Question

Imagine that your best friend knows you are taking a psychology course and wonders what psychology is all about. How would you define psychology for your friend?

The requirements of this assignment are:

Write an essay on the discipline of psychology.

Minimum of 300 words.

Use THREE sources.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/02/stem.aspx

Answer 1

Psychology as a subject is an interesting one as and deals with many problems of everyday life. It is the study of human behavior that helps us to understand the behaviour of people around us, tries to explain why people behave differently .

Psychology has been defined in many ways. In ancient days , focus was on behavioural aspects on the basis of philosophy according to it there is a soul in every individual and this is responsible for all our activities.

Since soul is not accessible at will , Greek philosophers defined psychology differently as a ‘science of mind’.

Later, Wilhelm Wundt , father of scientific approach to psychology defined it as the study of consciousness through the method of Introspection to study consciousness. But because of its subjectivity and unscientific definition,other discipline emerged.

Gradually, as a result of the development of scientific outlook people started thinking on scientific basis and JB Watson defined psychology as a science of behaviour of human as well as animal beings.

Today this is the most accepted definition. In this definition the term behaviour includes the cognitive activities like thinking, reasoning, intelligence, imagining, memory, etc., co-native activities like walking, dancing, fighting, attacking and other action tendencies and also the affective activities like feeling, joy, happiness, sympathy, anger, jealousy, etc. in a person. This definition also includes the behaviour not only of human beings and animals, but also all living organisms and their mental processes.

Hence, today the definition given by JB Watson is accepted in its modified form as “Psychology is the study or science of behaviour of the organism and its mental processes”.

Psychology has all the qualities of a science. After the establishment of psychological laboratory by Wundt, it has developed itself as a science.

Psychologists do experiments and make observations which others can repeat; they obtain data often in the form of quantitative measurements which others can verify. Like any other positive science psychology is also systematic in its approach. Measurement in psychology is often more difficult of course, than it is in other sciences.

However, psychologists have devised many ingenious tests to assign numbers to data. Psychology is following all the principles of science like principles of behaviour, objective experimentation, analysis of data and behaviour, formulation of hypothesis, and verification.

Psychology believes in cause and effect relationship in behaviour. It is considered as a behavioural science as it deals with behaviour of the organism.

However, because of its objectivity in analysis of behaviour through experiments, it may be considered as a developing positive science of behaviour.

There is a debate whether psychology should be part of STEM i.e. science , technology engineering and mathenaticsm, or not. Since psychology study human behavior , there will be subjectivity and it cannot be as scientific as other physical sciences . But certainly it follows the principles of science it may be treated as stem discipline.