Psychology

• Cognitive science
• Behavioral neuroscience
• Personality
• Social psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Psychopharmacology
• Health psychology
• Sexual orientation and gender studies
• Media psychology
• Trauma psychology
• Abnormal psychology
• Research methods and statistics

• Industrial/organizational psychology
• Forensic psychology
• Military psychology
• Clinical psychology
• Educational and school psychology
• Engineering and human factors
• Rehabilitation
• Couples and family psychology
• Sports, exercise, and performance psychology
• Clinical neuropsychology

Psychologists as a group have come up with a basic set of broad theoretical perspectives, or frameworks, to guide the work of psychology. These broad theoretical frameworks are sometimes referred to as metatheories.

• Biological

The biological approach centers on the biological underpinnings of behavior, including the effects of evolution and genetics. Biological psychologists focus mostly on the brain and the nervous system. Neuropsychology and the study of the brain, genetics, and evolutionary psychology are included within the biological metatheory.

• Behaviorism(Behavior)

Behaviorism emphasizes the role and influence of a person’s environment and previous learning experiences to understanding behavior. Behaviorists don’t traditionally focus on mental processes per se because they believe that mental processes are too difficult to observe and measure objectively. In the framework of behaviorism, the “why” of behavior can be explained by looking at the circumstances in which it occurs and the consequences surrounding someone’s actions. Classical conditioning and operant conditioning are ways of understanding behavior and they lead to behavior modification, a specific approach to modifying behavior, and helping people change that comes from the metatheory of behaviorism.

• Cognitive

The cognitive framework centers on the mental processing of information, including the specific functions of attention, concentration, reasoning, problem solving, and memory. Cognitive psychologists are interested in the mental plans and thoughts that guide and cause behavior and affect how people feel. Intelligence testing and information-processing theories are examples that fall within the cognitive metatheory.

People can change the way they think about a situation. You can choose to look on the bright side ― or at least not look solely at the downside. That’s the gist of cognitive therapy.

• Sociocultural

The sociocultural approach focuses on the social and cultural factors that affect behavior. Therefore, as you might expect, social and cross-cultural psychology fall within the sociocultural metatheory, which is all about the enormous power of groups and culture on the why, how, and what of behavior and mental processes.

• Developmental

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus is credited with saying, “The only constant in
life is change.” Developmental psychology is a metatheory that is built on the idea that mental processes and behavior change over time, from one mental process and behavior to another in a progressive manner. Mental processes are built from and upon previous ones. Behaviors are built from and upon previous ones.

• Evolutionary

Evolutionary psychology searches for the causes and explanations for mental processes and behavior through the lens of adaptive fitness and natural selection. The basic idea is that mental processes and behaviors are the product of the “selection through mating” for processes and behaviors that helped solve recurring problems facing humans across large swathes of time. Whereas developmental approaches emphasize change over the lifespan of an individual, evolutionary psychology emphasizes change over generations. Traits that were particularly helpful for survival, such as problem-solving and cooperating with others were “kept” and passed on to subsequent generations. Mental process or behavior that led to a person living long enough to pass on his or her genes stayed in the gene pool. Those that did not were dropped from the gene pool. Additionally, there is a branch of psychology known as comparative psychology that studies animal behavior as an analog for human behavior. Studying animals can help us understand humans, and evolutionary psychology is the foundation of and justification for this approach.

• Humanistic and existential

The humanistic and existential metatheory emphasizes that each person is unique and that humans have the ability and responsibility to make choices in their lives. I’m not a victim of circumstance! I have choices in my life. Humanists believe that a person’s free choice, free will, and understanding of the meaning of events in his or her life are the most important things to study in order to understand behavior. The works of Victor Frankl, Rollo May, and Fritz Perls along with the study of spirituality and religion are examples that fall within this framework.

Psychologists who work within the humanistic and existential metatheory believe that behavior is simply a result of choice.

