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Mizan-Tepi University

College of social science and humanities Department of psychology Prepared by: Kahsay B. (MSc)

Psychology

• (^) ‘Psyche’ refers to “mind”, or “soul”, while “logos” refers to study
• (^) Current agreed up on definition is;
• (^) Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and the underlying mental - (^) Science: scientific procedures and use empirical data to study behavior and mental processes

Goals of Psychology

• (^) Description
  • (^) Observing the behavior and noticing everything about it
    • (^) What? Where? To whom?
• (^) Explanation:
  • (^) Why is it happening?
• (^) Prediction:
  • (^) Determining what will happen in the future
• (^) Control: modify or change the behavior

Historical Background and Major Perspectives

• (^) 125 years old
• (^) 1879 in Leipzig, Germany Wilhelm Wundt established a lab
• (^) Developed the technique of introspection
  • (^) "father of modern psychology”

• Introspection: Looking inward (i.e., examining

and reporting your thoughts, feelings, etc.)

Early schools of psychology

• (^) Gestalt psychology
  • (^) Study of the whole mind
  • (^) how sensations are assembled into meaning perceptual experiences
  • (^) "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”
• (^) Behaviorism
  • (^) John B. Watson
  • (^) Study of observable and measurable behavior and nothing more about hidden mental processes

Early schools of psychology

• (^) Mind is like soul we cant measure, observe or locate it so it cant be subject of scientific study
• (^) Behaviorism had three other important characteristics
  • (^) Conditioned response as the building blocks of behavior
  • (^) Learned rather than unlearned behaviors
  • (^) Focus on animal behavior

Early schools of psychology

• (^) Unconscious contains: hidden wishes, passions, guilty secrets,
• (^) Becomes visible in dreams, slips of tongue, jokes
• (^) hypnosis and Dream analysis
• (^) These schools basically differ in terms of three issues - (^) In their object of study, In their goal and In their method

Modern schools Cont’d

• (^) Behavioral Perspective
  • (^) Emphasizes the role learning experiences play in shaping behavior
  • (^) how the environment affects the person‘s actions
  • (^) Sometimes called the "black box“ --- what goes and out
  • (^) Only interested in the effects of the environment (input) on behavior (output)

Modern schools Cont’d

• (^) Humanistic Perspective
  • (^) Human behavior is not determined
  • (^) Uniqueness of human beings and focuses on human values and subjective experiences
  • (^) Places greater importance on the individual‘s free will
• (^) Cognitive Perspective; emphasizes what goes on in people's heads - (^) how people reason, remember, understand language, solve problems - (^) how people's thoughts and explanations affect their actions, feelings, and choices

Branches/Sub Fields of Psychology

• (^) Developmental psychology
• (^) Personality Psychology
• (^) Social Psychology
• (^) Industrial psychology
• (^) Forensic psychology
• (^) Clinical Psychology
• (^) Counseling Psychology

Research Methods in Psychology

• (^) Scientific method
  • (^) Testing ideas through systematic observations, experimentations, and statistical analysis

• Theory

• (^) Set of principles intended to describe and explain some aspects of experience

• Hypotheses; tentative proposition about the

relationship between two or more variables

Research methods Cont’d

• (^) Case study
  • (^) Individual is studied in great detail
  • (^) Provides tremendous amount of data about a single case or individual
  • (^) Disadvantage is generalization
• (^) Survey
  • (^) Collect data from a very large group of people
  • (^) Advantage is it uses representative sample

Research methods Cont’d

• (^) Correlational research
  • (^) Measures the relationship between two or more variables
  • (^) It doesn‘t prove causation
  • (^) Shows the direction and magnitude of the relationship
  • (^) -1 shows a perfect negative correlation while +1 shows perfect positive
  • (^) -1 and +1 correlation coefficient are equally strong