Psychology and Society
Psychology is the scientific study of human and animal behavior.
It is made of
theories and tries to prove why we behave the way we do, our mental
processes,
our emotions, and our actions. In this writing assignment I will
discuss why
some people choose to behave so outrageous that we see it as abnormal
self-destructive behavior and why others try to fit in this society
and follow
the rules. In the United States there`s people from all over the world
from
different cultures and traditions. I will give my personal opinion on
some of
the issues and controversies in our country. My first issue is about
drugs. Many
people feel that certain illegal drugs like heroin, marijuana, and
cocaine
should be legalized. I think it`s a crazy idea, people feel that is
they
legalize it at first we would buy it but then we would get bored and
the use
will decrease, but how many lives will be lost? Is it worth taken a
chance? I
don`t think so, tobacco is legal and people don`t get tired of
smoking, so if
they legalized these drugs more and more people will get addicted. The
effects
of any drug depend on several factors like the amount taken the user`s
past drug
experience, the manner in which is taken, and circumstances. Heroin is
a highly
addictive drug derived from morphine, which is obtain from the opium
poppy. It
is a downer that affects the brains pleasure systems and interferes
with the
brains ability to perceive pain. Heroin can be injected into a vein or
a muscle,
smoked in a water pipe, inhale as smoke through a straw or snorted as
powder via
the nose. Cocaine is a powerful central nervous system stimulant that
The main focus of this research proposal is to address the study of social psychology and the role it plays in helping one understand human social behavior. In this proposal, one will attempt to explain how the field of social psychology will evolve within the next 10 years. Allport, (1985) maintains that social psychology is the scientific study that seeks to understand the nature of individual’s behavior and how they think, feel, and are influenced by others. To understand the framework of this proposal, one will focus on human social behavior as it relates to research in social psychology.
All actions entail an inner, psychological cause. This idea can be applied in literary analysis, one novel being Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Throughout Brave New World, the World State emerges as ideal and flawless with scientific and technological advancements. One way to examine such world is with the psychoanalytical lens–an approach in literature focusing on character psychology–to divulge significant meanings in conscious and unconscious behaviors. Utilizing the psychoanalytic lens, one can perceive the flaws of the World State through various people.
The principles and theories of Social Psychology are important and useful in assessing behaviors in situations. These social psychological principles and their applications can be seen in fictional films which can also be attributed to everyday life. One such film that holds certain social psychological perspectives is Will Gluck’s 2010 production of Easy A. A film about high school student Olive Penderghast and how a sudden change in popularity and financial status, after an unintentional rumor about how she supposedly lost her virginity to a college guy spread through the entire her school. The film draws on the behavioral connections of pronounced hussy Olive Penderghast and her English class’s assigned reading of The Scarlet Letter. Easy A depicts how Olive’s choice to handle the rumor by modeling the harlot in her reading and embroidering an A on her wardrobe lead her to be preserved as one. The reactions of townspeople in the Scarlet Letter are similar to those of her high school class mates. Through such actions, reactions, and behaviors of the film is able to addresses numerous social psychological perspectives. Some of these social perspectives include the Actor-Observer Difference in Casual Attribution, Self-fulfilling prophecy and Operant Conditioning.
My choice of research was in the play behaviors of children as well as aggression. Breaking the topic down more, behavior relates to the psychology and the psyche of each individual. The definition of psychology is “science of mind and behavior” (Clavijo, 2013). After reading the article by Clavijo, I have realized that psychology can be defined in three ways such as the study of the mind, the study of behavior, and the study of the mind and behavior. In the text “The Developing Person” by Berger, behavior is learned through social learning. Children learn different behaviors through the observation of others, others being children and adults. Different people have affects on a child’s life that can affect their behavior. A child’s behavior is heavily influenced by their parents. A son may speak aggressively and without respect towards his mother because this is the way that his father speaks to her therefore he feels that is how to communicate with his mother (Berger, 200, 2012). Moving into play behaviors, children learn from other children in how to play. Most believe cognitive growth relies on child’s play time. Vygotsky and Piaget both believe that when children play it is beneficial, but according to Vygotsky, playing enables a child to think outside the box and create their own meaning from objects, using their imagination. Piaget believes that child benefit from playing together because children and sharing their knowledge and making it more concrete ideas and thoughts. There are four stages of plays, with the fourth stage being the highest most complicated play which consists of rules and guidelines for the game. The lowest level or play would be functional play being infants shaking rattles, clapping their hands, or blow...