• Psychoanalytic(Psychoanalysis)/psychodynamic

The psychoanalytic/psychodynamic metatheory emphasizes the importance of unconscious mental processes, early child development, personality, the self, attachment patterns, and relationships. This approach explores how these mental and developmental processes interact with the challenges of life and everyday demands to affect the person you are and how you behave. Freud founded psychoanalysis in the early 1900s; since then, hundreds of theorists have added to his work. The later theories are typically labeled psychodynamic because they emphasize the dynamic interplay between various components of mind, the self, personality, others, and reality. Object Relations Theory and Self Psychology are two specific theoretical perspectives that fall within the psychoanalytic/psychodynamic metatheory.

• Postmodernism

The Postmodern metatheory questions the very core of psychological science, challenging its approach to truth and its focus on the individual. Postmodernists propose, for example, that in order to understand human thinking and reason,need to look at the social and communal processes involved in thinking and reason. Reality is not something that is out there independently; it is something that humans, as a community, create. Postmodernists make the argument that people in powerful positions have too much to say about what is “real” and “true” in psychology, and they advocatesocial constructionist view of reality, which states that the concepts of “reality” and “truth” are defined, or constructed, by society. These concepts, according to this framework, have no meaning apart from the meanings that society and its experts assign to them. Narrative and constructionist theories are examples that fall within the metatheory of Postmodernism.

• Biopsychosocial Model

One alternative to picking a metatheory is to combine several views together, thus adopting an integrationist or unifying approach. The biopsychosocial model of psychology represents a popular attempt at integration. The basic idea behind this model is that human behavior and mental processes are the products of:

1. biological
2. psychological
3. social influences

Biopsychosocialists try to find out how these influences interact to produce behavior. They believe that any explanation of behavior and mental processes that doesn’t consider all three primary factors (body, mind, and environment) is incomplete.

Psychologists accept that the mind exists in, or is synonymous with, the brain.
The biological metatheory is integrated into the biopsychosocial model because of this component. You may say that, just as digestion is what the stomach does, “mind” is what the brain does.

Brains don’t work and minds don’t think in a vacuum. Behavior and mental processes are embedded within a context that includes other people and things in the environment in which people live. Therefore, the social aspect of the biopsychosocial model also includes parent-child relationships, families, communities, and culture. Overlooking the impact of a person’s interaction with family and friends is to neglect reality. Just as the influence of family and friend relations is critical, it is also vital that psychologists consider cultural differences.

Nature refers to the concept that behavior and mental processes are innate, inborn, and hard-wired and will unfold over time as a person develops and her genetic blueprint is revealed. Nurture refers to the idea that behavior and mental processes are not inborn and instead are learned from the environment in which people live.

John Locke, a 17th-century British philosopher, espoused the concept of tabula rasa, the “blank slate” and believed that, given the right learning experiences, a person can become anything in life. On the other side is Charles Darwin, the father of evolution and nature advocate, who believed that a person’s destiny is found in his or her biology and genes.

Most modern psychologists consider this debate over. The simple answer is that both nature and nurture impact a person’s behavior and level of success. This means that making sense of what people do and why they do it is ultimately accomplished only by investigating and understanding the relative contributions of innate biological influences and learned environmental influences.

See:: Theory

Psychologists strive to maintain their expertise and knowledge through the use of three forms of knowledge acquisition or ways of knowing:

• Authority: Utilized to transmit information, usually in a therapy setting or the education and training process. Patients and students don’t have time to go out and research everything that they’re told. They have to take someone’s word for it at some point.
• Rationalism/logic: Used to create theories and hypotheses. If things don’t make logical sense, they probably won’t make sense when researchers use the scientific method to investigate them.
• Scientific method: Used as the preferred method of obtaining information and investigating behavior and mental processes. Psychologists implement the scientific method through a variety of different techniques.

A good-sized chunk of information that’s out there is also purely theoretical, but it makes sense on rational or logical grounds.

Psychologists use two broad categories of research when they want to scientifically evaluate a theory: descriptive research and experimental research.

Descriptive research consists of observation and the collection of data without trying to manipulate any of the conditions or circumstances being observed. They don’t help much if you’re interested in cause and effect relationships.

