behavior Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Ministry of Science and Higher Education

General Psychology (Psych. 1011)

Module Objectives

Up on the completion of this course, students will be able to:

 Describe basic psychological concepts;

 Compare and contrast the major theoretical perspectives in psychology;
 Discuss different aspects of human development;
 Compare and contrast different learning theories;
 Summarize motivational and emotional processes;
 Demonstrate social and interpersonal skills in everyday life;
 Set an adaptive goal and plan for future;
 Apply knowledge of psychology in their life; and
 Develop life skills.

CHAPTER ONE ESSENCE OF PSYCHOLOGY

Chapter Overview

This chapter tries to acquaint students with the concept of psychology. The specific contents addressed
in the chapter are

 definition of psychology and related concepts,

 goals of psychology,
 historical background and major perspectives in psychology,
 branches/subfields of psychology,
 and research methods in psychology.

Definition of Psychology

The word "psychology" is derived from two Greek words 'psyche' and logos‟. Psyche refers to mind, soul
or spirit while logos means study, knowledge or discourse. Therefore, by combining the two Greek
words the term "psychology" epistemologically refers to the study of the mind, soul, or spirit and it is
often represented by the Greek letter ᴪ (psi) which is read as ("sy"). Psychologists define psychology
differently based on their intentions, research findings, and background experiences. Nowadays, most
of them agree on the following scientific definition of psychology.

In the above definition, there are three aspects; science, behavior and mental processes:

1. Science: psychology uses scientific methods to study behavior and mental processes in both
humans and animals. This means psychologists do not study behavior with commonsense rather
they follow scientific procedures and use empirical data to study behavior and mental processes.
2. Behavior: refers to all of our outward or overt actions and reactions, such as talking, facial
expressions, movement, etc. There is also covert behavior which is hidden, nonabsorbable and
generally considered as a mental process
3. Mental processes: refer to all the internal, covert activities of our minds, such as thinking, feeling,
remembering, etc.

Goals of Psychology

As a science, psychology has four goals; description, explanation, prediction, and control.

Description: Description involves observing the behavior and noticing everything about it. It is a search
for answers for questions like What is happening? Where does it happen? To whom does it happen?
And under what circumstances does it seem to happen?

Explanation: Why is it happening? Explanation is about trying to find reasons for the observed behavior.
This helps in the process of forming theories of behavior (A theory is a general explanation of a set of
observations or facts).

Prediction: prediction is about determining what will happen in the future.

Control: How can it be changed? Control or modify or change the behavior from undesirable one (such
as failing in school) to a desirable one. Control can also be used in the sense that a psychologist tries to
check out the effects of certain undesirable factors in examining the relationship between two or more
behaviors. For example, in studying the relationship between intelligence and academic performance in
freshman courses, a psychologist may need to control the effect of socio-economic status of the family.

Historical Background and Major Perspectives in Psychology

Psychology is a relatively new field in the realm of the sciences, only about 125 years old. It began as a
science of its own in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany, with the establishment of a psychology laboratory in the
University of Leipzig by Wilhelm Wundt. Wundt developed the technique of objective introspection to
scientifically examine mental experiences. With such new orientation to the study of human subjective
experiences that were previously under the field of philosophy alone, psychology then begun as an
independent field of study and with Wundt as its founder or "father of modern psychology”. Once
psychology begun to use the scientific method, it then went through successive stages of development
in which different schools of thought emerged at different times. These schools of thought can be
categorized as old and modern as described below.

Early schools of psychology

A school of thought is a system of thinking about a certain issue, say, for example, about human
behavior. You may, for example, think that human behavior is all the result of inheritance, or you, may,
instead, say it is all the result of interaction with the environment. The first system of thinking takes a
biological approach and the later takes an environmental approach. But what is common in both is there
is a tendency to give general, systematized approach of explaining phenomena.
Surly, psychology, as a discipline, is embedded in different systems of thought from its inception. These
systems of thought were very broad in the early years of psychology and, therefore, we call them
schools of thought. There are five such early schools of psychology.

