Unit 1

Introduction to Psychology

Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. The word “psychology” comes from the
Greek words “psyche,” meaning life, and “logos,” meaning explanation. Psychology is a popular
major for students, a popular topic in the public media, and a part of our everyday lives.
Television shows such as Dr. Phil feature psychologists who provide personal advice to those
with personal or family difficulties. Crime dramas such as CSI, Lie to Me, and others feature the
work of forensic psychologists who use psychological principles to help solve crimes. And many
people have direct knowledge about psychology because they have visited psychologists, for
instance, school counselors, family therapists, and religious, marriage, or bereavement
counselors. Because we are frequently exposed to the work of psychologists in our everyday
lives, we all have an idea about what psychology is and what psychologists do. In many ways I
am sure that your conceptions are correct. Psychologists do work in forensic fields, and they do
provide counseling and therapy for people in distress. But there are hundreds of thousands of
psychologists in the world, and most of them work in other places, doing work that you are
probably not aware of. Most psychologists work in research laboratories, hospitals, and other
field settings where they study the behavior of humans and animals.

The study of psychology spans many different topics at many different levels of explanation,
which are the perspectives that are used to understand behavior. Lower levels of explanation are
more closely tied to biological influences, such as genes, neurons, neurotransmitters, and
hormones, whereas the middle levels of explanation refer to the abilities and characteristics of
individual people, and the highest levels of explanation relate to social groups, organizations, and
cultures.

The same topic can be studied within psychology at different levels of explanation. For instance,
the psychological disorder known as depression affects millions of people worldwide and is
known to be caused by biological, social, and cultural factors. Studying and helping alleviate
depression can be accomplished at low levels of explanation by investigating how chemicals in
the brain influence the experience of depression. This approach has allowed psychologists to
develop and prescribe drugs, such as Prozac, which may decrease depression in many
individuals. At the middle levels of explanation, psychological therapy is directed at helping
individuals cope with negative life experiences that may cause depression. And at the highest
level, psychologists study differences in the prevalence of depression between men and women
and across cultures. The occurrence of psychological disorders, including depression, is
substantially higher for women than for men, and it is also higher in Western cultures, such as in
the United States, Canada, and Europe, than in Eastern cultures, such as in India, China, and
Japan. These sex and cultural differences provide insight into the factors that cause depression.
The study of depression in psychology helps remind us that no one level of explanation can
explain everything. All levels of explanation, from biological to personal to cultural, are essential
for a better understanding of human behavior.

Methods in Psychology

Psychologists also work in schools and businesses, and they use a variety of methods, including
observation, questionnaires, interviews, and laboratory studies, to help them understand
behavior. In order to understand human behavior various methods are used. The purpose of study
or research is to develop principles and theories, test them and apply for solving different human
problems. In this way we develop dependable understanding that helps us in guiding behavior in
various situations. Since human beings are complex living organisms their behaviours are shaped
by many factors both intrinsic and extrinsic to him or her. A psychological research carried out
scientifically has the characteristics of objectivity which means that such researches are free
from any kind of biases. It is testable time and again and can be open to all. One can verify its
authenticity by following the same method in terms of getting the same result. It has scope for
self-correction. In other words the researcher corrects his or her understanding if there is some
error and goes for revision. The scientific studies have also the characteristic of replication which
means that the results of the study are consistently verified by similar other studies across
different settings. Thus in psychology a number of methods are used to carry out scientific
studies. These methods are discussed below.

Observation

Observation as a method of enquiry is often understood as a systematic registering of events

without any deliberate attempt to interfere with variables operating in the event which is being
studied. In this case the observer (psychologist) has no control on the extraneous variables. He or
she simply records the entire activities and then analyze them. On the contrary in the case of
laboratory observation the event under study is controlled by the observer. For example, studying
the effect of induced stress on task performance. Observation is also divided into participant and
non-participant types depending on the role of observer. In the case of participant observation the
researcher mixes up with the event under study and conducts the study. Where as in the case of
nonparticipant observation the researcher maintains an optimum distance and has little impact on
the events under study. One of the most important advantages of observation is that it studies the
range of behaviours in the form in which they are happening. However, this method requires
more time and effort. It often becomes victim of the biases of researcher.

