Cognitive Perspective Essay

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The brain has been studied with growing levels of scientific precision for hundreds of years. Many great psychologists, like Sigmund Freud and Wundt, have questioned why we think a certain way and how it makes us feel. They all came up with different ways to answer the question. Some, like John Watson, thought you should only look at what can be directly observed about a person, others focused on a person’s mental behavior, and social scientists hold that our culture plays a pivotal role in shaping how we act or believe. None of them are completely wrong about how we should look at the human mind. We need to look at the mind in all these ways to truly understand its processes. There are 6 main perspectives in psychology that help us deepen …show more content…

This has a significant impact on why we do the things we do and act the way we act. The Cognitive perspective suggests that much of human behavior is significantly influenced by cognitive processes.(1) Cognitive Psychology revolves around the notion that if we want to know what makes people tick we must first figure out what processes are actually going on in their …show more content…

This theory focuses on the role of unconscious influences on how we think and act.(2) This theory became very popular because of its explanatory power for previously unexplainable human behavior, Freud 's therapeutic method, called psychoanalysis or Insight therapy, was developed to identify the underlying conflicts between intrapsychic structures and resolve them by bringing them to consciousness. Although Freud thought of himself as a scientist, and he was very thorough in recording his methods and outcomes, he did not practice modern scientific methods. Psychoanalytic theory was developed through case study analysis, a qualitative, not scientific, method.(1) Freud believed that people have little free will to make choices in life. Instead, our behavior is determined by the unconscious mind and particularly childhood

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