CHAPTER ONE

ESSENCE OF PSYCHOLOGY
• 1.1. Definition of Psychology and Related Concepts
• The word "psychology" is derived from two Greek
words 'psyche' and “logos‟.
 Psyche refers to mind, soul or sprit
 logos means study, knowledge or discourse.
• "Psychology" epistemologically refers to the study of
the mind, soul, or sprit and
• it is often represented by the Greek letter ᴪ (psi)
which is read as ("sy").
• Psychologists define psychology differently based on
their intentions, research findings, and background
experiences.
• Nowadays, most of them agree on :
• Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior
and the underlying mental /mental processes.
 Science: psychology uses scientific methods to study
behavior and mental processes in both humans and
animals.
 Behavior: refers to all of our outward or overt
actions and reactions, such as talking, facial
expressions, movement, etc.
• There is also covert behavior which is hidden, non-
observable and generally considered as a mental
process
 Mental processes: refer to all the internal, covert
activities of our minds, such as thinking, feeling,
remembering, etc.
1.2. Goals of Psychology
• psychology has four goals; description, explanation,
prediction, and control.
• Description: Description involves observing the
behavior and noticing everything about it.
 It is a search for answers for questions like:
 “What is happening?”
 “Where does it happen?‘
 “To whom does it happen?” And
 “under what circumstances does it seem to happen?.
• Explanation: Why is it happening?
• Explanation is about trying to find reasons for the
observed behavior.
• This helps in the process of forming theories of
behavior
• Prediction: is about determining what will happen in
the future.
• Control: How can it be changed?
• Control or modify or change the behavior from
undesirable one (such as failing in school) to a
desirable one (such as academic success).
1.3. Historical Background and Major Perspectives in
Psychology
• It began as a science of its own in 1879 in Leipzig,
Germany, with the establishment of a psychology
laboratory in the University of Leipzig by Wilhelm
Wundt.
• Wundt developed the technique of objective
introspection to scientifically examine mental
experiences.
• With such newer orientation to the study of human
subjective experiences that were previously under
the field of philosophy alone,
• psychology then begun as an independent field of
study and with Wundt as its founder or "father of
modern psychology.”
• Once psychology begun to use the scientific method,
it then went through successive developments in
which different schools of thought emerged at
different times.
• These schools of thought can be categorized as old
and modern as described below.
1.3.1. Early schools of psychology
• A school of thought is a system of thinking about a
certain issue, say.
• There are five such early schools of psychology.
• Structuralism- structuralism views psychology as a
study of structure of mind.
• It is an expansion of Wundt‘s ideas by his student
named Edward Titchener (1867-1927).
• Titchener is the founder of structuralism.
• The goal of structuralists was to find out the units or
elements, which make up the mind such as;
sensations, images, and feelings.
• The best-known method used by them was
introspection “looking inward into our
consciousness”.
• It is a procedure aimed at analyzing the mental
experience into three basic mental elements:
images, feelings, and sensations.
• Analyzing mental structure alone was found to serve
little purpose in helping humans deal with the
environment.
• Hence, a new school of thought emerged to study
this functional value of human mind-functionalism.
• Functionalism- functionalism views psychology as a
study of function of the mind.
• The founder of this school of thought is William
James (1848-1910), who was the first American
psychologist and the author of the first psychology
textbook.
• James focused on how the mind allows people to
function in the real world;
 how people work, play, and adapt to their
surroundings, a viewpoint he called functionalism.
• He developed many research methods other than
introspection including questionnaires, mental tests
and objective descriptions of behavior.
• Generally, according to functionalists, psychological
processes are adaptive.
• They allow humans to survive and to adapt
successfully to their surroundings.
• Examining human mind in terms of its structural
elements and functions were, however, found to be
simplistic to understand the complex human being.
• It was believed that human mind is more than the
sum of sensations as well as adaptive functions.
• Hence, a new school of thought was emerged to
examine mind in a holistic manner-Gestalt
Psychology.
• Gestalt psychology: Gestalt psychology views
psychology as a study of the whole mind.
• Max Wertheimer and his colleagues founded this
school of thought in Germany .
• Gestalt psychologists argued that the mind is not
made up of combinations of elements.
• The German word "gestalt" refers to form, whole,
configuration or pattern.
• According to them, the mind should be thought of as
a result of the whole pattern of sensory activity and
the relationships and organizations within their
pattern.
• In brief, the gestalt psychologists acknowledge
consciousness.
• They held that "the whole is greater than the sum of
its parts”. Means mind is greater than its parts
(images, sensations, and feelings).
• Behaviorism: behaviorists view psychology as a
study of observable and measurable behaviors.
• John B. Watson is the founder of behaviorism.