Experimentation

In the case of experiment the experimenter studies the effect of one variable on the other by
deliberately manipulating and controlling one variable. The variable which is controlled and
manipulated by the experimenter is called independent variable (IV) and the variable on which
the impact of independent variable is studied is known as dependent variable (DV). In a simple
experiment two groups are formed. One is experimental group in which participants receive the
independent variable. The other is control group in which behaviour is observed without giving
the independent variable. By manipulating independent variable the experimenter is in a position
to state that change induced in one variable brings change in another variable. Apart from these
variables the experimenter has to also simultaneously take care of other variables which are
beyond his or her control. Such variables are called relevant variables and need to be controlled
as they might confound the effect of independent variables.

Case Study

You must have seen a doctor asking personal details in addition to the information about the
medical problem of the patient or a media person asking so many questions about various aspects
of life while taking interview of a popular person. The purpose behind asking these questions is
to know more about the person in terms of his experiences, relationships and interaction with
others so as to prepare profile of the person. In psychology this method is called case study. In
the field of psychological enquiry case study method has its own importance and relevance. In
this method the main unit of analysis is the individual and his experiences across different
contexts in life. It focuses on the individual’s interactional patterns with significant others as well
as his personal experiences across different real life situations. In order to prepare a case history
of data are taken from many sources for example his or her family history, educational life,
medical history and social life. This method is very popular in clinical psychology and life span
developmental psychology. In order to prepare the case history usually interview, observation
and psychological tests are used to obtain information about the individual. The data collected
through these techniques are analyzed in detail. A comprehensive profile of the individual is
developed which reflects the description of events in his or her life. Case study helps to locate
unique experiences of life as well as the various emotional and adjustment problems of the
individual. Though case study gives a detailed and in-depth description of individual’s life we
cannot make a very conclusive judgment about the individual without further establishing the
reliability and validity of such information from various sources such as family members, friends
and administration of some standardized psychological measures. Caution should be taken in
planning data-collection from the individual and interpretation of the responses given by the
individual.

Survey

You might be aware that television news channels or newspapers ask you to send your view
through SMS on current issues of national or international importance. While doing this they try
to seek the opinion of people on those issues to communicate their view to the Government as
well as to the society. For example they conduct opinion poll during the election as to which
political party enjoys support of the majority of the people. Conducting such a study is called
survey research. It is one of the popular research methods not only in psychology but also in
other disciplines such as sociology, political science, economics and management. In psychology
survey method is generally used to study the pattern of opinions, attitudes, beliefs and values of
the people. This method is also used to test the hypothesis about the relationship of variables
especially when some incident takes place. In order to collect the data from people a variety of
sources are used such as directly contacting the participants with a set of questions and taking
their interview, sending the questionnaire through email or through post and asking them to send
SMS by their mobile phones. Thus in survey, research is generally conducted through
questionnaire or interview. It can be conducted on a single individual as well as on a group.

Schools in Psychology

Structuralism

It includes introspection and the awareness of subjective experience. Wilhelm Wundt’s research
in his laboratory in Liepzig focused on the nature of consciousness itself. Wundt and his students
believed that it was possible to analyze the basic elements of the mind and to classify our
conscious experiences scientifically. Wundt began the field known as structuralism, a school of
psychology whose goal was to identify the basic elements or “structures” of psychological
experience. Structuralists used the method of introspection to attempt to create a map of the
elements of consciousness. Introspection involves asking research participants to describe
exactly what they experience as they work on mental tasks, such as viewing colors, reading a
page in a book, or performing a math problem. A participant who is reading a book might report,
for instance, that he saw some black and colored straight and curved marks on a white
background. Perhaps the best known of the structuralists was Edward Bradford Titchener (1867–
1927). Titchener was a student of Wundt who came to the United States in the late 1800s and
founded a laboratory at Cornell University. In his research using introspection, Titchener and his
students claimed to have identified more than 40,000 sensations, including those relating to
vision, hearing, and taste.

Functionalism and Evolutionary Psychology

In contrast to Wundt, who attempted to understand the nature of consciousness, the goal of
William James and the other members of the school of functionalism was to understand why
animals and humans have developed the particular psychological aspects that they currently
possess. For James, one’s thinking was relevant only to one’s behavior. As he put it in his
psychology textbook, “My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing”. James
and the other members of the functionalist school were influenced by Charles Darwin’s (1809–
1882) theory of natural selection, which proposed that the physical characteristics of animals and
humans evolved because they were useful, or functional. The functionalists believed that
Darwin’s theory applied to psychological characteristics too. Just as some animals have
developed strong muscles to allow them to run fast, the human brain, so functionalists thought,
must have adapted to serve a particular function in human experience.

