1. Chapter 1
What is Psychology?

2. 1.1 Why Study Psychology?
What do you hope to learn from the study of psychology?
Others?
Self?
Specific Topics?
Psychology provides a different way to view and interpret the world and the people who inhabit it.

3. What is psychology?
Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.

4. What is psychology?
Behavior is any action that people can observe or measure.
Walking
Talking
Sleeping
Eating
Blood Pressure
Brain Activity

5. What is psychology? Mental processes are cognitive activities. Dreams
Perceptions
Thoughts
Memories

6. What is psychology?
Psychologists also study people’s emotions as they can affect both behavior and cognition.

7. What are the goals of psychology?
Psychologists observe and describe behavior and mental processes.
A better understanding of behavior/mental processes enables psychologists to explain, predict, and control behavior.

8. Psychology as a Science
Psychology is a social science. (The social sciences include history, sociology, and political science.)
Some areas of psychology include elements of the natural sciences. (The natural sciences include biology and chemistry.)

9. Psychology as a Science
Psychologists, like scientists, conduct research.
Psychologists conduct research by using surveys, case studies, observation methods, and experimentation.

10. Psychology as a Science
Psychologists, like scientists, organize their ideas into theories.
A theory is a statement that attempts to explain why things are the way they are and happen the way they do.
Theories help psychologists predict behavior and mental processes.
Theories may be revised or discarded.

11. 1.2 What Psychologists Do
Psychologists work in many different fields, but they all focus on studying and explaining behavior and mental processes.

12. Major Fields in Psychology
Clinical Psychology
Make up the largest group of psychologists
Treat people with all types of psychology problems
Work in hospitals, prisons, colleges, and/or private practice
Psychiatrists
Are medical doctors and can prescribe medication

13. Major Fields in Psychology
Counseling Psychology
Typically treat people with adjustment problems
Often work in businesses or higher education

14. Major Fields in Psychology
School Psychology
Identify and help students who have problems that interfere with learning
Use interviews, tests, and observation to help students
Educational Psychology
Focus on course planning & instructional methods for entire school systems rather then individuals
Often work with testing

15. Major Fields in Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Study changes that occur during the life span
Includes physical, emotional, cognitive, or social changes

16. Major Fields in Psychology
Personality Psychology
Identify and study human characteristics or traits
Concerned with issues such as anxiety, aggression, and gender roles
Social Psychology
Concerned with people’s social behavior
Focus on external influences

17. Major Fields in Psychology
Experimental Psychology
Research basic processes such as functions of the nervous system, sensation and perception, learning, memory, thinking, and emotions
Basic research – has no immediate application and is done for its own sake

18. Other Specialists Industrial and Organizational Psychology
Industrial – study of people and work
Organizational – study of how people behave in organizations such as business
Usually trained in both areas
Employed by business to improve working conditions and worker output

19. Other Specialists
Environmental Psychology - Study how people influence and are influenced by their environment
Consumer Psychology – Study behavior of shoppers
Health Psychology
Study how behavior and mental processes relate to physical health
Study how stress affects health
Focus on disease prevention

20. Other Specialists Forensic Psychology
Work in the criminal justice system
Determine the psychological competence of defendants
Explain how psychological problems lead to criminal behavior
Work with police departments to select police officers, help officers cope with job stress, and train officers in the handling of dangerous situations

21. 1.3 A History of Psychology
Interest in psychology goes back to ancient Greece
Scientific approach, which began in the 1500s, led to birth of modern psychology in the late 1800s
Hippocrates

22. 1.3 A History of Psychology
Wilhelm Wundt and Structuralism
Established laboratory in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany
Structuralism focused on the basic elements of consciousness
Broke down consciousness into objective sensations and subjective feelings
Believed human mind functions by combining objective sensations and subjective feelings

23. 1.3 A History of Psychology
William James and Functionalism
Experience is a continuous “stream of consciousness”
Study how mental processes help organisms adapt to their environment
William James

24. 1.3 A History of Psychology
John B. Watson and Behaviorism
Defined psychology as the scientific study of observable behavior
Believed people can be conditioned by external events and free choice is an illusion
B.F. Skinner
Contributed idea of reinforcement
Behaviors reinforced will be repeated
Watson
Skinner

25. 1.3 A History of Psychology
The Gestalt School
Developed by German psychologists Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Kohler
Perceptions of objects are more then the sum of their parts - the wholes give meaning to the parts

26. 1.3 A History of Psychology
Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis
Emphasizes unconscious motives and internal conflicts and importance of childhood experiences
Very influential and very controversial
Sigmund Freud

27. The End