CHAPTER ONE

ESSENCE OF PSYCHOLOGY
• 1.1. Definition of Psychology and Related Con-
cepts
• The word "psychology" is derived from two Greek
words 'psyche' and “logos‟.
Psyche refers to mind, soul or sprit
logos means study, knowledge or discourse.
• "Psychology" epistemologically refers to the study
of the mind, soul, or sprit and
• it is often represented by the Greek letter ᴪ (psi)
which is read as ("sy").
• Psychologists define psychology differently based on
their intentions, research findings, and background
experiences.
• Nowadays, most of them agree on :
• Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior
and the underlying mental /mental processes.
Science: psychology uses scientific methods to study
behavior and mental processes in both humans and
animals.
Behavior: refers to all of our outward or overt actions
and reactions, such as talking, facial expressions,
movement, etc.
• There is also covert behavior which is hidden, non-
observable and generally considered as a mental
process
Mental processes: refer to all the internal, covert activi-
ties of our minds, such as thinking, feeling, remem-
bering, etc.
1.2. Goals of Psychology
• psychology has four goals; description, explanation,
prediction, and control.
• Description: Description involves observing the be-
havior and noticing everything about it.
It is a search for answers for questions like:
“What is happening?”
“Where does it happen?‘
“To whom does it happen?” And
“under what circumstances does it seem to happen?.
• Explanation: Why is it happening?
• Explanation is about trying to find reasons for the
observed behavior.
• This helps in the process of forming theories of be-
havior
• Prediction: is about determining what will happen in
the future.
• Control: How can it be changed?
• Control or modify or change the behavior from unde-
sirable one (such as failing in school) to a desirable
one (such as academic success).
1.3. Historical Background and Major Perspectives in
Psychology
• It began as a science of its own in 1879 in Leipzig,
Germany, with the establishment of a psychology
laboratory in the University of Leipzig by Wilhelm
Wundt.
• Wundt developed the technique of objective intro-
spection to scientifically examine mental experi-
ences.
• With such newer orientation to the study of human
subjective experiences that were previously under
the field of philosophy alone,
• psychology then begun as an independent field of
study and with Wundt as its founder or "father of
modern psychology.”
• Once psychology begun to use the scientific method,
it then went through successive developments in
which different schools of thought emerged at differ-
ent times.
• These schools of thought can be categorized as old
and modern as described below.
1.3.1. Early schools of psychology
• A school of thought is a system of thinking about a
certain issue, say.
• There are five such early schools of psychology.
• Structuralism- structuralism views psychology as a
study of structure of mind.
• It is an expansion of Wundt‘s ideas by his student
named Edward Titchener (1867-1927).
• Titchener is the founder of structuralism.
• The goal of structuralists was to find out the units or
elements, which make up the mind such as; sensa-
tions, images, and feelings.
• The best-known method used by them was intro-
spection “looking inward into our consciousness”.
• It is a procedure aimed at analyzing the mental expe-
rience into three basic mental elements: images, feel-
ings, and sensations.
• Analyzing mental structure alone was found to serve
little purpose in helping humans deal with the envi-
ronment.
• Hence, a new school of thought emerged to study
this functional value of human mind-functionalism.
• Functionalism- functionalism views psychology as a
study of function of the mind.
• The founder of this school of thought is William
James (1848-1910), who was the first American psy-
chologist and the author of the first psychology text-
book.
• James focused on how the mind allows people to
function in the real world;
how people work, play, and adapt to their surround-
ings, a viewpoint he called functionalism.
• He developed many research methods other than in-
trospection including questionnaires, mental tests
and objective descriptions of behavior.
• Generally, according to functionalists, psychological
processes are adaptive.
• They allow humans to survive and to adapt success-
fully to their surroundings.
• Examining human mind in terms of its structural el-
ements and functions were, however, found to be
simplistic to understand the complex human being.
• It was believed that human mind is more than the
sum of sensations as well as adaptive functions.
• Hence, a new school of thought was emerged to ex-
amine mind in a holistic manner-Gestalt Psychology.
• Gestalt psychology: Gestalt psychology views psy-
chology as a study of the whole mind.
• Max Wertheimer and his colleagues founded this
school of thought in Germany .
• Gestalt psychologists argued that the mind is not
made up of combinations of elements.
• The German word "gestalt" refers to form, whole,
configuration or pattern.
• According to them, the mind should be thought of as
a result of the whole pattern of sensory activity and
the relationships and organizations within their pat-
tern.
• In brief, the gestalt psychologists acknowledge con-
sciousness.
• They held that "the whole is greater than the sum of
its parts”. Means mind is greater than its parts (im-
ages, sensations, and feelings).
• Behaviorism: behaviorists view psychology as a study
of observable and measurable behaviors.
• John B. Watson is the founder of behaviorism.