• Other proponents include E. Thorndike and F.
Skinner.
• For Watson, psychology was the study of observable
and measurable behavior and nothing more about
hidden mental processes.
• According to Watson, we cannot define
consciousness any better than we can define the
soul; we cannot locate it or measure it and,
therefore, it cannot be the object of scientific study.
• As to Watson, behaviorism had three other
important characteristics in addition to its focus on
behavior;
 conditioned response as the elements or building
blocks of behavior,
 learned rather than unlearned behaviors, and
 focus on animal behavior.
• Psychoanalysis: psychology studies about the
components of the unconscious part of the human
mind.
• Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is the founder of this
school of thought.
• As a physician, Sigmund Freud became convinced
that some of the physical illnesses of his patients
didn‘t have medical or bodily causes; but non-
physical or emotional causes.
• He called these kinds of illnesses as “hysteria” or
conversion reaction to indicate the conversion of
emotional problems into bodily problems.
• He also underscored that that conflicts and
emotional traumas that had occurred in early
childhood can be too threatening to be remembered
consciously and therefore they become hidden or
unconscious and then will remain to affect later
behavior.
• Freud argued that conscious awareness is the tip of
the mental iceberg beneath the visible tip lays the
unconscious part of the mind.
• The unconscious which is the subject matter of
psychoanalysis contains hidden wishes, passions,
guilty secrets, unspeakable yearnings, and conflict
between desire and duty.
• We are not aware of our unconscious urges and
thoughts and they make themselves known in
dreams, slip of the tongue, apparent accidents and
even jokes.
• He used clinical case studies (hypnosis and Dream
analysis) as a method.
• 1.3.2. Modern schools of psychology
• Psychodynamic perspective - It has its origins in
Freud's theory of psychoanalysis, but many other
psychodynamic theories exist.
• This perspective emphasizes the unconscious
dynamics within the individual such as inner forces,
conflicts or instinctual energy.
• psychodynamic approach emphasizes:
 The influence of unconscious mental behavior on
everyday behavior
 The role of childhood experiences in shaping adult
personality
 The role of intrapersonal conflict in determining
human behavior
• Psychodynamic perspective tries to dig below the
surface of a person's behavior to get into
unconscious motives; psychodynamists think of
themselves as archaeologists of the mind.
• Behavioral Perspective- It emphasizes the role
learning experiences play in shaping the behavior of
an organism.
• It is concerned with how the environment affects
the person‘s actions.
• Behaviorists focus on environmental conditions (e.g.
rewards, and punishments) that maintain or
discourage specific behaviors.
• The behavioral perspective is sometimes called the
"black box" approach in psychology
• because it treats the mind as less useful in
understanding human behavior and
• focus on what goes in to and out of the box, but not
on the processes that take place inside
• This means, behaviorists are only interested in the
effects of the environment (input) on behavior
(output) but not in the process inside the box.
• Humanistic Perspective- According to this
perspective, human behavior is not determined
either by unconscious dynamics or the environment.
• Rather it emphasizes the uniqueness of human
beings and focuses on human values and subjective
experiences.
• This perspective places greater importance on the
individual‘s free will.
• The goal of humanistic psychology was helping
people to express themselves creatively and achieve
their full potential or self-actualization (developing
the human potential to its fullest).
• Cognitive Perspective- it emphasizes what goes on in
people's heads;
 how people reason,
 remember,
 understand language,
 solve problems,
 explain experiences and
 form beliefs.
• This perspective is concerned about the mental
processes.
• The most important contribution of this perspective
has been to show how people's thoughts and
explanations affect their actions, feelings, and
choices.
• Techniques used to explore behavior from a
cognitive perspective include
 electrical recording of brain activity,
 electrical stimulation and
 radioactive tracing of metabolic activity in the
nervous system.
• Biological Perspective- it focuses on studying how
bodily events or functioning of the body affects
behavior, feelings, and thoughts.
• It holds that the brain and the various brain
chemicals affect psychological processes such as
learning, performance, perception of reality, the
experience of emotions, etc.
• This perspective underscores that biology and
behavior interact in a complex way;
 biology affecting behavior and behavior in turn
affecting biology.
• Socio-cultural Perspective- It focuses on the social
and cultural factors that affects human behavior.
• For instance, social psychologists examine how group
membership affects attitudes and behaviors, why
authority and other people (like spouse, lovers,
friends, bosses, parents, and strangers) affect each of
us.
• Cultural psychologists also examine how cultural
rules and values (both explicit and unspoken) affect
people's development, behavior, and feelings.
• This perspective holds that humans are both the
products and the producers of culture, and our
behavior always occurs in some cultural contexts.
