Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Importance of psychology in society
Importance of psychology in society
Importance of psychology in society
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Importance of psychology in society
Psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and its function. Psychology is used to understand how human’s behavior is effected by their emotional and mental state. Some major contributions to psychology are Evolutionary, Cognitive, and Sociocultural Psychology. Evolutionary Psychology is an approach in the social and natural selection that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It’s a theory that studies how human behavior and mental process changes over time to help individuals adapt to their changing environment; through the principles of natural selection. The founder of Evolutionary psychology is Charles Darwin, but it has also been influenced by ethology, evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, genetics, and …show more content…
In his theory, Darwin argues that most of human behavior is an outcome of psychological adaptations, that are supposed to help solve recurrent problems in human ancestral environments. Evolutionary psychology has made major contributions to psychology. For example, it has helped psychologist figure out that the brain contains specialized neural mechanisms, that are designed to solve problems that recurred during evolutionary time. Evolutionary psychology has also helped psychologist create a hypothesis that states that humans have inherited special mental capacities for adaptations, that help them acquire languages, infer other people’s emotions, identify healthier mates, and help them cooperate well with others (Ghiselin 1973). Today, Evolutionary Psychology is used to identify emotional and cognitive adaptations that represent “human psychological nature” (last name, page # or year made) and its being applied to the study of many fields, including economics, aggression, law, psychiatry, politics, literature, and
Keith Henson a writer in evolutionary psychology once said that “Evolution acts slowly. Our psychological characteristics today are those that promoted reproductive success in the ancestral environment.” Evolution was first introduced by a naturalist by the name of Charles Darwin. Darwin had written an autobiography, at the age of 50, On the Origin of Species (1859) explaining how species evolve through time by natural selection; this theory became known as Darwinism. “Verlyn Klinkenborg, who writes editorials and vignettes on science and nature for the “New York Times”” (Muller 706) questions Darwin’s theory in one of his essays he wrote called Darwin at 200: The Ongoing Force of His Unconventional Idea. Both articles talk about the theory of Darwinism, but the authors’ use different writing techniques and were written in different time periods. Darwin himself writes to inform us on what the theory is, where as Klinkenborg goes on to explain why Darwinism is just a theory. Today, evolution is still a very controversial topic among many. It comes up in several topics that are discussed everyday such as in politics, religion and education.
Smith, S. & Stevens, R. (2002) Evolutionary Psychology, in Miell, D., Pheonix, A. and Thomas, K. (eds) Mapping Psychology 1, Milton Keynes, The Open University.
Evolutionary psychology is the science that strives to explain the behavioral mechanisms behind human actions. In order to study this field evolutionary psychologists recreate problems faced by our primitive ancestors; from these problems Evolutionary Psychology discusses problem-solving adaptations that aim to discover common patterns in human ancestral behaviors. These common behavioral patterns--including mating preferences-- are manifested today throughout a wide variety of cultures on this planet. A fundamental idea of Evolutionary Psychology is Charles Darwin’s concept of natural selection (1859): a) there were ancestral differences among the human species that influenced the survival and reproduction of certain members, and b) individuals
The biological approach to psychology makes the assumption that all behaviours are associated with changes in the brain function and that psychopathology will be caused by a disorder within the brain, neuroanatomy. Many biological psychologists tend to assume that most behaviours, normal and disordered, involve an inherited component from the biological parents. In theory this suggests that all behaviours can be related to changes in brain activity.
Crawford, Charles and Dennis L. Krebs. Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology: Ideas, Issues, and Applications. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998.
10. Provide a detailed definition of evolved psychological mechanism as proposed by evolutionary psychology. Demonstrate a human trait that fits your definition.
Psychology is the scientific study of the mind, brain, and behavior. In psychology, and all of the other sciences, relying on opinions is abandoned in order to find out which explanations best fit the evidence or data given. Science continually forces us to question our findings and conclusions. Over time, psychology has advanced greatly and a main reason for such progressiveness is because of the change in the research model used.
Psychology is a social science that aims to study the mind and the behaviors of humans. It aims to understand what drives humans to act the way they do. It differs from sociology and anthropology in that it takes accounts the individual rather than society as a whole.
According to David Funder, evolutionary psychology attempts to explain behavioral patterns by analyzing how they have many been used for survival and reproduction in past generations. Evolutionary psychology gave special attention to sex differences in mating behaviors, including differences in what men and women find most attractive in each other and the strategies they use to seek and keep mates. In the book The science of Psychology by Laura A. King, stats that psychologists argue, the way we adapt is traceable to problems early humans faced in adapting to their environment. Decisions like aggressiveness, fear, our physical features and body shapes all were had the influence of what our ancestors had to do to survive.
Evolution is consider to be the process in how organisms, like ourselves have grown and changed from other organisms before us. Psychology is the study of the human mind and the functions that would come with it. Since the theory of evolution came about in the biology world, a lot of psychologists believe that evolution has to do a great deal with how we can explain psychological and social behavior. Evolutionary psychology has been a theoretical approach to psychology that tries to point out the traits, like memory, perception, and language as changes to natural selection. Throughout history psychologist all ask the same question to whether or not evolution is a good explanation for the concepts of psychology and even today it is still considered
Like physiology, anatomy and biology, evolutionary psychology examines human behaviour from a Darwinian perspective. That is, like physical traits, psychological ...
The central purpose of this essay is to critically discuss the importance of understanding human evolution and the history of psychology for the modern psychologist. For the human evolution, the essay will be addressing on how we and other species descended from our ancestors and how the different environment has helped to us to become more adaptable. Regarding the history of psychology, the essay will be discussing on how psychology branched off from the philosophy approach to become its own science. The essay will then go on discussing how the understanding of both human evolution and history of psychology would be used by modern psychologist.
Nature versus nurture remains one of the oldest philosophical debates within the field of psychology. Nature refers directly to the genes and the hereditary factors that directly influence who we are, ranging from our individual physical appearance to our personality traits and characteristics. What is interesting to note, is most branches of psychology tend to take one side versus the other kind of approach. Examples of this can be seen in biological psychology where they tend to stress the significance of genetics and biological influences on a person’s behaviors. While behaviorism tends to focus more on the impact that a person’s environment has on their behaviors. Theorist such as John B. Watson believed that people could be trained
When asked to define psychology there so many thoughts that runs through my mind. Psychology is the scientific study of ones thoughts and behavior. People think psychologically every day for example when you try to explain what someone else is doing to another person. There are many fields of study that try to understand how people think and the actions they take. Psychology is used for many different reasons not only do they study the human behavior they also help mental patients and try to figure them out and a problem that they have. Learning the scientific perspective on human behavior can help you develop a curiosity for how the human behavior works (Feist 2013). When studying psychology it not only makes you more aware of how people work in a general setting it also makes you more aware of how you work yourself.
Humans have eloped in many different ways through childhood all the way into adulthood though time. Since the beginning of time humans have always been evolving and adapting to changes in environments or their culture. According to Leda Cosmides & John Tooby “The goal of research in evolutionary psychology is to discover and understand the design of the human mind”.which mans that while studying the evoloution of phsycology you also study the human mind.Different populations have changed over time due to regional effects and different lifestyles. Acco...