• Other proponents include E. Thorndike and F. Skin-
ner.
• For Watson, psychology was the study of observable
and measurable behavior and nothing more about
hidden mental processes.
• According to Watson, we cannot define conscious-
ness any better than we can define the soul; we can-
not locate it or measure it and, therefore, it cannot
be the object of scientific study.
• As to Watson, behaviorism had three other impor-
tant characteristics in addition to its focus on behav-
ior;
conditioned response as the elements or building
blocks of behavior,
learned rather than unlearned behaviors, and
focus on animal behavior.
• Psychoanalysis: psychology studies about the com-
ponents of the unconscious part of the human mind.
• Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is the founder of this
school of thought.
• As a physician, Sigmund Freud became convinced
that some of the physical illnesses of his patients
didn‘t have medical or bodily causes; but non-physi-
cal or emotional causes.
• He called these kinds of illnesses as “hysteria” or
conversion reaction to indicate the conversion of
emotional problems into bodily problems.
• He also underscored that that conflicts and emo-
tional traumas that had occurred in early childhood
can be too threatening to be remembered con-
sciously and therefore they become hidden or un-
conscious and then will remain to affect later behav-
ior.
• Freud argued that conscious awareness is the tip of
the mental iceberg beneath the visible tip lays the
unconscious part of the mind.
• The unconscious which is the subject matter of psy-
choanalysis contains hidden wishes, passions, guilty
secrets, unspeakable yearnings, and conflict between
desire and duty.
• We are not aware of our unconscious urges and
thoughts and they make themselves known in
dreams, slip of the tongue, apparent accidents and
even jokes.
• He used clinical case studies (hypnosis and Dream
analysis) as a method.
• 1.3.2. Modern schools of psychology
• Psychodynamic perspective - It has its origins in
Freud's theory of psychoanalysis, but many other
psychodynamic theories exist.
• This perspective emphasizes the unconscious dynam-
ics within the individual such as inner forces, conflicts
or instinctual energy.
• psychodynamic approach emphasizes:
The influence of unconscious mental behavior on ev-
eryday behavior
The role of childhood experiences in shaping adult per-
sonality
The role of intrapersonal conflict in determining human
behavior
• Psychodynamic perspective tries to dig below the
surface of a person's behavior to get into uncon-
scious motives; psychodynamists think of themselves
as archaeologists of the mind.
• Behavioral Perspective- It emphasizes the role learn-
ing experiences play in shaping the behavior of an
organism.
• It is concerned with how the environment affects
the person‘s actions.
• Behaviorists focus on environmental conditions (e.g.
rewards, and punishments) that maintain or discour-
age specific behaviors.
• The behavioral perspective is sometimes called the
"black box" approach in psychology
• because it treats the mind as less useful in under-
standing human behavior and
• focus on what goes in to and out of the box, but not
on the processes that take place inside
• This means, behaviorists are only interested in the ef-
fects of the environment (input) on behavior (output)
but not in the process inside the box.
• Humanistic Perspective- According to this perspec-
tive, human behavior is not determined either by un-
conscious dynamics or the environment.
• Rather it emphasizes the uniqueness of human be-
ings and focuses on human values and subjective ex-
periences.
• This perspective places greater importance on the
individual‘s free will.
• The goal of humanistic psychology was helping peo-
ple to express themselves creatively and achieve
their full potential or self-actualization (developing
the human potential to its fullest).
• Cognitive Perspective- it emphasizes what goes on in
people's heads;
how people reason,
remember,
understand language,
solve problems,
explain experiences and
form beliefs.
• This perspective is concerned about the mental pro-
cesses.
• The most important contribution of this perspective
has been to show how people's thoughts and expla-
nations affect their actions, feelings, and choices.
• Techniques used to explore behavior from a cognitive
perspective include
electrical recording of brain activity,
electrical stimulation and
radioactive tracing of metabolic activity in the nervous
system.
• Biological Perspective- it focuses on studying how
bodily events or functioning of the body affects be-
havior, feelings, and thoughts.
• It holds that the brain and the various brain chemi-
cals affect psychological processes such as learning,
performance, perception of reality, the experience of
emotions, etc.
• This perspective underscores that biology and behav-
ior interact in a complex way;
biology affecting behavior and behavior in turn affect-
ing biology.
• Socio-cultural Perspective- It focuses on the social
and cultural factors that affects human behavior.
• For instance, social psychologists examine how group
membership affects attitudes and behaviors, why au-
thority and other people (like spouse, lovers, friends,
bosses, parents, and strangers) affect each of us.
• Cultural psychologists also examine how cultural
rules and values (both explicit and unspoken) affect
people's development, behavior, and feelings.
• This perspective holds that humans are both the
products and the producers of culture, and our be-
havior always occurs in some cultural contexts.
