UNIT 1 - 4 Psychology
UNIT 1 - 4 Psychology
UNIT 1 - 4 Psychology
1. Clinical Psychologists
This is one of the most popular field of psychology. Clinical psychologists are
trained to deal with treatments of emotional, mental and behavioural
disorders such as depression, anxiety and suicidal tendencies. They use a
treatment called psychotherapy and usually hold a PHD, they work in
hospitals or clinics in collaboration with doctors or may have a private
practice. In Zambia for instance you can find them at Chainama.
2. Counselling psychologists
Individuals who specialise in this field are trained to help or give guidance to
those with less problems such as marriage problems, helping students to
cope up with studies or school work, HIV/AIDS to be called a counsellor in
Zambia you must be registered with Zambia Counselling Council (ZCC).
3. Developmental psychologists
They study the physiological, cognitive and social development that take
place throughout life. Some specialise in behavior during infancy, childhood
and adolescence or changes that occur in maturity or old age. They may also
study developmental disabilities and their effects.
4. Social psychologists
These examine people’s interaction with others and social environment, they
work in organisational consultancy, marketing research, system design or
applied psychology fields. Many social psychologists’ specialise in areas
such as group behaviour, leadership, altitudes.
5. Forensic psychologists
This is the principal in legal and criminal justice system, to help judges,
attorneys and other legal professionals understanding the findings of
particular cases. These are usually expert witnesses and typically
specialise in one of the three areas. Family court, civil court and criminal
court.
6. Educational psychologists
7. Industrial psychologists
8. Physiological Psychology
It’s because all the methods it implores to study behaviour and mental
processes are scientific in nature.
What is behaviour?
a. Overt – This is the behaviour you can easily see like jogging.
b. Covert – This is the behaviour you cannot easily see (Mind, thinking)
Goals of psychology
Anthropology- used to find out how culture can affect behaviour. For
example, people from certain culture could have a certain preference or
attitude to certain food, how they raise children and the concept of beauty.
History of Psychology
Although the history of Psychology can be traced back to ancient Greece
with scholars such as Plato and Socrates who talked about human
behaviour and how the mind works. The formal beginning of psychology is
designated as occurring in 1879 in Leipzig Germany where Wilhelm Wundt
established the first psychology laboratory, it is here that psychology first
emerged as a science. In 1890 William James wrote a first book principals of
psychology, in 1892 Stanley Hall established the American Psychology
Association (APA) the largest association with members all over the world. In
1900 Sigmund Freud published the book Interpretation of books. In 1905
the first intelligence test was produced by Binet and Simon. In 1908
Margrate Washburn became the first woman to receive a PHD in psychology.
In 1920 Francis Summer was the first black man to receive a PHD in
psychology. In 1933 Inez Bevery Prosser was the first black woman to
receive a phd in psychology. 1n 1978 Herbert Simon received a Noble Prize
on his work or recognition of his work. In 1981 Roger Sperry received his
noble prize on his work of split brain.
SCHOOLS OF PSYCHOLOGY
1. Structuralism
This school emerged from the works of Wilhelm Wundt. In his theory the
mind was the structure and the goal of psychology was to analyse the mind
into elemental structural parts . he believed that it was important to know
what the mind is made out of and used the method called Introspection
(looking within oneself) to study the structure of the mind.
2. Functionalism
It emerged in the late 19th and early 20th Century, it focused not in mind
itself but on how the mind influences the behavior . Thus the functionalism
argued that it is not the structure of the mind that was important, they
argued that the primary role of the consciousness was to mediate or
intervene between the needs of the environment and the demands of the
environment. This school was developed by John Dewery an American
philosopher who was trying to explore education functioning in schools and
gave importance to learning habit.
3. Evolution
1. Biological perspective
It explains behavior in biological terms, that is the role of genes, brain, and
physiological changes are used to explain behaviour. It seeks to understand
the relationship between the body and mind. George Elias is the person
associated with this perspective
2. Psychodynamic/psychoanalytic perspective
Western thought than Sigmund Freud, the Viennese physician who lived from 1856 to 1939.
