PSYC 2015 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Monism, Ontogeny
Document Summary
Monism: the mind is the result of activity in the brain, the mind can be studied scientifically, example: personality is explained by neurons in our brain. Dualism: the body is material but the mind is nonphysical, the mind influences behavior through the brain, example: personality is an aspect of the mind, which cannot be explained by the physical self (brain, body) Psychology: study of the description, explanation, modification, and prediction of human and animal behavior. Biological psychology: application of the principles of biology, to the study of physiological, genetic, evolutionary, and developmental mechanisms of behaviors. Biological explanations of behavior fall into four categories: physiological. Relates a behavior to the activity of the body: ontogenetic. Describes the development of a behavior: evolutionary. Reconstructs evolutionary history of a behavior: functional. Describes why a behavior functions as it did.
