PSYCO104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Monism, Folk Psychology

• School: University of Alberta
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCO104
• Professor: James Farley

Document Summary

Psychology: the scientific study of behavior and the mind. Behavior: directly observable activity, anything that someone does (ex. actions, etc) Monism: when the body and the mind connect (ex. memories arising from experiences) Biological: how the body might be contributing to certain types of research questions (ex. if you"re stressed, you might have a hormone imbalance) Psychological: focusing on the mind and the unobservable processes, not directly related to behavior or biology (ex. if you"re feeling stressed, maybe you took a course previously and didn"t do well, so you"re nervous about taking this course) Environmental: how someone"s surroundings affect a person"s feelings (ex. forgotten they had a midterm, and everyone else is stressed around them) Goals of psychology: describe behavior and mental processes, explain/understand causes of these behaviors, predict behaviors, influence/control behaviors under certain conditions (can become dangerous due to the incomplete understanding of the brain) 3 and 4 are more applied, drawn from the understanding gained from 1 and.