This revolutionary thinker’s psychoanalytic theory challenged prevailing notions of human
nature and human development by proposing that people are driven by motives and
emotional conflicts of which they are largely unaware and that they are shaped by their
earliest experiences in life (Hall, 1954). Freud’s ideas continue to influence thinking about
human development, even though they are far less influential today than they once were.
Because you have undoubtedly been introduced to this theory before, we cover it only briefly.
Freud strongly believed in unconscious motivation—the power of instincts and other inner
forces to influence behaviour without awareness. A preadolescent girl, for example, may not
realize that she is acting in babyish ways in order to regain the security of her mother’s love,
and a teenage boy may not realize that his devotion to body building is a way of channelling
his sexual and aggressive urges. So, you immediately see that
Freud’s theory emphasizes the nature side of the nature–nurture issue: biological instincts—
forces that often provide an unconscious motivation for actions—are said to guide human
development.
According to Freud (1933), each individual has a fixed amount of psychic energy that can be
used to satisfy basic urges or instincts and to grow psychologically. As a child develops, this
psychic energy is divided among three components of the personality: the id, the ego, and the
superego. At birth, all psychic energy resides in the id—the impulsive, irrational part of the
personality whose mission is to satisfy the instincts. It seeks immediate gratification, even
when biological needs cannot be realistically or appropriately met. If you think about it,
young infants do seem to be all id in some ways. When they are hungry or wet, they fuss and
cry until their needs are met. They are not known for their patience.
The second component of the personality is the ego, the rational side of the individual that
tries to find realistic ways of gratifying the instincts. According to Freud (1933), the ego
begins to emerge during infancy when psychic energy is diverted from the id to energize
cognitive processes such as perception, learning, and problem solving. The hungry toddler
may be able to do more than merely cry when she is hungry; she may be able to draw on the
resources of the ego to hunt down Dad, lead him to the kitchen, and say “cookie.” However,
toddlers’ egos are still relatively immature; they want what they want now. As the ego
matures further, children become more capable of postponing their pleasures until a more
appropriate time and of devising logical and realistic strategies for meeting their needs.
The third part of the Freudian personality is the superego, the individual’s internalized moral
standards. The superego develops from the ego as 3- to 6-year-old children internalize (take
on as their own) the moral standards and values of their parents. Once the superego emerges,
children have a parental voice in their heads that keeps them from violating society’s rules
and makes them feel guilty or ashamed if they do. The superego insists that people find
socially acceptable or ethical outlets for the id’s undesirable impulses.
Conflict among the id, ego, and superego is inevitable, Freud said. In the mature, healthy
personality, a dynamic balance operates: the id communicates its basic needs, the ego
restrains the impulsive id long enough to find realistic ways to satisfy these needs, and the
superego decides whether the ego’s problem-solving strategies are morally acceptable. The
ego must strike a balance between the opposing demands of the id and the superego while
accommodating the realities of environment.
According to Freud (1940/1964), psychological problems often arise when the individual’s
supply of psychic energy is unevenly distributed among the id, the ego, and the superego. For
example, a person diagnosed as an antisocial personality, or sociopath, who routinely lies and
cheats to get his way, may have a weak superego, whereas a married woman who cannot
undress in front of her husband may have an overly strong superego, perhaps because she was
made to feel ashamed about any interest she took in her body as a young girl. Through
analysis of the dynamics operating among the three parts of the personality, Freud and his
followers attempted to describe and understand individual differences in personality and the
origins of psychological disorders.
Psychosexual Development
Freud (1940/1964) maintained that as the child matures biologically, the psychic energy of
the sex instinct, which he called libido, shifts from one part of the body to another, seeking to
gratify different biological needs. In the process the child moves through five psychosexual
stages: oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital.
Freud emphasized the role of nature over that of nurture in development, maintaining that
inborn biological instincts drive behavior and that biological maturation guides all children
through the five psychosexual stages. Yet he also viewed nurture—especially early
experiences within the family—as an important contributor to individual differences in adult
personality. At each psychosexual stage, the id’s impulses and social demands come into
conflict. Harsh child-rearing methods can heighten this conflict and the child’s anxiety.