Psychodynamic Psychology

Perhaps the school of psychology that is most familiar to the general public is the
psychodynamic approach to understanding behavior, which was championed by Sigmund Freud
(1856–1939) and his followers. Psychodynamic psychology is an approach to understanding
human behavior that focuses on the role of unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories. Freud
developed his theories about behavior through extensive analysis of the patients that he treated in
his private clinical practice. Freud believed that many of the problems that his patients
experienced, including anxiety, depression, and sexual dysfunction, were the result of the effects
of painful childhood experiences that the person could no longer remember. Freud’s ideas were
extended by other psychologists whom he influenced, including Carl Jung (1875–1961), Alfred
Adler (1870–1937), Karen Horney (1855–1952), and Erik Erikson (1902– 1994). These and
others who follow the psychodynamic approach believe that it is possible to help the patient if
the unconscious drives can be remembered, particularly through a deep and thorough exploration
of the person’s early sexual experiences and current sexual desires. These explorations are
revealed through talk therapy and dream analysis, in a process called psychoanalysis. The
importance of the unconscious in human behavior, the idea that early childhood experiences are
critical, and the concept of therapy as a way of improving human lives are all ideas that are
derived from the psychodynamic approach and that remain central to psychology.

Behaviorism

Although they differed in approach, both structuralism and functionalism were essentially
studies of the mind. The psychologists associated with the school of behaviorism, on the other
hand, were reacting in part to the difficulties psychologists encountered when they tried to use
introspection to understand behavior. Behaviorism is a school of psychology that is based on the
premise that it is not possible to objectively study the mind, and therefore that psychologists
should limit their attention to the study of behavior itself. Behaviorists believe that the human
mind is a “black box” into which stimuli are sent and from which responses are received. They
argue that there is no point in trying to determine what happens in the box because we can
successfully predict behavior without knowing what happens inside the mind. Furthermore,
behaviorists believe that it is possible to develop laws of learning that can explain all behaviors.
The first behaviorist was the American psychologist John B. Watson (1878–1958). Watson was
influenced in large part by the work of the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), who
had discovered that dogs would salivate at the sound of a tone that had previously been
associated with the presentation of food. Watson and the other behaviorists began to use these
ideas to explain how events that people and other organisms experienced in their environment
(stimuli) could produce specific behaviors (responses). For instance, in Pavlov’s research the
stimulus (either the food or, after learning, the tone) would produce the response of salivation in
the dogs. In his research Watson found that systematically exposing a child to fearful stimuli in
the presence of objects that did not themselves elicit fear could lead the child to respond with a
fearful behavior to the presence of the stimulus. The most famous behaviorist was Burrhus
Frederick (B. F.) Skinner (1904–1990), who expanded the principles of behaviorism and also
brought them to the attention of the public at large. Skinner used the ideas of stimulus and
response, along with the application of rewards or reinforcements, to train pigeons and other
animals. And he used the general principles of behaviorism to develop theories about how best to
teach children and how to create societies that were peaceful and productive.

Gestalt Psychology

Gestalt psychology is a school of psychology based upon the idea that we experience things as
unified wholes. This approach to psychology began in Germany and Austria during the late 19th
century in response to the molecular approach of structuralism.Instead of breaking down
thoughts and behavior to their smallest elements, the gestalt psychologists believed that you must
look at the whole of experience. According to the Gestalt thinkers, the whole is greater than the
sum of its parts.

The Cognitive Approach and Cognitive Neuroscience

Beginning in the 1960s, growing numbers of psychologists began to think about the brain and
about human behavior in terms of the computer, which was being developed and becoming
publicly available at that time. The analogy between the brain and the computer, although by no
means perfect, provided part of the impetus for a new school of psychology called cognitive
psychology. Cognitive psychology is a field of psychology that studies mental processes,
including perception, thinking, memory, and judgment. These actions correspond well to the
processes that computers perform. Although cognitive psychology began in earnest in the 1960s,
earlier psychologists had also taken a cognitive orientation. Some of the important contributors
to cognitive psychology include the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909),
who studied the ability of people to remember lists of words under different conditions, and the
English psychologist Sir Frederic Bartlett (1886–1969), who studied the cognitive and social
processes of remembering. Other important cognitive psychologists include Donald E. Broadbent
(1926–1993), Daniel Kahneman (1934–), George Miller (1920–), Eleanor Rosch (1938–), and
Amos Tversky (1937–1996). In its argument that our thinking has a powerful influence on
behavior, the cognitive approach provided a distinct alternative to behaviorism. According to
cognitive psychologists, ignoring the mind itself will never be sufficient because people interpret
the stimuli that they experience. Cognitive psychologists maintain that when we take into
consideration how stimuli are evaluated and interpreted, we understand behavior more deeply.
Cognitive psychology remains enormously influential today, and it has guided research in such
varied fields as language, problem solving, memory, intelligence, education, human
development, social psychology, and psychotherapy. The cognitive revolution has been given
even more life over the past decade as the result of recent advances in our ability to see the brain
in action using neuroimaging techniques. Neuroimaging is the use of various techniques to
provide pictures of the structure and function of the living brain (Ilardi & Feldman, 2001). [19]
These images are used to diagnose brain disease and injury, but they also allow researchers to
view information processing as it occurs in the brain, because the processing causes the involved
area of the brain to increase metabolism and show up on the scan.