 1.4. Branches/Sub Fields of Psychology
• Developmental psychology: It studies the physical,
cognitive and psychological changes across the life
span.
• It attempts to examine the major developmental
milestones that occur at different stages of
development.
• Social Psychology: deals with people‘s social
interactions, relationships, social perception, and
attitudes.
• Personality Psychology: it focuses on the
relatively enduring traits and characteristics of
individuals.
• Personality psychologists study topics such as
self-concept, aggression, moral development,
etc.
• Cross-cultural Psychology: examines the role of
culture in understanding behavior, thought, and
emotion.
• Industrial psychology: applies psychological
principles in industries and organizations to increase
the productivity of that organization.
• Forensic psychology: applies psychological principles
to improve the legal system (police, testimony, etc..).
• Educational Psychology: concerned with the
application of psychological principles and theories in
improving the educational process including
curriculum, teaching, and administration of academic
programs.
• Health Psychology : applies psychological principles
to the prevention and treatment of physical illness
and diseases.
• Clinical Psychology:- is a field that applies
psychological principles to the prevention, diagnosis,
and treatment of psychological disorders.

• Counseling Psychology: - is a field having the same

concern as clinical psychology but helps individuals
with less severe problems than those treated by
clinical psychologists.
• 1.5. Research Methods in Psychology
 A. Definition of terms
• Scientific method - a process of testing ideas through
systematic observations, experimentations, and
statistical analysis.
• Theory - is an integrated set of principles about
observed facts that is intended to describe and
explain some aspects of experience.
• Hypotheses - is a tentative proposition about the
relationship between two or more variables or
phenomena.
• E.g. Males have high self - confidence in making
decisions than females.
 B. Major types of research methods
• There are three major types of research methods:
 Descriptive,
 Correlational and
 Experimental research methods.
• Descriptive research: in this type of research, the
researcher simply records what she/he has
systematically observed.
• Descriptive research methods include naturalistic
observation, case studies, and surveys.
• I . Naturalistic observation: is a descriptive research
method in which subjects are observed in their
natural environment to get a real (not artificial)
picture of how behavior occurs.
• Limitations of naturalistic observation are
 Observer effect (animals or people who know they
are being watched may behave artificially) and
 Observer bias (the researcher may not observe
systematically or he/she may observe behaviors
he/she wants to observe and ignores others).
II. Case study: is a descriptive technique in which an
individual is studied in great detail.
 Advantage is that it provides tremendous amount of
data about a single case or individual.
 Disadvantage of case study is that the researchers
can‘t apply the results to other similar people, which
means what researchers find in one case can‘t
necessarily apply or generalize to others.
 III. Survey: is a descriptive research method used to
collect data from a very large group of people.
• It is useful to get information on private (covert)
behaviors and it addresses hundreds of people with
the same questions at the same time.
• Its disadvantage is that it needs a careful selection of
a representative sample of the actual population.
• Correlational research: is a research method that
measures the relationship between two or more
variables.
• Though correlation tells researchers
 if there is a relationship between variables,
 how strong the relationship is, and
 in what direction the relationship goes,
• It doesn‘t prove causation (which means it doesn‘t
show the cause and effect relationship).
• for example, that if there is a relationship between
smoking and lung cancer, this doesn‘t mean that
smoking causes lung cancer.
• Experimental Research: it is a research method that
allows researchers to study the cause and effect
relationship between variables.
• Experiments involve at least one independent
variable and one dependent variable.
• The independent variable is the manipulated,
influential, experimental factor.
• The dependent variable is the factor (behavior) that
is measured in an experiment.
• It can change as the independent variable is
manipulated.
• Experiments also involve randomly assigned
experimental groups and control groups.
• An experimental group is a group whose experience
is manipulated.
• A control group is a comparison that is treated in
every way like the experimental group except for the
manipulated factor
 C. Steps of scientific research
• There are at least five major steps :
• Step one –
• Defining the Problem - noticing something attention
catching in the surrounding for which one would like
to have an explanation.
• Step two
• Formulating the Hypothesis: you might form an
educated guess about the explanation for your
observations, putting it into the form of a statement
that can be tested in some way.
• Step three
• Testing the Hypothesis - at this step, the researcher
employs appropriate research methods and collects
ample data (information) to accept or reject the
proposed statement.
• Step four
• Drawing Conclusions: this is the step in which the
researcher attempts to make generalizations or draw
implications from tested relationship
• Step five
• Reporting Results - at this point, the researcher
would want to write up exactly what she/he did, why
she/he did, and what she/he found.
• So that, others can learn from what she/he has
already accomplished, or failed to accomplish.
• This allows others to predict and modify behavior
based on the findings.
•THE END