Significance of Experimental Psychology - Coursework Example

Experimental Psychology Jill L. College Morrison Empire College Psychology Experimental psychologists employ either basic or applied research or both to search about human and animal behavior. The findings then used to promote healthy child development, improve teaching and learning methods, develop safer workplaces or provide insights to improve substance abuse treatment programs. Experimental psychology can be used to study topics such as learning, emotion, motivation, perception, sensation, cognition and applied to bring about change in many real life developmental processes. Part I Some of the facts and learning points can be described as per the following. Classical Conditioning Primarily, it is a learning theory that has its roots in the theory of behaviorism. Ivan Pavlov is known as the father of classical conditioning. In his experimented, he made use of the bell as the neutral stimulus and food as the environmental stimulus to create the salivation response each time when he rang the bell. He established that learning occurs through associations that are formed "between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus". This also means that the environment plays a pivotal role in forming a specific behavior. Thoughts, emotions, feeling or any other mental states are not useful in explaining such behavior. Classical conditioning is successfully applied in real-world settings. Most phobias are the result of some childhood happenings in the life. A frightening experience of dog bite (as an environment stimulus) can create permanent phobia towards all dogs in the life including those where dog is completely docile and harmless. Teachers apply classical conditioning while tutoring so as to remove fear and anxiety in the minds of students and achieve better outcomes. The Stroop Effect The Stroop effect gives clues about fundamental cognitive processes. The Stroop effect informs about limitations of our mental vitality and flexibility. According to the Stroop effect, reading process is an auto process and people read the meaning without much consciousness but at the same time, fail to notice the ink color of the specific word due to lack of directed attention. The cognitive mechanism or directed attention is a scarce resource. Due to this limitation, mental effectiveness cannot last for long resulting into poor decisions. Directed attention facilitates a variety of proenvironmental and prosocial behaviors. It allows us to follow important long term goals regardless of our immediate needs (Kantowitz et al, 2014). Thinking and Problem Solving Thinking is a kind of mental process that usually never stops. However, awareness to thinking makes major difference. Our brain receives a variety of information from environment through our sensory organs and stores that information for future use. With current and stored information, thinking is initiated involving several mental activities such as reasoning, judging, imaging, inferring. When one encounters a problem, thinking is initiated to solve the problem. Whether problem is small or large, thinking is the way to find the solution. To solve a problem, thinking often begins with inductive and ends with deductive reasoning. Problem solving involves directed and focused thinking process; however, on success, it often establishes a Mental Set that leads to incorporating the same technique or strategy to solve the similar problem when one encounters next time. A mental set hinders the quality of our mental activities and it is quite likely that it prevents person solving the next problem (Kantowitz et al, 2014). Cognitive Dissonance Cognitive Dissonance explains our everyday behaviors. While having two contradictory views at the same time, one encounters unpleasant emotion within. This leads to irrational decision making or rationalizing in favor of action that favors us most in a given situation. Dissonance arises due to believing in something but attempting to accomplish something else. Dissonance becomes extremely powerful when matter concerns self-image. Even when one sees other people behaving in a manner different than expected dissonance may occur. Drunkards and smokers produce all kinds of reasons to explain their behavior. Cognitive dissonance is also observed when persuasion is done to change beliefs and values. Personality Traits Personality is a complex phenomena and each person exhibits different traits. Currently, the five-factor model of personality traits is more prevalent or more in agreements among psychologists. They are agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. Agreeableness includes traits such as kindness, trust, affection or other prosocial behaviors. Extraversion includes assertiveness, sociability, and talkativeness including emotional expression. Conscientiousness denotes goal-directed behaviors, high level of thoughtfulness and a high level of self-control. Neuroticism describes tendencies such as anxiety, irritability, moodiness and emotional instability and these are not taken positively. Insight and imagination falls in the category of openness and is also indicative of a broad range of interests. According to the researchers, these personality traits are found in most cultures. Part II Classical conditioning has deeper roots and most people are under its influence. I can feel its influence on me even now. At my age 7, my parents kept me on fruits and vegetables for at least a month when I had some digestion issues. It took me almost a month to recover but my mind became conditioned and averse to those fruits, especially papaya and bottle gourd. Even today those fruits and vegetables make me sick if some day I am made to eat it. My mind associates my ill health with those dishes even today and makes me repulsive. Now I feel that many of my recent actions, feelings or thoughts had its linkages with past incidents though it never appeared to me so. I really explain why I prefer visiting a particular outlet for my shopping. The shop does not offer me any special discounts or any credit to me, but perhaps because my grandpa would often take me there during my childhood to gift me some good clothing and toys. I really wonder if it is a Mental Set that drags me there and prevents me for better solutions. The understanding of experimental psychology has opened up new vistas in my life. After knowing about cognitive dissonance, it now appears me to that I was regularly making fool of myself. When I scan my all past views and current views I find that many of them are not in resonance. Numerous times, I attempted to rationalize my actions to save myself from cognitive dissonance. It clearly appears to me that in the past, I was biased in my actions. Our mind is strange and full of weird thoughts. Many of my class mates in school were not hostile to me even though I used to reject them because their views were not matching with mine. Often, I did not allow them with my group in outing. It is now I realize that differences in views cannot be a criterion to reject someone. In fact, many of my own views have changed drastically when I see the things retrospectively. I am now convinced that many of the findings of experimental psychology are of great help if one wants to evolve in life. It teaches how one can extract more in life through team work. My earlier notion about leadership style was faulty. A way back, I believed military commanders as true leaders because they could order their soldiers to move forward without any question; however, as of now, I strongly feel that a true leadership style involves altogether different leadership traits that display prosocial behaviors including empathy, assertiveness, trust on people, thoughtfulness, imaginativeness and visionary besides being emotionally stable. In a professional life, one interacts with numerous people including colleagues, subordinates, seniors within the organization and customers, suppliers and business partners including social interaction outside the organization and then social psychology principles and its understanding could be of immense help for organizational development and improved outcomes. Thinking process in experimental psychology has a special importance and meaning because it leads to ‘evidential truth’ based on the probabilistic real life findings. It helps people to be more conscious about own thinking process. http://www.nios.ac.in/media/documents/secpsycour/english/chapter-7.pdf References Kantowitz, B., Roediger, H., & Elmes, D. (2014), Experimental Psychology. 10th ed. Cengage Learning. Cherry, K (2014). The Five-Factor Theory of personality. Retrieved November 19, 2014 from http://psychology.about.com/od/personalitydevelopment/a/bigfive.htm References Read More