Different Psychological Theories for a Better Grasp of Human Nature - Research Paper Example

Social Bonding and Control Theories PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES Psychological theories are scientific ideologies used by different scholars to provide descriptions of the human mind and its function. They examine various factors that affect behavior of an individual in a particular context. These theories tend to describe the mental characteristics or attitude of a person or group of people. They provide the reason behind the mindset and the mental process of a human being. All theoretical descriptions provided by psychology seek to understand and explain thought, emotion, and behavior. Knowledge of psychology is applicable in various fields. People apply the knowledge in mental health treatment, enhancement of performance, self-help and ergonomics. The study of psychology led to the invention of different schools of thought. Different people use these schools of believed to explain human thought and behavior. These schools of thought appear to be competitive in nature in which they contribute to understanding of psychology. They include Structuralism, Functionalism, Psychoanalysis, Behaviorism, humanism, and cognitivism. Structuralism was the first school of thought to be developed in psychology. The school focused on breaking down mental processes into the most fundamental components. Structuralism used introspection as the primary method of understanding consciousness. Wilhelm Wundt played a significant role in the development of this school of thought. Functionalism created a reaction to the structuralism. It was reinforced by the work done by William James and the evolution theory of Charles Darwin. It is a school of thought that sought to describe the mental processes in a more systematic and accurate manner. It emphasized on the purpose of consciousness and behavior. The school also focused on interpersonal differences that emanate in between individuals and their effects on education. Psychoanalysis is a school founded by Sigmund Freud. He also contributed to the development of the psychodynamic approach to psychology. It emphasized on the use of the unconscious mind on behavior. The developer of this theory believed that the mind of a human being is made up of three elements. These elements are mainly the id, the ego, and the superego. Behaviorism is a school of thought developed by John B. Watson. It relies on the notion that behaviors can be measured, trained and changed. More descriptions of this school of thought were founded in Watson’s classic paper “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it”. The behavioral psychology claims that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning. The type of the environment that an individual interacts with determines the way conditioning occurs to that person. Humanistic psychology is an idea that focused on each potential and stressed the importance of growth and self-actualization. It believes that people are innately good and that mental and social problems result from deviations emanating from the natural tendency. It claims that people have personal agency and that they are motivated to use this free will to pursue things that help them in achieving their full potential as human beings (Freud, 1990). People, therefore, drive their behavior through the need for fulfillment of their potential and personal growth. It influences people to look for new ways to grow, become better and adopt new things in their lives. Cognitivism is school of psychology which highlights significant idea in the topics such as learning styles, attention, memory, and forgetting and language acquisition. It studies mental processes like how people think, perceive, learn and recall ideas. Upon the above-discussed schools of thoughts, various psychological theories have been used to provide more ideas on the same. They are composed of the Behavioral theories, cognitive theories, developmental theories, humanist theories and the personality theories. They also involve all learning theories. Behavioral Theories Behavioral theory is a psychological technique that combines philosophy, methodology and theoretical approaches to describing the behavior. John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner are the significant contributors to the development of these theories. The main influences of these ideas were identified by Ivan Pavlov, who investigated classical conditioning. His experiments examined that classical conditioning depends on stimulus which establishes reflexes and respondent behavior. Pavlov performed an experiment with dogs to interpreter classical conditioning. B. F. Skinner conducted a study on operant conditioning. Skinner investigated that change in behavior is as a result of antecedents and consequences. In these two experiments, the researchers proved that a specific stimulating factor may induce a particular, specific behavior. In the Skinner’s analysis, whenever the rats pressed on the lever, pigeons fell. The rat therefore learned how to associate the lever press with the falling of the pigeons. Other psychologists such as Thorndike and Guthrie contributed to the achievement of remarkable success in training animals to perform unexpected responses that emitted large number of replies. Pavlov also contributed to the development of behavioral theories by performing experiments with a dog. Whenever the bell rang, the dog used to salivate, and the dog received food. The dog therefore learned how to relate the sound with food. The behavior became persistent such that when the bell rang and with no food presentation, the dog used to salivate. These two experiments were used to describe the behavior f different animals including human beings. Behavioral theory plays a significant role in education. It helps in understanding how a deviation in external behavior is achieved through a large amount of repetition of desired actions. The theory provides the need for a reward of good habits and the discouragement of bad habits. In the learning process, there is the need for a great deal of many similar actions, recommendations for correct outcomes and regular correction of mistakes. Cognitive theories Cognitive theory refers to the study of mental processes like attention, use of language, memory, perception, problem-solving, creativity and the way of thinking. The theory addresses on the state of being aware of any new available perceptual information that comes across the human mind. The rate of awareness an individual is mainly determined by the five primary senses. The theory suggests that there are two major types of memory. These memories are the short-term and the long-term memories. Other cognitive psychologists study memory in terms of working memory. The Ebbinghaus experiment described the successive location effect where information from the establishment and at the end of the list of random words was better remembered than those in the middle. Cognitive psychology breaks long-term memory into three sib-classes. These include the procedural memory, semantic memory and episodic memory. Cognitive theory also addresses on the timing of the language acquisition and how it can be used to determine its influence on developing learning disability by a child. The theory concluded that there is the need for making evaluations on various factors that may lead to cognitive problems in an individual. Developmental theories Development psychology theories are theories that divide the life process of a child into distinct stages of development. These phases are associates of qualitative differences in behavior. Developmental theories agree that changes in the body of an individual occur in an orderly way and different areas. Some psychologies perceive development as a continuous process while others views it as a discontinuous process. Many psychologists claim that development t of an individual involves gradual and ongoing changes throughout the life span. Others argue that development involves distinct and separate stages with varied behavior that occur in each phase. Some of the theories developed to explain developmental stages of an individual includes: the Spiral Dynamics by Don Beck and Chris Cowan. Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development t expanded on Freud’s psychosexual stages and James W. Fowler’s stages of faith development theory (Miller, 1983). The emergent Cyclic Levels Theory and the Modular theory of social development founded by Clare W. Graves and Judith Rich Harris respectively gave more explanation on the elaboration of an individual. All these developmental theories depend on the assumption that changes that occur in human life are discontinuous process that involves distinct stages. These phases are characterized by qualitative differences in behavior. Humanist theories Humanistic theories of psychology refer to the ideology that tries to describe the uniqueness that occurs in each. Humanism tends to shift the focus of behavior to the individual/ whole person instead of the unconscious mind, genes, observable behavior. The theory gives a precise description of being a human. It stresses on personal ideas and self-fulfillment of an individual. It is based on the assumptions that all humans have a free will and not all behavior exhibited by people are determined. Humanistic psychology also assumes that all individuals have characteristics that make them appear unique from others. The humanist theories of Rodgers (1959) and Maslow theory (1943) contained similar ideas on human behavior. These two psychologists claim that one can only achieve a proper understanding of human behavior through studying humans but not animals (Maddi, 2008). They proposed that clinicians should consider the individual rather than the average performance of groups in order to understand the behavior. Humanistic theory is based on the following fundamental principles: Human beings, as people succeed the total of their parts. People can be reduced to their components People exist in varied particular human context which includes the cosmic conservationism. People are always aware, and they have always known that they are aware of certain ideas. All individuals have the conscious mind that makes them aware of ones Human beings have choices that identify themselves with specific responsibilities in life. All individuals have specific goals which they intend to fulfill. The theory of humanism tends to reject scientific methodology such as experiments and typically the use of qualitative research method. The process mainly involves the use of open-ended questionnaires, unstructured interviews, and the informal observations to obtain information about human behavior. The publications made the American Psychological Association (Division 32 of APA) provided an idea concerning human behavior and environment. It presented a claim that human action is independent of the environment or emotionless and natural orders of the body. However, this theory is most applied in the evaluation of human behavior than any other theory in psychology. Personality theories Personality theories are psychological theories that tend to describe the nature as a dynamic organization within a person that determines his/her behavior and thoughts. The theory assumes that each contains a unique psychological structure and particular characteristics that make them appear unique when compared with other people. It is based on idiographic and nomothetic view of human behavior (Burke, 2006). Idiographic view claims that every person is unique but sometimes one may not be able to compare different individuals. On the other hand, nomothetic view argues that different individuals can be compared. According the perception of the personality theory, the nature, and the nurture are significant deliverables of personality development. Personality development is described by the Freud’s theory. He claimed that personality of an individual is based on factors such as unconscious processes, psychosexual stages, and instinctual drives like food, sex, and aggression. He went further to claim that personality development of an individual mainly depends on the interaction of the intense behavior and environment during the first five years of development. Freud developed a tripartite theory of personality. His theory claimed that nature can be structured in three distinct parts. These subdivisions are the ego, the id, and the superego. Ego is a personality structure that operates to mediate between the improbable id and the external. It acts as a decision-making component of personality. Ego resembles the aspects of personality explained by the reality principle. It describes realistic ways of satisfying the requirements in the id. It considers social realities and norms, etiquette and rules in deciding how to behave. The id is described as a primordial and natural component of individuality. It is made up of inherited elements of personality like sex and aggressive deaths. The superego integrates the values and morals of the society learned from one’s parents and others. It resembles the conscience that punishes the ego through causing feelings of guilt. These structures give the psychological knowledge behind the uniqueness of individuals. Learning theories Learning theories are theoretical frameworks that describe how individuals absorb, processes and retain information during the learning activity. These theories focus on the cognitive, emotional and environmental influences as the primary determiners of the learning process. Most behaviorists perceive learning as a way of conditioning that advocates a reward and intention in education. Many cognitive descriptions of learner claim that learning should be accompanied by a change in behavior as a result of the acquisition of knowledge. The ideology of constructivism claims that the capability of learners to obtain knowledge depends on the extent of the knowledge that the student already knows and understands (Gray, 2012). The acquisition of knowledge should, therefore, be an individually driven activity. Transformative learning theory stresses on the most frequent and acceptable change that is required in the learner’s preconceptions and world view. Different philosophers posed questions in the psychology of education. Concepts contained in the Plato, and the Locke documentation try to relate philosophy to psychology of learning. The Plato admitted that one could not acquire knowledge without accepting that he/she does not know. It proclaimed that education is mainly based on remembering knowledge that once held in the past lives. Plato defined learning as a passive and impressions cannot be made on the mind of an individual unless the soul of a person had already obtained that knowledge. Locke argued that people are born in a blank state. He claimed that a person should achieve some experiences for him/her to acquire knowledge. Locke also believed that learning is a passive process. People should, therefore, stagger to perceive experiences which facilitate learning. All the theories of learning focus on behavior as an outcome of learning. In conclusion, the above-discussed theories focus on the mental activities as the significant subject to behavior changes in the life period of a person. The brain acts as the central part of concern by all these psychological theories. References Burke, P. J. (2006). Contemporary social psychological theories. Stanford, Calif: Stanford Social Sciences. Freud, S., Strachey, J., In Freud, A., In Rothgeb, C. L., Richards, A., & Scientific Literature Corporation. (1990). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth Press. Gray, C., & MacBlain, S. (2012). Learning theories in childhood. Los Angeles, [Calif.: SAGE. Maddi, S. R., & Costa, P. T. (2008). Humanism in personology: Allport, Maslow, and Murray. New Brunswick, N.J: AldineTransaction. Miller, P. H. (1983). Theories of developmental psychology. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman. Read More