because humans are conscious beings capable of thought, reason, and language. But then it happens — change. That’s right, something unexpected happens, and my human begins floundering, struggling, and verging on failing to achieve its primary function. How could I have forgotten that the world is not a static place? The Greek philosopher Heraclitus is credited with saying, The only constant in life is change. Developmental psychology is a metatheory that is built on the idea that mental processes and behavior change over time, from one mental process and behavior to another in a progressive manner. Mental processes are built from and upon previous ones. Behaviors are built from and upon previous ones.Furthermore, the approach’s focus on meeting our needs and fulfilling our growth potential reflects an individualistic, self-obsessed outlook that is part of the problem faced by our society rather than a solution. References

Over the years, each of the major metatheories I just covered has enjoyed its day in the sun, only to be put on the shelf when the next big thing came along. This revolving door of explanatory frameworks makes it tough to sort through the different metatheories and choose the best one for finding the answers you’re seeking. Where do you begin? Studying a person’s subjective experience is the biggest problem for scientific psychology, which stresses the need for its subject matter to be publicly observable and verifiable. Subjective experience, by definition, resists such processes. Throughout this book, you find icons in the margins. They’re there to help you easily find certain types of information. Here’s a list of the icons you see: In your own life, have you ever felt like just another nameless face in the crowd? Has your life ever seemed as if it’s controlled by the winds of chance? How did it feel? Probably not very good. Feeling like you have choices — and making good choices — gives you a sense of true being and affirms your existence. That’s the case with most people anyway, and psychologists who work within the humanistic and existential metatheory believe that behavior is simply a result of choice. Psychoanalytic/psychodynamic

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Warning With this icon, I’m trying to alert you to information that is a must know if you’re going to learn psychology. Psychoanalytic criticisms claim that individuals cannot explain their own behavior because the causes are largely unconscious. Consequently, conscious explanations will be distorted by rationalization or other defenses. A person is said to be in a state of incongruence if some of the totality of their experience is unacceptable to them and is denied or distorted in the self-image.