To defend itself against anxiety, the ego adopts unconscious coping devices called defense
mechanisms (Freud, 1940/1964). Consider the defense mechanism of fixation— arrested
development in which part of the libido remains tied to an early stage. A baby boy who was
rarely allowed to linger at the breast, was screamed at for mouthing and chewing pay checks
and other fascinating objects left lying around the house, or was otherwise deprived of oral
gratification might become fixated at the oral stage. He would then seek to satisfy unmet
oral needs and to avoid the potentially more agonizing conflicts of the anal stage. He might
display this oral fixation by becoming a chronic thumb sucker and, later in life, by chain-
smoking, talking incessantly (as college professors are prone to do), or depending too much
on other people.
Similarly, the 3-year-old who is harshly punished for toileting accidents may become
fixated at the anal stage and turn into an inhibited or stingy adult. Or she may deal with her
anxiety through another defense mechanism, regression, which involves retreating to an
earlier, less traumatic stage of development. She may revert to infantile behavior—cooing
like a baby and demanding juice from a baby bottle. Similarly, the man who has had a terrible
day at work may want his wife to act like his mother and “baby” him. In this way, Freud
argued, early experiences may have long-term effects on personality development.
The phallic stage from age 3 to age 6 is an especially treacherous time, according to Freud.
Youngsters develop an incestuous desire for the parent of the other sex. (A boy’s Oedipus
complex and a girl’s Electra complex ) If all goes well, they resolve the emotional conflict
they experience by identifying with the same-sex parent and in the process incorporating that
parent’s values into the superego. After the lull of the latent period, during which sexual
urges are tame and 6- to 12-year-olds invest psychic energy in schoolwork and play,
adolescents experience new psychic conflicts as they reach puberty and enter the final stage
of psychosexual development, the genital stage. They may have difficulty accepting their
new sexuality, may re-experience some conflicting feelings toward their parents that they felt
during the phallic stage, and may distance themselves from their parents to defend themselves
against these anxiety-producing feelings.
During adulthood, people may develop a greater capacity to love and typically satisfy the
mature sex instinct by having children. However, Freud believed that psychosexual
development stops with adolescence and that the individual remains in the genital stage
throughout adulthood.
4. Behavioural Perspective
The person associated with this perspective is John B. Watson, this
perspective is much interested in overt behaviour. Behaviorists believe that
there are certain environmental factors that influence behavior (certain
factors in the environment affect behaviour). The other persons associated
with this perspective are Ivan Pavlov and B.F Skinner
5. Cognitive perspective
6. Humanistic Perspective
EXPERIMENTATION IN PSYCHOLOGY
1. Naturalistic observation
For the most part, psychologists have learned about behaviour in animal
and human subjects from laboratory studies. However, at times
psychologists want to study how animals and people behave in their
normal environments.
One of the major problems of the case study is that it often forms the basis
for making sweeping generalizations which derive from data coming from
individuals whose evident may not necessary be reliable.
3.SURVEYS
5. Experimentation:
Watson tried to prove his theory with the help of his famous Little Albert
Experiment, by way of which he conditioned a small kid to be scared of a
white rat. The behavioural psychology described three types of
learning: Classical Conditioning, Observational Learning and Operant
Conditioning.
LEARNING THEORIES
Before
UCS———————————> UCR
(Food) (Saliva)
During
NS+UCS------------------CR
(Bell) + (Food) (Saliva)
After
CS———————————> CR
(Bell) (Saliva)
Learning by Observation
According to Albert Bandura, learning cannot simply be based merely on
associations or reinforcements which he has mentioned in his writings in
his book Social Learning Theory which was published in 1977. Instead,
his focus was on learning based on observation, which he has proven
through his well known Bobo Doll experiment. He reckoned that children
keenly observe their surroundings and the behaviour of people around them
particularly their caregivers, teachers and siblings and try to imitate those
behaviours in their day to day life. He also tried proving through his
experiment that children can easily imitate the negative behaviours or
actions.
SUMMARY
1. Classical Conditioning: In case of Classical Conditioning, the process
of learning is described as a Stimulus-Response connection or
association.