The Humanistic School of Thought

Humanistic psychology developed as a response to psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Humanistic

psychology instead focused on individual free will, personal growth and the concept of self-
actualization. While early schools of thought were primarily centered on abnormal human
behavior, humanistic psychology differed considerably in its emphasis on helping people achieve
and fulfill their potential. Major humanist thinkers include Psychologists like Abraham Maslow
and Carl Rogers. Humanistic psychology remains quite popular today and has had a significant
influence on other areas of psychology including positive psychology. This particular branch of
psychology is centered on helping people living happier, more fulfilling lives.

Sensation and Perception

Sensation is the process by which we receive information from the environment. The information
is actually a stimulus which is detectable input from the environment. The different kinds of such
inputs are

1. Light—vision
2. Sound—hearing
3. Chemicals—taste and smell
4. Pressure, temperature, pain—sense of touch
5. Orientation, balance—kinesthetic senses.

Environmental information (stimuli) exists in many forms. For example: air vibrations, gases,
chemicals, tactile pressures. Our senses respond to a limited range of environmental stimuli. For
example, we cannot hear sound of frequencies above 20,000 Hz, even though dogs can hear
them. There are some physical stimuli that our bodies are sensitive to:

1. Light as experienced through vision. It includes visible light as part of the

electromagnetic Properties of light. Its intensity (experienced as brightness). Wavelength
(experienced as hue). Complexity or purity (experienced as saturation).
2. Sound as experienced through audition. It includes properties of sound. Intensity
(influences mainly loudness). Frequency (influences mainly pitch. Wave form (influences
mainly timbre).

Sensory processes are the initial steps to perception. There are two main processes governing
sensation: Transduction and adaptation. Transduction is the process of converting energy of a
stimulus into neural activity. The stimulus is recoded as a neural pattern. Adaptation is a process,
where a constant level of stimulus results in a decreased response over time.
Sensation usually involves sensing the existence of a stimulus, whereas perceptual systems
involve the determination of what a stimulus is. Perception is the process of selecting and
identifying information from the environment. It is the interpretation of information from the
environment so that we can identify its meaning. Our knowledge about the world allows us to
make fairly accurate predictions about what should be there—so we don’t need a lot of
information from the stimulus itself. Two main processes govern the process of perception.
Bottom-up processes are processes that are involved in identifying a stimulus by analyzing the
information available in the external stimulus. This also refers to information processing that
begins at the receptor level and continues to higher brain centers. Top-down processes are
processes that are involved in identifying a stimulus by using the knowledge we already possess
about the situation. This knowledge is based on past experiences and allows us to form
expectations about what we ought to perceive. This also refers to information processing that
begins in higher brain centers and proceeds to receptors. Top-down processes allow for
perceptual judgments and bias to start influencing how we process incoming stimuli and
information. Early incoming information is already being processed in terms of top-down
influences and previous experience.

Psychophysics

It is the study of the mathematical or functional relationship between physical energy and
psychological experience. For example, how much more intense must a stimulus be in order for
us to perceive a change in intensity? Psychophysics tells us that the amount of change needed
depends on the initial intensity. A quiet sound needs to be turned up less than a louder sound.
Classroom lights can provide a simple demonstration of this; if the main lights are already on and
you add an additional light, perception of brightness changes little. But if you start with the room
mostly dark and add the same additional light, there is a large change in perception of brightness.

Thresholds

Absolute threshold

The point at which a stimulus can be detected 50 percent of the time.

Difference threshold
The minimal change in stimulation that can be reliably detected 50 percent of the time. It is also
known as the just noticeable difference (jnd).

Signal-detection theory

This theory suggests how individuals are able to detect a minimal stimulus (signal) among other
background stimuli (noise). This may influence how individuals make a decision in a specific
situation.