My intended major is Psychology. Psychology to me is like an uncompleted master key that could unlock all the secrets behind human beings, which is an endless riddles. My interest in this subject stemmed from the many problems I questioned about human existence and personal identity, mainly based on human nature. I have always been curious about what would happen if all main past psychologists (e.g., Freud, Watson, Maslow, etc.) sit together and discuss the debate of someone’s behavior. In order to make use of all psychology theories, I would imagine those famous psychologists are sitting with me and discuss someone’s behavior based on their theory and make the best conclusion.
This paper highlights the life of one the most influential psychologist in history: Kenneth Bancroft Clark. He made many contributions to psychology, and in the process he empowered African Americans and black people in general to rise above social oppression. His research of the doll test contributed to the end of racial segregation in schools when the Supreme Court decided to rely on social science in the Brown v. Board of Education. Clark left a legacy, and the findings in his work are far reaching even to the Caribbean. In the same manner, the Caribbean that has a history of racial segregation has benefited from psychology in different areas. The information in this paper was gathered using secondary sources. The researcher discovered that
My paper is based on an article from the text’s web site (chapter 9) entitled “Lack of sleep ages body’s systems.” The basic claim of the article is that sleep deprivation has various harmful effects on the body. The reported effects include decreased ability to metabolize glucose (similar to what occurs in diabetes) and increased levels of cortisol (a stress hormone involved in memory and regulation of blood sugar levels). The article also briefly alludes (in the quote at the bottom of page 1) to unspecified changes in brain and immune functioning with sleep deprivation.
Information from the National Comorbidity Survey showed that social phobia is the third most common mental disorder with a lifetime prevalence of 13.3% (Kessler. 1994). Some people report an onset of social phobia in their mid-teens while others develop the disorder after a stressful or trauma produced experience. This disorder usually follows a chronic course that usually results in considerable impairments in vocal and social functioning ((Davidson, Hughes, George, & Blazer, 1993). There are a number of effective treatments for those suffering from social phobia. Some of these treatments are cognitive techniques, exposure treatments, and social skills training. Cognitive behavior therapy, used for treatment of social phobia, is a part of
It is common to consider the founding year of psychology to be where psychology became a separate science. According to Hergenhahn (2009), this approach is unsatisfactory for two reasons: (1) It ignores the vast philosophical heritage that molded psychology into the type of science it eventually became; and (2) it omits important aspects of psychology that are outside the realm of science. Since the mid-19th century, psychologists have incorporated the scientific method into their work however, the work of many psychologists who did not embrace the scientific method before the mid-19th century cannot be ignored. According to Kendra Cherry, before 1879 there have been many potential contributors to the beginning of what is often called "modern science," the ideas of the French philosopher Rene Descartes are important to science but particularly to psychology. During the 17th-century, he worked to answer the question "Are the mind and body the same, or different?” and that resulted in the development of Cartesian Dualism, which is the idea that mind and body are different, but that the mind can influence the body and the body can influence the mind. This stated that the mind and body were two separate entities that interact to form the human experience. Descartes is mostly known for his principle that thoughts exist which is known as cogito ergo sum. His reason was since thoughts cannot be separated from him, he existed. Additionally, he stated that if he could doubt, then something or someone must also be doing the doubting, therefore the very fact that he doubted proved his existence. The questions of the mind are a major aspect of psychology hence this could have been the beginning of psychology.
Most inhabitants of the Space Coast do not consider “snow birds”, people that live somewhere else and come to the beach when their home becomes too cold, as residents. I have always wondered what makes members of a group, such as Space Coast residents, disconnect themselves from outsiders. Even psychologists use cultural imperatives to keep unwanted or unqualified people out of the psychological community. The research in the psychological field covers a vast array of disciplines and takes a post-graduate education. Psychologists use cultural imperatives to vet the psychological community and outline the manner in which new research becomes knowledge. I will begin by discussing the origin of psychology and psychology’s growth over time.
