1. What is Human behavior?

2. Psychology is…. The scientific study of the mind and behavior
What does that actually mean?
many sub-fields of study such areas as human development, sports, health, clinical, social behavior and cognitive processes.
Behaviors are measurable internal and external activity a living thing does
Observable and internal (stress / fear )

3. What questions do you have?
Why are some people the life of the party and others prefer to curl up with a good book? Why do you remember certain events but not others? Why do people lie? Why are some people always happy?

4. What topics do psychologists study?
-learning and memory -sensation and perception -motivation and emotion -thinking and language -personality and social behavior -intelligence -infant, child & adolescent development -mental illness … and much more.
How do these tpics relate to HB

5. The history of psychology
People have studied the mind and how it works since the time of the ancient Greeks (400 – 500 BC) , but the scientific study of psychology only dates back to a little over a hundred years ago.
Wilhelm Wundt opened the first psychology lab in 1879, this marked the beginning of the scientific study of psychology

6. What does it mean to be a psychologist?
Research Promote physical or mental health (change unhealthy behaviors) Help people learn Work in communities Workplace
Basic – study how/why people act the way they do Applied – use/apply research

7. What does this tell you about psychology?

8. How do psychologists answer questions?
Psychology attempts to investigate the causes of behavior using systematic and objective procedures for observation, measurement and analysis, backed-up by theoretical interpretations, generalizations, explanations and predictions

9. How psychologists work
Psychologists use human behavior as a clue to the workings of the mind. Although we cannot observe the mind directly, everything we do, think, feel and say is determined by the functioning of the mind. So psychologists take human behavior as the raw data for testing their theories about how the mind works.
In fact, psychologists adopt a similar approach to scientists in other fields. Nuclear physicists interested in the structure of atoms cannot observe protons, electrons and neutrons directly. Instead, they predict how these elements should behave and devise experiments to confirm or refute their expectations.
Psychology lies at the intersection of many other different disciplines, including biology, medicine, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and artificial intelligence (AI).
For example, neuropsychology is allied with biology, since the aim is to map different areas of the brain and explain how each underpins different brain functions like memory or language. Other branches of psychology are more closely connected with medicine. Health psychologists help people manage disease and pain. Similarly, clinical psychologists help alleviate the suffering caused by mental disorders.

10. Each psychological perspective is underpinned by a shared set of assumptions of what people are like, what is important to study and how to study it.  Some conduct detailed biological studies of the brain, others explore how we process information; others analyze the role of evolution, and still others study the influence of culture and society.