Chapter One

The Essence of Psychology

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Meaning and Goals in Psychology

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 Meaning of Psychology

• Literally, the word psychology is originated from

two Greek words:
Psych which means “breathe”, “spirit”, “soul” or “mind”
logos which means “the study of”.
• The term psychology is, therefore, coined plainly to
mean the study of soul or mind.
• It is represented by the Greek letter psi (‘sy’).

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 Meaning cont.

• The current definition which is widely used

of psychology is the following:
“Psychology is the scientific study of behavior
and mental processes”.

• This definition contains three elements:

1. It is a science
2. Studies behavior
3. Studies mental process

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 Meaning cont.

I. What does science mean?

• Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and
organizes knowledge in the form of testable
explanations and predictions about nature and the
universe.
• A scientific enterprise obtains knowledge trough
systematic and objective methods of observation
and experimentation.

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 Meaning cont.
II. What does behavior mean?
• Behavior: refers to any action or reaction that can be
observed and measured - such as an increase in the
heart rate, language development, and the unruly
violence that often erupts in a mob - such as vandalism.
• Psychology studies both overt behavior and covert
behaviors.
– Overt behaviors are those measurable, observable or
external actions like swimming, walking, crying,
laughing, speaking, etc.
– Covert behaviors are internal action or reaction such
as feeling, thinking, remembering, attitude, belief, etc.
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 Meaning cont.

III. What does mental processes imply?

• Mind which refers to both conscious and unconscious
mental states.
• These states cannot actually be seen but only be
inferred from observable behavior.
• Such mental states include thinking, reasoning,
imagination, and dreaming.
• Psychologists also studies emotions.
• Emotions: is a feeling state of the organism, involving
bodily changes. Example: love, anger, jealousy, envy
and fear.
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 Meaning cont.

• Psychologists strive to understand the mysteries of human

nature-why people think, feel, and act as they do.
• With its broad scope psychology investigates an enormous
range of phenomenon: learning, language, personality,
social behavior; intelligence, human development,
psychological disorders and mental illness and much more.
• Discoveries from psychology can help people understand
themselves, relate better to others, and solve the problems
that confront them and others in their day to day activities.

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 What psychology is not?
Extra sensory perceptioins
Do you think the followings are part of (or related to) modern
psychology?
• Telepathy: Transfer of information on thoughts or feelings
between individuals by means other than the
five classical senses.
It is direct communication of one mind with other mind.
• Precognition: Perception of information about future places or
events before they occur.
• Clairvoyance: Obtaining information about places or events at
remote locations, by means unknown to current science.
EX. extrasensory perception.
• Psychokinesis: The ability of the mind to influence matter, time,
space, or energy by means of unknown to current science.
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 What psychology is not
• Palmistry: (also called palm reading, chiromancy) is
the art of characterization and foretelling the future
through the study of the palm
• Astrology: comprises several systems of divination
based on the premise that there is a relationship
between astronomical phenomena and events in
the human world.
• Numerology: Numerology is any study of the
purported divine, mystical or other special
relationship between a number and some coinciding
observed (or perceived) events.
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 Goals in Psychology
1. Describing Behavior: this includes observing,
recording and describing what is observed as
objectively, as humanly, as possible.
– Example studying the characteristics of the most effective
people, studying the behavior of people suffering from
certain personality disorder, say mental retardation
2. Explaining Behavior: Here an attempt is to find
out the possible reasons or causes behind the
observed behavior. The WHY?
– Example studying the causes of mental retardation.
If……..then……. Cause effect relationship
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 Goals of Psychology
3. Predicting Behavior: having information at hand,
psychologists can prognosticate the trend of a behavior in
the future.
– There is a saying which very often holds true: “a child
is a father of man.”
– what is likely to happen in the future
4. Controlling/Influence Behavior: the intention here is to
control or influence a behavior.
– Once we know what happens, why it happens and what is
likely to happen in the future, we can exert control over it.
– The aim here is changing people’s attitude or ability or
personality.

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 Historical Development of
Psychology, Schools of Thought and
Perspectives

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 History of Psychology

• Philosophical interest in the mind and behavior dates

back to the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, China
and India.
• Greek philosophers like Thales, Socrates, and Aristotle
dealt with questions of nature versus nurture. They
debated the nature of pleasure and pain, motivation,
desire, free will, memory and our perception of the
world.
• In the 8th century, Islamic physicians in Fez, Morocco,
used practices that resembled psychotherapy to treat
mental patients. That was 1000 years before Sigmund
Freud “established” the practice.

