What is Psychology? — Psychology STD 11 Humanities — Question
CBSE BoardEnglish MediumSTD 11 HumanitiesPsychologyWhat is Psychology?3 Marks
Question
Define and explain the nature of psychology.
✓
Answer
Psychology is considered to be a science as it adopts the scientific method to arrive at conclusions.
Psychology is a scientific study of mental processes, experiences and behaviour.
This definition points out towards three key areas which constitute the field of psychology.
Psychology studies COGNITIVE PROCESSES (mental processes): like thinking, remembering, perceiving and learning which involves internal mental activities and not directly observable.
Mental process refers to state of consciousness or awareness.
These are used to solve problems and other cognitive activities.
It involves brain activities and mental process although both are interdependent.
They are inferred from observations of people's verbal behaviour, muscular reactions and non-verbal cues.
For example, we can't observe how the person observes an object (say, dog) but we can infer it from his/her reactions, whether he is scared if he runs away from the dog or is not scared, when he sees a dog.
Psychology studies BEHAVIOUR: Behaviour is action or reaction of individual to any initiating cause (stimuli).
Psychologist also take into account the context of behaviour, e.g. family setting or official setting.
They study animal behaviour also for comparison purposes.
Psychology studies overt (observable) or as well as covert (internal) behavioural pattern.
Psychology studies EXPERIENCES:
Experience is what we feel at a given point of time.
It brings the subjective nature of the experiencing person as a function of his/ her awareness or consciousness.
These are internal state of mind.
Experiences are influenced by external or internal conditions.
Psychology also attends to altered state of consciousness, which creates new experience, e.g. dreams, meditation or drug-intake situations etc.
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