For a long time in history, studies of history of psychology have been done in three distinct ways. These domains were as follows: consciousness, psyche, behavior and mental life but every case stood on its own. Psychology was in this case the knowledge domain. Moreover, psychology was composed of various accounts. There was also the case of the society that was composed of views of the world or culture or industrialization. Although the history between these disciplines is not viewed sometimes, there are social aspects that are studied on how they are related to psychology. The often asked question is the relationship between the theories of psychology and its application to human life for instance, individual life, mental life and subjectivity. Presently, efforts by writers to separate the three categories have seen light. Psychology itself cannot exist without a society which supports all its facts. Moreover, psychological object cannot be taken as independent, given, discovered but that which is discovered and comes before knowledge. Psychology can hence be seen in two perspectives: as a discipline and as a subject of human. A conclusion can be made that psychology exists in a domain that is constructed. This is contrary to science domain where truth is constructed.
Psychology is the investigation of the mind and how it processes and directs our thoughts, actions and conceptions. However, in 1879 Wilhelm Wundt opened the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany. Nevertheless, the origins of psychology go all the way back thousands of years starting with the early Greeks. This foundation is closely connected to biology and philosophy; and especially the subfields of physiology which is the study of the roles of living things and epistemology, which is the study of comprehension and how we understand what we have learned. The connection to physiology and epistemology is often viewed as psychology, which is the hybrid offspring of those two fields of investigation.
Turning a complex source of information presented from specialists in a specific field into a news or media article that is understandable and interesting for a general audience can be disastrous if the new article expands the truth or twists the findings from the original complex source. In the case of psychology, news articles published on the internet or in the newspapers can take the complex source of information from an academic article, such as a peer-reviewed journal, and reflect the findings from the academic journal accurately, somewhat skewed or completely inaccurate. These articles about psychology that tailor more to gaining the interest from readers who may not specialize in the topic being discussed are called pop-psychology
Public Safety Officials have been battling the difficult question of profiling for quite a while. The question is how do they know the suspected individual fit the category associated with an offense? While it has been proven that many profiling cases are somewhat directed to a racial profile, it can be proven that people, given the discretion, are able to identify explanations for a series of behavioral events by identifying what that behavior accredits to. This theory, identified by Frite Heider, “suggested that we have a tendency to give casual explanations for someone’s behavior, often by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition,” called the attribution theory. Until recently, a study of the like was considered to be a branch of sociology and not a form of psychology. Social psychology essentially became the focus on the individual rather than the group as a whole. Many thoughtful ideas are collected in response to the studies of social psychology. Human cognition is understood to arise from interacting socially; highlighting the importance of socialization. We use social cognition to develop our explanations and our ideas on why a person’s behavior is/does what it is/does.
Psychology is the scientific study and practical application of observable behavior and mental processes of organisms. Psychology differs from other social sciences such as: Sociology, History, or Economics, because psychology specifically deals with the study of an individual. The other social sciences will study groups, or history. Psychology is less a science of reported findings, it attempts asks and answers questions using observable behavior and what can be determined as mental processes of the subject. The symbol for psychology is the Greek letter “psi” (Ø). The subject matter of psychology is, affect, behavior, and cognition. The affect for psychology is the actual mental processes that make up: moods, feeling, and emotional state. An example for affect would be feeling sad about something happening. Behavior includes the actually actions and responses of organisms. Behavior can include the way we act in any given situation, for example when we get up in the morning. The order in the way we prepare ourselves for going out into public can be categorized as our behavior. Cognition is the actual mental events and the processes that result from them. Memories of an event are a great example of an organism’s cognition. The components and corresponding faces of psychology include the body of knowledge which is considered the teaching face, set of investigative methods or research face, and array of techniques the therapy face. The goals of psychology are: to explain behaviors, to describe behaviors, to predict behavior, and to modify inappropriate behaviors. Explaining behaviors would be a question similar to “Why does this happen?”, and example of how describing behavior could be accomplished would be asking “What causes this behavior, where does it come from?”. Predictions can be elaborated on by asking “When will the behavior occur?”. An example of a behavioral modification question is “What can be changed in the environment to alter this behavior?”. A specialized subfield of psychology that most interests me is, Forensic Psychology, because it would be appealing to me to understand a potential criminal mind and to make the determination if the criminal was sane at the time the crime was committed or if he/she was operating with full judgment. In studying the 9/11 attack on America, a Forensic Psyc...