The Nature of Psychology Essay examples -- essays research papers

The Nature of PsychologyPsychology is the scientific study and realistic application of observable behavior and mental processes of organisms. Psychology differs from other affable sciences such as Sociology, History, or Economics, beca utilise psychology specifically deals with the study of an individual. The other social sciences will study groups, or history. Psychology is less a science of reported findings, it attempts asks and answers questions using observable behavior and what digest be determined as mental processes of the subject. The symbol for psychology is the Greek letter psi (). The subject matter of psychology is, affect, behavior, and cognition. The affect for psychology is the actual mental processes that make up moods, feeling, and emotional state. An example for affect would be feeling sad about something happening. Behavior includes the actually actions and responses of organisms. Behavior can include the way we act in any given situation, for example when w e get up in the morning. The order in the way we prepare ourselves for going out into public can be categorized as our behavior. Cognition is the actual mental events and the processes that result from them. Memories of an event are a great example of an organisms cognition. The components and corresponding faces of psychology include the body of knowledge which is considered the teaching face, set of investigative methods or research face, and array of techniques the therapy face. The goals of psychology are to explain behaviors, to describe behaviors, to predict behavior, and to modify inappropriate behaviors. Explaining behaviors would be a question similar to Why does this happen?, and example of how describing behavior could be accomplished would be asking What causes this behavior, where does it come from?. Predictions can be elaborated on by asking When will the behavior occur?. An example of a behavioral modification question is What can be changed in the environment to alt er this behavior?. A specialized subfield of psychology that most interests me is, Forensic Psychology, because it would be appealing to me to understand a potential venomous mind and to make the determination if the criminal was sane at the time the crime was committed or if he/she was operating with full judgment. In poring over the 9/11 attack on America, a Forensic Psyc... ... level of a specific behavioral defect. After all the previous methods have been used, the use of existing data could be of help. Using existing data enables the psychologist to draw conclusions using other studies, surveys, observations, and tests to aide in the diagnose and treatment of a low-spirited person. A depressed person has a decrease in activity at the serotonin synapses. The independent variable would be the activity in the serotonin synapses. The dependent variable is the actual depression. In an experiment there are two types of groups the experimental, and confine groups. The experimenta l group is the participants who are exposed to the independent variable. The control group is the group of people who are not exposed to the independent variable, the comparison group. Three ethical concerns in psychological research experiments are do no harm, maintain confidentiality, and the use of deception only when absolutely necessary. In a depression experiment, the do no harm would be observed by only interviewing the subject. The researcher should refrain from any activity that would cause physical, emotional, and or psychological harm to the subject(s) in any of the groups.