 1.4. Branches/Sub Fields of Psychology
• Developmental psychology: It studies the physical,
cognitive and psychological changes across the life
span.
• It attempts to examine the major developmental
milestones that occur at different stages of develop-
ment.
• Social Psychology: deals with people‘s social interac-
tions, relationships, social perception, and attitudes.
• Personality Psychology: it focuses on the rela-
tively enduring traits and characteristics of in-
dividuals.
• Personality psychologists study topics such as
self-concept, aggression, moral development,
etc.
• Cross-cultural Psychology: examines the role of cul-
ture in understanding behavior, thought, and emo-
tion.
• Industrial psychology: applies psychological princi-
ples in industries and organizations to increase the
productivity of that organization.
• Forensic psychology: applies psychological principles
to improve the legal system (police, testimony, etc..).
• Educational Psychology: concerned with the applica-
tion of psychological principles and theories in im-
proving the educational process including curriculum,
teaching, and administration of academic programs.
• Health Psychology : applies psychological principles
to the prevention and treatment of physical illness
and diseases.
• Clinical Psychology:- is a field that applies psycholog-
ical principles to the prevention, diagnosis, and
treatment of psychological disorders.

• Counseling Psychology: - is a field having the same

concern as clinical psychology but helps individuals
with less severe problems than those treated by clini-
cal psychologists.
• 1.5. Research Methods in Psychology
A. Definition of terms
• Scientific method - a process of testing ideas through
systematic observations, experimentations, and sta-
tistical analysis.
• Theory - is an integrated set of principles about ob-
served facts that is intended to describe and explain
some aspects of experience.
• Hypotheses - is a tentative proposition about the re-
lationship between two or more variables or phe-
nomena.
• E.g. Males have high self - confidence in making deci-
sions than females.
B. Major types of research methods
• There are three major types of research methods:
Descriptive,
Correlational and
Experimental research methods.
• Descriptive research: in this type of research, the re-
searcher simply records what she/he has systemati-
cally observed.
• Descriptive research methods include naturalistic ob-
servation, case studies, and surveys.
• I . Naturalistic observation: is a descriptive research
method in which subjects are observed in their natu-
ral environment to get a real (not artificial) picture of
how behavior occurs.
• Limitations of naturalistic observation are
Observer effect (animals or people who know they are
being watched may behave artificially) and
Observer bias (the researcher may not observe sys-
tematically or he/she may observe behaviors he/she
wants to observe and ignores others).
II. Case study: is a descriptive technique in which an in-
dividual is studied in great detail.
Advantage is that it provides tremendous amount of
data about a single case or individual.
Disadvantage of case study is that the researchers can‘t
apply the results to other similar people, which
means what researchers find in one case can‘t neces-
sarily apply or generalize to others.
 III. Survey: is a descriptive research method used to
collect data from a very large group of people.
• It is useful to get information on private (covert) be-
haviors and it addresses hundreds of people with the
same questions at the same time.
• Its disadvantage is that it needs a careful selection of
a representative sample of the actual population.
• Correlational research: is a research method that
measures the relationship between two or more
variables.
• Though correlation tells researchers
if there is a relationship between variables,
how strong the relationship is, and
in what direction the relationship goes,
• It doesn‘t prove causation (which means it doesn‘t
show the cause and effect relationship).
• for example, that if there is a relationship between
smoking and lung cancer, this doesn‘t mean that
smoking causes lung cancer.
• Experimental Research: it is a research method that
allows researchers to study the cause and effect rela-
tionship between variables.
• Experiments involve at least one independent vari-
able and one dependent variable.
• The independent variable is the manipulated, influ-
ential, experimental factor.
• The dependent variable is the factor (behavior) that
is measured in an experiment.
• It can change as the independent variable is manipu-
lated.
• Experiments also involve randomly assigned experi-
mental groups and control groups.
• An experimental group is a group whose experience
is manipulated.
• A control group is a comparison that is treated in ev-
ery way like the experimental group except for the
manipulated factor
 C. Steps of scientific research
• There are at least five major steps :
• Step one –
• Defining the Problem - noticing something attention
catching in the surrounding for which one would like
to have an explanation.
• Step two
• Formulating the Hypothesis: you might form an edu-
cated guess about the explanation for your observa-
tions, putting it into the form of a statement that can
be tested in some way.
• Step three
• Testing the Hypothesis - at this step, the researcher
employs appropriate research methods and collects
ample data (information) to accept or reject the pro-
posed statement.
• Step four
• Drawing Conclusions: this is the step in which the
researcher attempts to make generalizations or draw
implications from tested relationship
• Step five
• Reporting Results - at this point, the researcher
would want to write up exactly what she/he did, why
she/he did, and what she/he found.
• So that, others can learn from what she/he has al-
ready accomplished, or failed to accomplish.
• This allows others to predict and modify behavior
based on the findings.
•THE END