 Structuralism- structuralism views psychology as a study of structure of mind. It is an expansion

of Wundt ‘s ideas by his student named Edward Titchener (1867-1927). Titchener is the founder
of structuralism. The goal of structuralists was to find out the units or elements, which make up
the mind such as; sensations, images, and feelings. The best-known method used by them was
introspection ―looking inward into our consciousness. It is a procedure aimed at analyzing the
mental experience into three basic mental elements: images, feelings, and sensations.

Analyzing mental structure alone was found to serve little purpose in helping humans deal with
the environment. Hence, a new school of thought emerged to study this functional value of
human mind-functionalism.

 Functionalism- James (1848-1910), who was the first American psychologist and the author of
the first psychology textbook, functionalism views psychology as a study of function of the
mind. The founder of this school of thought is William James. Unlike Wundt and Titchener,
James focused on how the mind allows people to function in the real world; how people work,
play, and adapt to their surroundings, a viewpoint he called functionalism. He developed many
research methods other than introspection including questionnaires, mental tests and objective
descriptions of behavior. Generally, according to functionalists, psychological processes are
adaptive. They allow humans to survive and to adapt successfully to their surroundings.

Examining human mind in terms of its structural elements and functions were, however, found
to be simplistic to understand the complex human being. It was believed that human mind is
more than the sum of sensations as well as adaptive functions. Hence, a new school of thought
emerged to examine the mind in a holistic manner-Gestalt Psychology.

 Gestalt psychology: Gestalt psychology views psychology as a study of the whole mind. Max
Wertheimer and his colleagues founded this school of thought in Germany in the 20th century.
Gestalt psychologists argued that the mind is not made up of combinations of elements. The
German word "gestalt" refers to form, whole, configuration or pattern. According to them, the
mind should be thought of as a result of the whole pattern of sensory activity and the
relationships and organizations within their pattern. In brief, the gestalt psychologists
acknowledge consciousness. They held that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Mind is greater than its parts (images, sensations, and feelings).

Generally what is common to all the three schools of though is the fact that they all try to examine the
human mind; which is an internal, non-visible, and hidden experience of human beings. Although it
could be useful to understand this experience, it was believed that this subjective, private experience
can‘t be observable, measurable, and hence can‘t be studied scientifically. Hence, for psychology to
become scientific, it needs to get rid of dealing with subjectivity in all its forms and rather focus on
studying behavior. This has led to the birth of a new paradigm of thought about psychology called
behaviorism.

 Behaviorism: behaviorists view psychology as a study of observable and measurable behaviors.

John B. Watson is the founder of behaviorism. Other proponents include E. Thorndike and F.
 Skinner. For Watson, psychology was the study of observable and measurable behavior and
nothing more about hidden mental processes. According to Watson, we cannot define
consciousness any better than we can define the soul; we cannot locate it or measure it and,
therefore, it cannot be the object of scientific study.

As to Watson, behaviorism had three other important characteristics in addition to its focus on
behavior; conditioned response as the elements or building blocks of behavior, learned rather
than unlearned behaviors, and focus on animal behavior. He believed that all behaviors are
learned but not inherited and learners are passive and reactive (they are not initiating their
learning but they respond when the environment stimulates them).

All the four schools of thought discussed so far are focused on human mind and behavior as conscious
experiences. But, an opposition to this assertion came from a physician in Vienna who, after working
with so many patients, realized that human functioning was basically explained by more powerful forces
which were not accessible to our consciousness. Hence, this led to the formulation of a new school of
thought in psychology called Psychoanalysis.

 Psychoanalysis: psychology studies the components of the unconscious part of the human
mind. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is the founder of this school of thought. He was the most
controversial and most popular in the study of behavior and mental processes. As a physician,
Sigmund Freud became convinced that some of the physical illnesses of his patients did not
have medical or bodily causes; but non-physical or emotional causes. He called these kinds of
illnesses as hysteria or conversion reaction to indicate the conversion of emotional problems
into bodily problems. He also underscored that that conflicts and emotional traumas that had
occurred in early childhood can be too threatening to be remembered consciously and
therefore they become hidden or unconscious and then will remain to affect later behavior.

