What is psychology? How do you study it?

In 1890 William James, the American philosopher and physician and one of the founders of modern psychology, defined psychology as 'the science of mental life' and this definition provides a good starting point for our understanding even today. We all have a mental life and therefore have some idea about what this means, even though it can be studied in rats or monkeys as well as in people and the concept remains an elusive one. Like most psychologists, William James was particularly interested in human psychology, which he thought consisted of certain basic elements: thoughts and feelings, a physical world which exists in time and space, and a way of knowing about these things. For each of us, this knowledge is primarily personal and private. It comes from our own thoughts, feelings, and experience of the world, and may or may not be influenced by scientific facts about these things. For this reason, it is easy for us to make judgements about psychological matters using our own experience as a touchstone. We behave as amateur psychologists when we offer opinions on complex psychological phenomena, such as whether brain-washing works, or when we espouse as facts our opinions about why other people behave in the ways that they do: think they are being insulted, feel unhappy, or suddenly give up their jobs. However, problems arise when two people understand these things differently. Formal psychology attempts to provide methods for deciding which explanationsare most likely to be correct, or for determining the circumstances under which each applies. The work of psychologists helps us to distinguish between inside information which is subjective, and may be biased and unreliable, and the facts: between our preconceptions and what is 'true' in scientific terms. Psychology, as defined by William James, is about the mind or brain, but although psychologists do study the brain, we do not understand nearly enough about its workings to be able to comprehend the part that it plays in the experience and expression of our hopes, fears, and wishes, or in our behaviour during experiences as varied as giving birth or watching a football match. Indeed, it is rarely possible to study the brain directly. So, psychologists have discovered more by studying our behaviour, and by using their observations to derive hypotheses about what is going on inside us. Psychology is also about the ways in which organisms, usually people, use their mental abilities, or minds, to operate in the world around them. The ways in which they do this have changed over time as their environment has changed. Evolutionary theory suggests that if organisms do not adapt to a changing environment they will become extinct (hence the sayings 'adapt or die' and 'survival of the fittest'). The mind has been, and is still being, shaped by adaptive processes. This means that there are

evolutionary reasons why our minds work the way that they do -- for instance, the reason why we are better at detecting moving objects than stationary ones may be because this ability was useful in helping our ancestors to avoid predators. It is important for psychologists, as well as for those working in other scientific disciplines such as biology and physiology, to be aware of those reasons. A difficulty inherent in the study of psychology is that scientific facts should be objective and verifiable but the workings of the mind are not observable in the way that those of an engine are. In everyday life they can only be perceived indirectly, and have to be inferred from what can be observed, i.e. behaviour. The endeavour of psychology is much like that involved in solving a crossword puzzle. It involves evaluating and interpreting the available clues, and using what you already know to fill in the gaps. Furthermore, the clues themselves have to be derived from careful observation, based on accurate measurement, analysed with all possible scientific rigour, and interpreted using logical and reasoned arguments which can be subjected to public scrutiny. Much of what we want to know in psychology -- how we perceive, learn, remember, think, solve problems, feel, develop, differ from each other, and interrelate -- has to be measured indirectly, and all these activities are multiply determined: meaning that they are influenced by several factors rather than by a single one. For example, think of all the things that may affect your response to a particular situation (losing your way in a strange town). In order to find out which factors are the important ones, a number of other confounding factors have somehow to be ruled out. Complex interactions are the norm rather than the exception in psychology, and understanding them depends on the development of sophisticated techniques and theories. Psychology has the same goals as any other science: to describe, understand, predict, and learn how to control or modify the processes that it studies. Once these goals have been achieved it can help us to understand the nature of our experience and also be of practical value. For instance, psychological findings have been useful in fields as varied as developing more effective methods of teaching children to read, in designing control panels for machines that reduce the risk of accidents, and in alleviating the suffering of people who are emotionally distressed.

-1Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com Publication Information: Book Title: Psychology: A Very Short Introduction. Contributors: Gillian Butler - author, Freda McManus - author. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: Oxford. Publication Year: 1998. Page Number: 1.