Gestalt principles of perceptual organization

Gestalt psychologists believed that the world is organized around best forms—some of which are
defined geometrically, such as a circle, square. Perceptual systems tend to “gravitate” toward
those forms so that the resultant perception may be biased toward a particular interpretation.

1. Law of Pragnanz (Also called the law of simplicity): Tendency to see things in the
simplest form.
2. Closure: filling in missing information from the perceptual array by closing in gaps.
3. Laws of grouping: Similarity: grouping things on the basis of how similar they are to one.
Proximity: grouping things on the basis of how near they are to one another.

Emotions

An emotion is a mental and physiological feeling state that directs our attention and guides our
behavior. Whether it is the thrill of a roller-coaster ride that elicits an unexpected scream, the
flush of embarrassment that follows a public mistake, or the horror of a potential plane crash that
creates an exceptionally brilliant response in a pilot, emotions move our actions. Emotions
normally serve an adaptive role: We care for infants because of the love we feel for them, we
avoid making a left turn onto a crowded highway because we fear that a speeding truck may hit
us. But emotions may also be destructive, such as when a frustrating experience leads us to lash
out at others who do not deserve it. The most fundamental emotions, known as the basic
emotions, are those of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. The basic emotions
have a long history in human evolution, and they have developed in large part to help us make
rapid judgments about stimuli and to quickly guide appropriate behaviors. The basic emotions
are determined in large part by one of the oldest parts of our brain, the limbic system, including
the amygdala, the hypothalamus, and the thalamus. Because they are primarily evolutionarily
determined, the basic emotions are experienced and displayed in much the same way across
cultures and people are quite accurate at judging the facial expressions of people from different
cultures.

The James-Lange Theory of Emotion

The James-Lange theory is one of the best-known examples of a physiological theory of

emotion. Independently proposed by psychologist William James and physiologist Carl Lange,
the James-Lange theory of emotion suggests that emotions occur as a result of physiological
reactions to events. This theory suggests that seeing an external stimulus leads to a physiological
reaction. Your emotional reaction is dependent upon how you interpret those physical reactions.
For example, suppose you are walking in the woods and see a grizzly bear. You begin to tremble,
and your heart begins to race. The James-Lange theory proposes that you will conclude that you
are frightened ("I am trembling. Therefore, I am afraid"). According to this theory of emotion,
you are not trembling because you are frightened. Instead, you feel frightened because you are
trembling.

The Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion

Another well-known physiological theory is the Cannon-Bard theory of emotion. Walter Cannon
disagreed with the James-Lange theory of emotion on several different grounds. First, he
suggested, people can experience physiological reactions linked to emotions without actually
feeling those emotions. For example, your heart might race because you have been exercising,
not because you are afraid. Cannon also suggested that emotional responses occur much too
quickly to be simply products of physical states. When you encounter a danger in the
environment, you will often feel afraid before you start to experience the physical symptoms
associated with fear, such as shaking hands, rapid breathing, and a racing heart. Cannon first
proposed his theory in the 1920s, and his work was later expanded on by physiologist Philip
Bard during the 1930s. According to the Cannon-Bard theory of emotion, we feel emotions and
experience physiological reactions such as sweating, trembling, and muscle tension
simultaneously. More specifically, the theory proposes that emotions result when the thalamus
sends a message to the brain in response to a stimulus, resulting in a physiological reaction. At
the same time, the brain also receives signals triggering the emotional experience. Cannon and
Bard’s theory suggests that the physical and psychological experience of emotion happen at the
same time and that one does not cause the other.

Schachter-Singer Theory

Also known as the two-factor theory of emotion, the Schachter-Singer theory is an example of
a cognitive theory of emotion. This theory suggests that the physiological arousal occurs first,
and then the individual must identify the reason for this arousal to experience and label it as an
emotion. A stimulus leads to a physiological response that is then cognitively interpreted and
labeled, resulting in an emotion. Schachter and Singer’s theory draws on both the James-Lange
theory and the Cannon-Bard theory. Like the James-Lange theory, the Schachter-Singer theory
proposes that people infer emotions based on physiological responses. The critical factor is the
situation and the cognitive interpretation that people use to label that emotion. Like the Cannon-
Bard theory, the Schachter-Singer theory also suggests that similar physiological responses can
produce varying emotions. For example, if you experience a racing heart and sweating palms
during an important exam, you will probably identify the emotion as anxiety. If you experience
the same physical responses on a date, you might interpret those responses as love, affection, or
arousal.