Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and
mental processes of both humans and animals
when applied to
humans, psych covers
what people think,
feel, and do.
psychologists differ in
how much importance
they place on specific
types of behavior
they do agree, however,
that the study of behavior
must be systematic
systematic method: asking and
answering questions about what people
think, act, and feel as they do reduces
the chances of coming to false
conclusions
in order to understand our observations, we usually
have to combine all of our thoughts
Overall, psychologists seek to do
four things
3.) Prediction: They then predict what organisms
will do, and, I case of humans, what they think or
feel in various situations
By studying descriptive and theoretical accounts of past
behaviors, psychologists can predict future behaviors
Influence: finally, some psychologists seek to influence behavior in
helpful ways
ones with a long-term goal of
finding out more on behavior
are doing basic science
ones who are more interested in discovering ways to
use what we know to benefit others view psych as an
applied science and are using psychological
principles to solve more immediate problems
see pages 11-12 for more examples
1.) Description: the first goal is to describe or gather info about the behavior
being studies and to present what is known
2.) Explanation: Psychologists are not content simply
to state the facts. They seek to explain why people (or
animals) behave as they do.
such explanations can be called psychological principles
psychologists propose these explanations
as hypotheses- an educated guess about
some phenomenon
more complex theories are
constructed...they change as new
data improves our understandings