Freud argued that conscious awareness is the tip of the mental iceberg, beneath the visible tip
lays the unconscious part of the mind. The unconscious which is the subject matter of
psychoanalysis contains hidden wishes, passions, guilty secrets, unspeakable yearnings, and
conflict between desire and duty. We are not aware of our unconscious urges and thoughts and
they make themselves known in dreams, slip of the tongue, apparent accidents and even jokes.
He used clinical case studies (hypnosis and Dream analysis) as a method.

Before concluding this section, how do you think the above five early schools of psychology generally
differ one from the other?

These schools of thought basically differ in terms of three issues:

 object,
 goal, and
 methods of study:

In their object of study, i.e. what they studied (conscious mind, unconscious mind, and overt behavior).
In their goal (analyze the components of the mind or observing the effect of the environment on
behavior). In their method (Introspection, observation, clinical case studies, etc...).

Note that an important lesson learned from early psychological thoughts is that there are different ways
of explaining the same behavior. Hence, modern psychologists tend to examine human behavior
through several views. The views that predominate today are psychodynamic, behavioral, humanistic,
cognitive, biological, and sociocultural perspectives. These views reflect different questions about
human behavior, different assumptions about how the mind works, and different kinds of explanations
as to why people do and what they do. The schools of thought are presented below.

 Psychodynamic perspective - It has its origins in Freud's theory of psychoanalysis, but many
other psychodynamic theories exist. This perspective emphasizes the unconscious dynamics
within the individual such as inner forces, conflicts or instinctual energy. The psychodynamic
approach emphasizes: The influence of unconscious mental behavior on everyday behavior .
The role of childhood experiences in shaping adult personality. The role of intrapersonal conflict
in determining human behavior

Psychodynamic perspective tries to dig below the surface of a person's behavior to get into
unconscious motives. Psychologists with psychodynamic orientation think of themselves as
archaeologists of the mind.

 Behavioral Perspective- It emphasizes the role learning experiences play in shaping the behavior
of an organism. It is concerned with how the environment affects the person ‘s actions.
Behaviorists focus on environmental conditions (e.g. rewards, and punishments) that maintain
or discourage specific behaviors. The behavioral perspective is sometimes called the "black box"
approach in psychology because it treats the mind as less useful in understanding human
behavior and focus on what goes in to and out of the box, but not on the processes that take
place inside This means, behaviorists are only interested in the effects of the environment
(input) on behavior (output) but not in the process inside the box.

 Humanistic Perspective-According to this perspective, human behavior is not determined either

by unconscious dynamics or the environment. Rather it emphasizes the uniqueness of human
beings and focuses on human values and subjective experiences. This perspective places greater
importance on the individual‘s free will. The goal of humanistic psychology was helping people
to express themselves creatively and achieve their full potential or self-actualization (developing
the human potential to its fullest).

 Cognitive Perspective- it emphasizes what goes on in people's heads; how people reason,
remember, understand language, solve problems, explain experiences and form beliefs. This
perspective is concerned about the mental processes. The most important contribution of this
perspective has been to show how people's thoughts and explanations affect their actions,
feelings, and choices. Techniques used to explore behavior from a cognitive perspective include
electrical recording of brain activity, electrical stimulation and radioactive tracing of metabolic
activity in the nervous system
 Biological Perspective- it focuses on studying how bodily events or functioning of the body
affects behavior, feelings, and thoughts. It holds that the brain and the various brain chemicals
affect psychological processes such as learning, performance, perception of reality, the
 experience of emotions, etc. This perspective underscores that biology and behavior interact in
a complex way; biology affecting behavior and behavior in turn affecting biology. It also
emphasizes the idea that we are physical beings who evolved over a long time and that genetic
heritage can predispose us to behaving in a certain way. In a manner that our eyebrows evolved
to protect our eyes, we may have evolved certain kinds of behavior patterns to protect our
bodies and ensure the survival of our species.

 Socio-cultural Perspective- It focuses on the social and cultural factors that affects human
behavior. As a fish cannot live out of water, human behavior cannot be understood without
sociocultural context (the social and cultural environment) that people "Swim" in every day. For
instance, social psychologists examine how group membership affects attitudes and behaviors,
why authority and other people (like spouse, lovers, friends, bosses, parents, and strangers)
affect each of us. Cultural psychologists also examine how cultural rules and values (both
explicit and unspoken) affect people's development, behavior, and feelings. This perspective
holds that humans are both the products and the producers of culture, and our behavior always
occurs in some cultural contexts.

