Psychology: The Science of Behaviour
Areas of psychological research:
• Physiological psychology - studies physiological basis of behaviour
o Learning, memory, sensory process, emotional behaviour, motivation,
sexual behaviour, sleep
o All observed in non-human animals
• Comparative psychology - studies behaviour of a variety of organisms in an
attempt to understand adaptive and functional significance of behaviour and
their relationship in evolution
o Inherited behaviour patterns – courting, mating, predation, aggression,
defensive behaviours, and parental behaviours
• Behaviour analysts – studies effect of environment on behaviour – effects of
consequences of behaviour on behaviour themselves
• Behaviour genetics – studies role of genetics in behaviour
o Examine similarities in physical and behavioural characteristics of blood
relatives
• Cognitive psychology – studies complex behaviours and mental processes
such as perception, attention, learning and memory, verbal behaviour,
concept formation, and problem solving
o Events that cause behaviour consist of functions of brain in response to
environmental factors
o Explanations involve characteristics of inferred mental process such as
imagery, attention, and mechanisms of language
• Cognitive neuroscience – attempts to understand cognitive psychological
functions by studying brain mechanisms that are responsible for them
(cognitive psychology + physiological psychology)
o Study people whose brains have been damaged by natural causes –
disease, stroke, tumors
• Developmental psychology – studies changes in behavioural, perceptual, and
cognitive capacities of organisms as a function of age and experience
o Study causal events that are as comprehensive as all of psychology –
physiological processes, cognitive processes, and social influences
• Social psychology – study of effects people have on each other’s behaviour
o Explore perception, cause-and-effect relationships, group dynamics, and
emotional behaviours (agressions, sexual behaviour)
• Personality psychology – attempts to categorize and understand causes of
individual differences in patterns of behaviour
o Look for causal events in person’s history – genetic and environmental
• Evolutionary psychology – explains behaviour in terms of adaptive
advantages that specific behaviours provided during evolution of a species
(use natural selection as guiding principle)
o Interested in studies of behavioural genetics and comparative psychology
• Cross-cultural psychology – studies effects of culture on behaviour
• Clinical psychology – devoted to investigation and treatment of abnormal behaviour and mental disorders
Fields of applied psychology:
• Clinical neuropsychologists – specializes in the identification and treatment of
behavioural consequences of nervous system disorders and injuries
• Health psychologists – works to promote behaviours and lifestyles that
improve and maintain health and illness
• Engineering psychologists (ergonomists or human factors psychologists) –
focus on the ways that people and machines work together
o Use knowledge of behaviour and its causes to help designers and
engineers design better machines
• Forensic psychologists – advise members of legal and justice systems with
respect to psychological knowledge
Philosophical roots of psychology
• Animism (animare – to quicken, enliven, endow with breath or soul) – belief
that all animals and all moving objects possess spirits providing their motive
force
• Psychology as a science is based on assumption that behaviour is subject to
physical laws
• Rene Descartes ( 17th century French philosopher and mathematician) -
advocated sober, impersonal investigation of natural phenomena using
sensory experience and human reasoning
o World is mechanical entity set in motion by god but runs on its own
o To understand world one must understand how it was constructed –
opposes church’s belief that purpose of philosophy was to reconcile
human experience with truth of god’s revelation
o Living things were machines affected by natural causes and producing
natural effects
o Reflexes - automatic response to stimulus not using mind
o Dualism – belief that reality consists of mind and matter with a causal link
between mind and physical housing (unique)
Extended things – physical bodies
Thinking things - minds
o Humans are set apart b/c they possess a mind which is not part of natural
world and therefore obeys different laws
o Mind controlled movements of body and body supplied mind with info
about environment (through organs)
Took place in pineal body – small organ on top of brain stem
buried beneath large cerebral hemispheres
Pineal body tilted causing flow of fluid to proper set of nerves and
initiated muscles to inflate and move
• Moving statues in Royal Garden served as inspiration
First to use technological device as model of nervous system
th
• John Locke (17 century philosopher) – replaced Descarte’s rationalism (pursuit of truth through reason) with empiricism (pursuit of truth through
observation and experience)
o Rejected belief that idea were innately present in infant’s mind and
proposed that all knowledge must come through experience
o Model of mind was tabula rasa (clean slate)
o Knowledge developed through linkages of simple, primary sensations
combined to form complex ones
• George Berkeley (18 century Irish bishop, philosopher and mathematician)
– knowledge of events in world required inferences based on accumulation of
past experiences – we learn how to perceive
• Tried to fit nonquantifiable variable reason into equation
• James Mill (19 century Scottish philopher) – developed materialism (reality
can be known only through an understanding of physical world which mind is
a part of ) into system for looking at human nature
o Mind was also a machine, passive responding to body
Biological roots of psychology
• Luigi Galvani (18 tthItalian physiologist) showed Descarte’s hydraulic model
of body to be incorrect – showed muscles could contract by applying electrical
stimulus to them or to nerves attache
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