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 Plato (427 – 347 BC)

• The mind or soul is distinct in its own right and is God-

given.
• It enters the body with its reflected perfection of God and
rules the body which it inhabits as knower, thinker and
determiner of actions.
• The soul is composed of three parts:
1. head – exerts reason. It is called rational soul.
2. heart – responsible for our noble impulses. It is called
emotional soul.
3. diaphragm or abdomen – seat of our own passions. It is
called irrational soul.
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 Aristotle (384-322 BC)

• He was a student of Plato and distinguished

three functions of the soul.
1. vegetative soul – concerned with basic
maintenance of life.
2. appetitive soul – concerned with motives and
desires.
3. rational soul – the governing function located
in the heart. The brain merely performs minor
mechanical processes as a gland.
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 Claudius Galen (129 AD to 210 AD)

• Galen, a Greek philosopher from the Roman Empire –

contributed his theory of the dependence of human
temperament on physiological factors.
• Differences in behavior is attributed to the “humors” or
vital juices of the body namely blood, phlegm, black bile
and yellow bile.
• He correspondingly named temperaments:
1. sanguine – cheerful (blood)
2. phlegmatic – sluggish, slow, unresponsive (phlegm)
3. melancholic – sad (black bile)
4. choleric – irritable, easily angered, hot-tempered (yellow bile)
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 Medieval Period

• St. Augustine – combined Platonic Psychology with

Christian thinking.
• He introduced and use the method of introspection
and manifested his interest in distinguishing several
faculties of the soul as Will, Memory, Imagination and
others, producing the first definite development of
what later was called Faculty Psychology.
• St. Thomas Aquinas – combined Aristotelian notions
to the theologically imperative idea of immortality.

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 Pre-Modern Period

• Rene Descartes , French Philosopher – formulated a

theory of mind-body interaction.
• John Locke, English Philosopher, – in his “An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding” introduced the
idea as the unit into which all experiences may be
analyzed.
 Jhon Locke theorized that knowledge is not inborn
but is learned from experience.
• Their idea led to two debates: nativism vs.
empiricism.
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 Nativism vs. Empiricism

• Nativist view- holds • Empiricist View – holds

that human beings that knowledge is
enter the world with an acquired through
inborn store of experience and
knowledge and interactions with the
understanding of world.
reality
• Innate truth (nature) • Nurture
• Rene Descartes • John Locke - tabula rasa
“blank slate”
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 Monism vs. Dualism
• Monism – A Greek idea that held that all things are linked and
inseparable, including the body and mind.
• Dualism – The body and the mind are separate.
Rene Descartes guessed that the body and the soul were
separate entities only somewhat dependent on each other.
• What is the nature of the soul?
 Descartes: “The sense perceptions and physical passions of
humans depends on the body, but awareness of them is
the job for the soul.”

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 1879: Birth of Psychology
Wilhelm Wundt: the father of Modern
Psychology
•University of Leipzig, Germany
•Established first Psychology Laboratory in 1879.
• Defined psychology as the study of Wilhelm Wundt
(1832-1920)
consciousness.
• He used scientific methods to study
fundamental psychological processes, such as
mental reaction times in response to visual or
auditory stimuli.
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 Wilhelm Wundt’s 1879 experiment
He measured the time it took for people to:
Push a button when a ball Push a button when
dropped (based on when they consciously aware of hearing
heard the ball hit a platform): the ball hit the platform:
1/10th of a second. 2/10ths of a second.

Why were the

times different?

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 William James (1842-1910)

• In 1890, William James published his most

renowned and influential book, The Principles
of Psychology, combining his ideas on
psychology and philosophy.
• It had taken him close to 12 years to finish it.
• The book was written with much clarity and
charm and vehemently disputed Wundt’s view
of psychology.

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 Schools of Thought in Psychology

• When Psychology first emerged as a separate science

from Physiology and Philosophy, the debate over how to
describe and explain the human mind and behavior began.
• The different schools of psychology represent the major
theories within psychology.
• The first school of thought, structuralism, was advocated
by the founder of the first psychology lab, Wilhelm Wundt.
• Almost immediately, other theories began to emerge and
compete for dominance in psychology.

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 Schools of Thought, cont…

• In the past, psychologists often identified themselves

exclusively with one single school of thought.
• Today, most psychologists have an eclectic outlook on
Psychology.
• They often draw on ideas and theories from different
schools rather than holding to any singular perspective.
• The following are some of the major schools of thought
that have influenced our knowledge and
understanding.

