Description and Usefulness of Psychology - Essay Example

? Psychology of Psychology In my understanding, psychology refers to a field of study of the human mind in relation to the exhibited behaviors. It entails what one thinks about and using this information to the benefit of the subject or a third party. For example, it would inform on the activities in the mind of a student who has been constantly discriminated against in school, say based on race. This information would help determine the best therapy that would make such a student feel the sense of belonging to the school community again. Indeed, Ash (2004) supports this postulate, noting that up to the early 1990s, psychology was literally defined as the study of human mind and soul. According to this scholar, the term psychology has been derived from two Greek words, psyche and logos, meaning soul or mind and word respectively. Therefore, adopting the definition by Kalat (2013), psychology refers to the science of studying human behavior and mind. Of the many subfields in psychology, this paper focuses on learning, social and developmental psychologies. Learning psychology entails the learnt experiences that could change human behavior. In this context, the theory of operant conditioning, for instance, postulates that punishment and reinforcement serve as learning tools. In the modern context, reinforcement has become popular in shaping children’s behavior positively as people move away from corporal punishment to positive reinforcement. Social psychology studies how the social context influences human behavior. It entails how thoughts, feelings, beliefs, goals and intentions get constructed and how these influence human interactions. The social identity theory in this context postulates that humans need to uphold a positive aspect of not just personal but also social identity, which is partly attained through the emphasis of the desirability of own group, focusing on what distinguishes it from lesser groups. For example, students identify with their school and would always want to it perceived as the best. Finally, studying the progressive psychological changes in humans as they age describes developmental psychology. It considers theoretical areas like emotional, social, biological and cognitive processes. The theory of cognitive development appreciates that humans develop their cognitive abilities through actions that are self-motivated in the world. That explains how children acquire mental representation of information, gradually acquiring habits they learn from adults. 2. What Psychology Means to My People To understand what psychology means to my people, I interviewed my friend, Smith. According to Smith, psychology is a science of studying the thinking of people that causes them to behave the way they do so as to bring out positive aspects from the subject. I sought to find out what informed his definition. The reason he referred to it as a science was because the study entails a lot of learning of human cognition. Psychologists engage in intense research to understand why people behave the way they do at their places of work, learning institutions and homes among others. They use scientific approaches in carrying out these studies. Furthermore, from the thoughts arises human behavior. The way one behaves is a true reflection of what that person thinks. To support this argument, Smith gave the example of a child. When a child refuses to go to school, it could be because such a child has thought of how the school environment is unfriendly. Probably, the child could have thought of how better it would be remaining home to watch television as opposed to being in class. Therefore, thinking inspires behavior in humans, hence the focus of psychology. Finally, just like any other study, psychology intends to relate one’s thinking and behavior to positively benefit people. Therefore, in the explanation of psychology, Smith argues that there has to be an indication that it aims at positively transforming human lives. However, my friend also admitted that psychology could be used for trickery, for example, in seducing someone based on their perceived thinking and not reality. Such acts have been termed as unethical by Kalat (2013). Therefore, whereas psychology enables one to study one’s mind, it should be applied ethically. Albeit my friend, Smith, missed to understand that psychology follows ethical guidelines, he was right to consider it as a science that informs on the behavior of humans based on a study of their thinking. 3. Usefulness of Psychology Psychology plays a critical role in promoting health in human beings. According to Ash (2004), clinical and counseling psychologists have helped many people solve their problems that could threaten their well-being, particularly mental health. Psychology provides appropriate solutions for mental or emotional health problems including schizophrenia and depression. Others include difficulties in thinking, referred to as cognitive problems. Psychology also helps teach on management and coping with health conditions like cancer, HIV/AIDS and chronic pain. Because of their understanding of human mind, psychologists provide psychotherapy effectively. Another aspect in which psychology could be useful is in helping in learning among children. This falls under the docket of educational psychologists. Using psychological knowledge, such professionals engage the student and get to understand the reason for their performance below the expected. This way, they find appropriate solutions to enable effective learning. They also play an important role in advising on appropriate careers for these students, based on the observation of how their minds interact with their behaviors. At workplaces, psychology helps in the realization of a satisfactory working environment. The Human Resource Department observes the behavior of workers to get an insight into their thinking. In case of any dissatisfaction, workers would exhibit rebellious or demoralized tendencies. This way, a corrective approach would be undertaken to have these workers satisfied, hence more productive. As a science, psychology uses scientific studies to determine how human thinking shapes behavior. Even so, I feel that psychological experiments over-rely on animals as their subjects and could therefore be missing out on reliability of their findings in the human context. Take for instance the findings on operant conditioning experiment on animals like birds, dogs and monkeys that relates stimulus to learned action. The learned reaction by animals has been attributed to the animals’ nervous systems of neuronal forms, which take both the basic and primitive reflexes. Whereas these form the main part of the nervous system in animals, it does not apply to humans (Houwer, Fielder & Moors, 2011). Hence, psychological experiments should focus more on human subjects and not animals so as to give reliable findings. Another shortcoming of psychology as observed by Smith, my interviewee, indicates that psychological research depends more on observation, gathering data and establishing a pattern that would be generalized to the greater population. Because behavior could be shaped by complex biological systems, it would be important for psychology to incorporate biochemical, biological and medical approaches in their studies. References Ash, M. G. (2004). The uses and usefulness of psychology. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 600 (1), 99 -114. Houwer, J. D., Fielder, K. & Moors, A. (2011). Strengths and limitations of theoretical explanations in psychology: Introduction to the special section. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6 (2), 161 – 162. Kalat, J. W. (2013). Introduction to psychology. New York, NY: Cengage. Read More