Branches/Sub Fields of Psychology

Brainstorming Question: Dear student, can you tell where psychologists are employed to work after
graduation?

Developmental psychology – It studies the physical, cognitive and psychological changes across the life
span. It attempts to examine the major developmental milestones that occur at different stages of
development.

Personality Psychology – it focuses on the relatively enduring traits and characteristics of individuals.
Personality psychologists study topics such as self-concept, aggression, moral development, etc.

Social Psychology –deals with people‘s social interactions, relationships, social perception, and
attitudes.

Cross-cultural Psychology - examines the role of culture in understanding behavior, thought, and
emotion. It compares the nature of psychological processes in different cultures, with a special interest
in whether or not psychological phenomena are universal or culture-specific.

Industrial psychology – applies psychological principles in industries and organizations to increase the
productivity of that organization.

Forensic psychology - applies psychological principles to improve the legal system (police, testimony,
etc..).

Educational Psychology - concerned with the application of psychological principles and theories in
improving the educational process including curriculum, teaching, and administration of academic
programs.

Health Psychology - applies psychological principles to the prevention and treatment of physical illness
and diseases.
Clinical Psychology: -is a field that applies psychological principles to the prevention, diagnosis, and
treatment of psychological disorders.

Counseling Psychology: - is a field having the same concern as clinical psychology but helps individuals
with less severe problems than those treated by clinical psychologists.

Research Methods in Psychology

A. Definition of terms

Before getting into research methods, it is important to start with discussion of scientific method. At the
beginning of this chapter, we said that psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental
processes. This means, in psychology, researchers want to see only what is objectively there, not what
their biases ( subjective perceptions) might want them to see. Researchers do this by using the scientific
method (a system for reducing bias and error in the measurement of data). Hence, before discussing the
types of research methods; we will try to understand the meanings of the following terms.

 Scientific method - a process of testing ideas through systematic observations,

experimentations, and statistical analysis.
 Theory - is an integrated set of principles about observed facts that is intended to describe and
explain some aspects of experience.
 Hypotheses - is a tentative proposition about the relationship between two or more variables
or phenomena.

Major types of research methods

Although psychologists pursue the same scientific method, there is, however, diversity in how
psychologists do research to achieve their objectives and goals. Hence, there are three major types of
research methods:

 descriptive,
 correlational and
 experimental research methods.

Descriptive research - in this type of research, the researcher simply records what she/he has
systematically observed. Descriptive research methods include naturalistic observation, case studies,
and surveys.

Naturalistic observation: is a descriptive research method in which subjects are observed in

their natural environment to get a real (not artificial) picture of how behavior occurs. Limitations
of naturalistic observation are observer effect (animals or people who know they are being
watched may behave artificially) and observer bias (the researcher may not observe
systematically or he/she may observe behaviors he/she wants to observe and ignores others).

Case study: is a descriptive technique in which an individual is studied in great detail. Its
advantage is that it provides tremendous amount of data about a single case or individual.

The disadvantage of case study is that the researchers can‘t apply the results to other similar people,
which means what researchers find in one case can‘t necessarily apply or generalize to others.
 Survey: is a descriptive research method used to collect data from a very large group of people.
It is useful to get information on private (covert) behaviors and it addresses hundreds of people
with the same questions at the same time. Its disadvantage is that it needs a careful selection of
a representative sample of the actual population.

Correlational research - is a research method that measures the relationship between two or
more variables. A variable is anything factor or condition that exists in any amount or condition
and can potentially change or vary the results of a research outcome.

Though correlation tells researchers if there is a relationship between variables, how strong the
relationship is, and in what direction the relationship goes, it doesn‘t prove causation. (which means it
doesn‘t show the cause and effect relationship). This means, for example, that if there is a relationship
between smoking and lung cancer, this doesn‘t mean that smoking causes lung cancer.