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 I. Early Schools of Thought

1. Structuralism School of Thought

• Structuralism is widely regarded as the first school of thought in
Psychology. It maintains that conscious mental processes can be
broken down into the most basic elemental structures.
• Major thinkers associated with structuralism include Wilhelm
Wundt and Bradford Edward Titchener.
• Its focus was on reducing mental processes down into their most
basic elements such as sensations and feelings.
• They used techniques such as introspection to analyze the inner
processes of the human mind.
• Introspection is a technique of self-reporting where the subject
attempts to reconstruct their sensations and feelings
immediately after experiencing a specific stimulus.
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 2. Functionalism School of Thought
• Functionalism formed as a reaction to the theories of the
Structuralism school of thought and was heavily influenced by the
work of William James.
• James studied human thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and asked:
what function might they serve? how might they have helped our
ancestors survive?
• Rather than focusing on the elements of consciousness,
functionalists were interested on the purpose of consciousness and
behavior, i.e., how the mind allows people to function in the real
world.
• Functionalism also emphasized individual differences, which had a
profound impact on education.
• Here also introspection (self-examination) was used as a method of
study besides experimentation.
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 3. Gestalt School of Thought
• 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, i.e., the attributes of the whole are not deducible from
analysis of the parts in isolation.
• The word Gestalt is used in modern German to mean the way a thing
has been “put together.” There is no exact equivalent in English.
“Form” and “shape” are the usual translations; in psychology the
word is often interpreted as “pattern” or “configuration.”
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 Behaviorism School of Thought
• Behaviorism became a dominant school of thought during the
1950s;
• It was based upon the work of thinkers such as: John B. Watson
, Ivan Pavlov, and B. F. Skinner; who believed that behaviors
can be measured, trained, and changed.
• Behaviorism suggests that all behavior can be explained by
environmental causes rather than by internal forces.
• Behaviorism is focused on observable behavior: Theories of
learning including classical conditioning and
operant conditioning were the focus of a great deal of research.
• It had a significant influence on the course of psychology, and
many of the ideas and techniques that emerged from this
school of thought are still widely used today.
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 Psychoanalysis School of Thought
• Psychoanalysis school of thought was founded by Sigmund
Freud who was a neurologist.
• This school emphasizes on the unconscious aspect of mind,
conflict between biological instincts and societal demands,
and early experiences.
• According to Freud all behavior whether normal or
abnormal is influenced by the unconscious mind.
• 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.

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 What is a perspective?

• Perspectives are stand points from which an

individual looks at a particular idea, thing, or event.

• The same thing may have different meaning when

seen from different direction.

• And these different meanings of the same event may

again form more meaning when pooled together.

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 Perspective, cont…
• ‘The way I see it is not necessarily the way you see it’
• Perspective may be about touching the different
parts of the whole or the reality
• It is worth mentioning that each perspective has its
own input to add in understanding human behavior.
• But it is only when the different, if not necessarily
all, perspectives are touched that discoveries in
psychology become more successful in
understanding behavior and mental processes.

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 Perspective, cont…
The story of blind men and the elephant…

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 Perspective, cont…

How many? It depends on where you are!

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 II. Modern Perspectives in Psychology
• Biological- focuses on how our biological
structures and substances underlie a given
behavior, thought, or emotion.
• Evolutionary- focuses on the possible role of
evolved psychological mechanisms (inherited
tendencies shaped by evolution) in human
behavior.
• Psychodynamics- the focal point is the role of
hidden, often unconscious, internal processes.

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 Perspectives in Psychology
• Social-cultural- discuses social and cultural factors
that can influence behavior. For example it asks
question like how thinking and behavior change
depending on the setting or situation.
• Behavioral- focuses on overt behavior. Focuses on
issues like how we learn through rewards,
punishment, and observation. Environmental
influences are given a due attention.
• Cognitive- focuses on cognitive processes such as
memory formation, thinking, reasoning,
imagination etc.
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 Branches of Psychology
Psychologists have different ways of looking at the same problem,
which is why there are so many sub-fields of psychology
• Clinical Psychology: Studies diagnosis, causes, and treatment
of mental disorder. It also helps individuals who have emotional
and psychological problems.
• Counseling psychology: Assist individuals in dealing with many
Personal problems that do not involve sever psychological
disorders.
• Developmental psychology: studies how people change
physically, cognitively, emotionally, and socially over the entire
life span.
• Forensic Psychology: is an applied field focused on using
psychological research and principles in the legal and criminal
justice system.
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 Branches of Psychology
• Social psychology: study social influence, social perception, and
social interaction.
• Educational psychology: it is the study of learner, learning and
teaching. It studies all aspects of educational processes.