Experimental research involves the control and manipulation of the objects and events being investigated in order to get a better idea of the cause and effect relationships between the objects or events.

A z-factor is something affecting the hypothesis that I am unaware of or not accounting for. It is an extraneous variable that I need to control in order to have confidence in my theory. Good research studies try to eliminate z-factors or extraneous variables by controlling for their influence and factoring them out of the explanation. See:: Falsifiability

Generally, two types of statistical analyses are used in psychology, descriptive and inferential. See:: Statistics

A variable is the thing, characteristic, behavior, or mental process that is being measured or observed. Psychologists are interested in how variables relate, that is how do the things that are measured affect, impact, or alter each other?

In research, there are two types of variables, independent and dependent. A dependent variable is the thing that is
impacted or altered as a function of the independent variable. The independent variable impacts the dependent variable as it changes. The value of the dependent variable is directly caused or influenced by the independent variable.

Does that mean that if two variables are related that there is a causal relationship?
No, sometimes variables can be involved in a non-causal manner known as a correlation or a correlational relationship. A correlation exists between two ­variables when the value of one is related to the value of the other but not necessarily in a causal manner.

A correlation can be mistaken for causation(conjecture); just because two variables are related does not mean that one causes the other to happen. Correlation, not causation.

When psychologists want to test the impact of independent variables on dependent variables. They go with a simple experimental and control group approach. An experimental group is the group that is getting the independent variable, and the control group is not; it is getting nothing in essence.

There is another variation of this approach that is often used to help make the impact of the independent variable stand out more. This is done by using a placebo group in addition to the control group. A placebo is a decoy variable of sorts, a fake independent variable that is not expected to have an impact on the dependent variable, but the person in the study thinks it is an actual treatment or independent variable.

The placebo group quite often shows change or improvement. This is known as the placebo effect, when an experimental effect is related to the presence of the placebo. A fascinating phenomenon is one that scientists from all fields are trying to learn more about but have not quite figured out yet. See:: Mind

The idea that all of human psychology can be reduced to biology is known as biological reductionism.

This idea seems to insult our closely guarded and esteemed sense of free will, self-awareness, and consciousness. how can all this complex stuff going on inside my mind be reduced to a hunk of flesh resting between my ears?

We can’t escape our brains and genes, so biology and psychology are stuck with each other. But this relationship doesn’t have to be contentious as long as we adopt the monist stance. See:: Brain

Ideas about Therapy

• The child who seeks constant attention is, of necessity, an unhappy child. He feels that unless he gets attention he is worthless, has no place. He seeks constant reassurance that he is important. Since he doubts this, no amount of reassurance will ever impress him. – RUDOLF DREIKURS, M.D., Children: the Challenge

In psychology, a “wound” often refers to an emotional or psychological injury resulting from painful or traumatic experiences, impacting an individual’s well-being and behavior. These wounds can manifest as various emotional, behavioral, and psychological symptoms.

• Emotional Wounds: These are scars left behind from painful experiences that can affect relationships, happiness, and overall well-being.
• Trauma-Related Wounds: These result from extraordinarily stressful events that shatter a sense of security, leading to upsetting emotions and memories, says HelpGuide.org.
• Childhood Wounds: These are injuries from adverse experiences during childhood, such as neglect or abuse, affecting well-being.
• Core Wounds: These are deep-seated feelings of unworthiness or lack of self-worth that can shape an individual’s behaviors and beliefs.
• Primal Wounds: These are early life experiences that lead to feelings of non-being and can manifest in behaviors like loneliness or frustration, says Psychology Today.

Psychology is the broader field; It’s the scientific study of the mind and behavior. Psychology encompasses a wide range of approaches, including historical and philosophical perspectives, while modern theories often emphasize empirical data and scientific methods.

While “psychology” and “modern psychology” are often used interchangeably, the term “modern psychology” specifically refers to the field as it has evolved using scientific methods and is practiced today, distinguishing it from earlier philosophical or introspective approaches. Modern psychology extends beyond theoretical understanding to practical applications in areas like clinical practice, counseling, and organizational behavior.