Experimental Research: it is a research method that allows researchers to study the cause and
effect relationship between variables. In experimental research, a carefully regulated procedure
in which one or more factors believed to influence the behavior being studied are manipulated
and all other factors are held constant. Experiments involve at least one independent variable
and one dependent variable. The independent variable is the manipulated, influential,
experimental factor. The dependent variable is the factor (behavior) that is measured in an
experiment. It can change as the independent variable is manipulated.

For example, a researcher may need to know whether or not class size has an effect on students‘
academic performance and hypothesizes as do students in small class size have better academic
performance than students in large class size. In this question, the researcher has two variables: class
size, which is the independent variable to be manipulated and students‟ performance which is the
dependent variable to be measured while class size is changed.

Experiments also involve randomly assigned experimental groups and control groups. An experimental
group is a group whose experience is manipulated. In our example, the experimental group is students
who are assigned in small class sizes. A control group is a comparison that is treated in every way like
the experimental group except for the manipulated factor (class size). The control group serves as a
baseline against which the effects of the manipulated condition can be compared. In this example, the
control group is the group of students who are assigned in large class sizes.

Although experimental research is useful to discover causes of behaviors, such research must be done
cautiously because expectations and biases on the part of both the researcher and participants can
affect the results.

Steps of scientific research

In scientific research, there are at least five major steps to be followed.

Step one - Defining the Problem - noticing something attention catching in the surrounding for which
one would like to have an explanation. For example, you may notice that children seem to get a little
more aggressive with each other after watching practically violent children‘s cartoon videos. You
wonder if the violence in the cartoon video could be creating aggressive behavior on the children.
Hence, you may raise a research problem focusing on the effect of aggressive videos on children‘s
behavior.

Step two - Formulating the Hypothesis - after having an observation on surroundings (perceiving the
problem), you might form an educated guess about the explanation for your observations, putting it into
the form of a statement that can be tested in some way. For our example above, you might formulate a
hypothesis ―children who watch violent cartoons will become more aggressive than those who watch
non-violent cartoons‖.

Step three - Testing the Hypothesis - at this step, the researcher employs appropriate research methods
and collects ample data (information) to accept or reject the proposed statement. For instance, in the
above example, the data will be gathered from children who watch aggressive videos and from those
who do not watch aggressive videos and make comparisons between the behaviors of the two groups to
determine whether watching aggressive video makes children more aggressive.

Step four - Drawing Conclusions - this is the step in which the researcher attempts to make
generalizations or draw implications from tested relationship

Step five - Reporting Results - at this point, the researcher would want to write up exactly what she/he
did, why she/he did, and what she/he found. So that, others can learn from what she/he has already
accomplished, or failed to accomplish. This allows others to predict and modify behavior based on the
findings.

Summary

 Psychology is a science of behavior and mental process.

 Psychologists aim at describing, explaining, predicting and controlling behaviors.
 Though Psychology as a scientific field began in 1879 in Germany, it has gone through different
phases.
 The perspectives of psychology are generally classified as early and modern. Early psychology
was considered schools of “isms”, which include structuralism, functionalism, behaviorism, and,
in fact, Gestalt psychology and psychoanalysis.
 Modern perspectives of psychology have emerged from these early psychological thoughts.
These modern perspectives that are used to describe and explain and mind .
 The knowledge of Psychology can be applied in different contexts such as health, education,
business, law, and the like.
 Psychologists study behavior using three major types of research methods; descriptive,
correlational, and experimental.
 In employing the different types of research methods, psychologists are expected to follow five
basic steps in conducting research. Defining the Problem, formulating a hypothesis, testing the
hypothesis, drawing conclusions and writing the report.

Discussion Questions

 1.Compare and contrast the five early schools of thought in psychology.

 2. Compare and contrast the modern psychological perspectives.
 3. Please reflect on the relationship between the goals of psychology and the three types of
research methods using examples.
 4. Mention the steps of conducting research in psychology.
 5. A psychologist is interested in exploring the effect of tutorial support on students ‘academic
performance and assign students into two groups. Students in group one get the tutorial
support and those in group two do not. In this example, what is the;
o a) Dependent variable
o b) Independent variable
o c) Control group
o d) Experimental group.