• Cognitive psychology: investigates all aspects of cognition-memory,

thinking, reasoning, language development, decision making, and so
on.
• Industrial/organizational psychology: studies all aspects of behavior
in work settings (e.g. increasing motivation, evaluating employee’s
performance, training and development, consultancy, work and
health etc).
• Abnormal Psychology: is the study of abnormal behavior and
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 Branches of Psychology

• Health Psychology - applies psychological principles to the

prevention and treatment of physical illness and diseases.
• Cross-cultural Psychology - examines the role of culture in
understanding behavior, thought, and emotion. It compares
the nature of psychological processes in different cultures,
with a special interest in whether or not psychological
phenomena are universal or culture-specific.
• 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.
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 Research Methods in Psychology

Basic Concepts in Research Methods

Scientific research is a systematic, controlled, empirical,
and critical investigation of hypothetical and propositions
about natural, behavioral, and social phenomena.
Scientific method - a process of testing ideas through
systematic observations, experiment, and statistical
analysis.

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 Basic Concepts Ctd…

 Theory - is an integrated set of principles

about observed facts that is intended to
describe and explain some aspects of
experience.
 Hypothesis - 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.
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 Types of Research Methods
There are three major types of research methods:
 Descriptive
 Correlational and
 Experimental research methods.

I. 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.
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 Research, cont…
1. Naturalistic Observation
• In naturalistic observation, psychologists observe,record and measure
behavior in real world settings and make no effort to manipulate or
control the situation.
• It often involves counting behaviors, such as number of aggressive
acts, number of smiles, etc.
• 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).

2. Case Study
• A case study is an in-depth look at a single individual.
• It is used mainly by clinical psychologists
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 Research, cont…
• It provides information about one person’s fears,
hopes, fantasies, traumatic experiences, upbringing,
family relationships, health, or anything that helps
the psychologist understand the person’s mind and
behavior.
• In case study, usually only one case is involved,
severely limiting the generalization to the rest of the
population.
• It can also be very time consuming and can involve
other problems specific to the techniques used,
including researcher bias.

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 Research, cont…
3. Survey
• Psychologists use surveys to find out about people’s
experience and attitudes by asking a large sample of
participants questions about their attitudes and
behaviors.
• The two most frequently used tools of survey
researchers are questionnaires, which participants
fill out by themselves, and interviews in which
researchers ask questions using a standard format.

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 Research, cont…
Advantages of Survey study
• Provide large information within short period of time.
• Help to generalize the findings from the sample to the
population
• Time saving or economical in terms of time
Limitations of Survey study
• The participants of the study may distort their
responses if the concern is a touching area, such as
sex, money, or race relations
• The sample/participant may not precisely represent
the target population
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 Research, cont…

II. Correlational Study

• Correlational study is used to determine whether there is
relationship between two or more variables or not.
• It does not show cause- effect relationship. For example,
if two variables (A & B) are correlated:
• The 1st variable (A) may cause the 2nd variable (B).
• The 2nd variable (B) may cause the 1st variable (A).

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 Research, cont…

• The 3rd unknown variable “C” may causes the correlation

between variable A & B.
• Therefore, we cannot conclude that the 1st variable
causes the 2nd variable and vice versa.
• The correlation coefficient is a numerical index showing
the extent of relationship between the two variables
under examinations. The values range from –1 to +1.
• Correlation coefficient indicates the
Direction (positive, negative, none) and
Magnitude (perfect, strong, moderate and weak)
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 Research, cont…
III. Experimental Methods
• An experiment is a carefully regulated procedure in which one
or more of the factors believed to influence the behavior being
studied are manipulated and all others are held constant.
• If the behavior under study changes when the factor is
manipulated, we say that the manipulated factor causes the
behavior to change.
• Every experiment has two types of variables:
– Independent Variable (IV) – the variable that is
manipulated by the experimenter (input variable)
– Dependent Variable (DV) – the outcome variable (results of
the experiment)
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 Research, cont…
• Experiments also involve randomly assigned
experimental groups and control groups.
 An experimental group is a group whose
experience is manipulated.
It can be increased or varied by the
experimenter.
 It is called experimental treatment.

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 Research, cont…

Steps of scientific research

In scientific research, there are at least five major steps
to be followed.
– Step one - Defining the Problem
– Step two - Formulating the Hypothesis
– Step three - Testing the Hypothesis
– Step four - Drawing Conclusions
– Step five - Reporting Results

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