The Nature of Psychology Psychology is the scientific study and practical application of observable behavior and mental processes of organisms. Psychology differs from other social sciences such as: Sociology, story, or Economics, because psychology specifically deals with the study of an individual. The other social sciences will study groups, or history. Psychology is less a science of reported findings, it attempts asks and answers questions using observable behavior and what can be determined as mental processes of the subject. The symbol for psychology is the Greek letter “psi” (Ø). The subject matter of psychology is, affect, behavior, and cognition. The affect for psychology is the actual mental processes that make up: moods, feeling , and emotional state. An example for affect would be feeling sad about something happening. Behavior includes the actually actions and responses of organisms. Behavior can include the way we act in any given situation, for example when we get up in the morning. The order in the way we prepare ourselves for going out into public can be categorized as our behavior. Cognition is the actual mental events and the processes that result from them. Memories of an event are a great example of an organism ’s cognition. The components and corresponding faces of psychology include the body of knowledge which is considered the teaching face, set of investigative methods or research face, and array of techniques the therapy face. The goals of psychology are: to explain behaviors, to describe behaviors, to predict behavior, and to modify inappropriate behaviors. Explaining behaviors would be a question similar to “Why does this happen?”, and example of how describing behavior could be accomplished would be asking “ causes this behavior, where does it come from?”. Predictions can be elaborated on by asking “When will the behavior occur?”. An example of a behavioral modification question is “ can be changed in the environment to alter this behavior?”. A specialized subfield of psychology that most interests me is, Forensic Psychology, because it would be appealing to me to understand a potential criminal mind and to make the determination if the criminal was sane at the time the crime was committed or if he/she was operating with full judgment. In studying the 9/11 attack on America, a Forensic Psyc… … middle of paper … … level of a specific behavioral defect. After all the previous methods have been used, the use of existing data could be of . Using existing data enables the psychologist to draw conclusions using other studies, surveys, observations, and tests to aide in the diagnose and treatment of a depressed person. A depressed person has a decrease in activity at the serotonin synapses. The independent variable would be the activity in the serotonin synapses. The dependent variable is the actual depression. In an experiment there are two types of groups: the experimental, and control groups. The experimental group is the participants who are exposed to the independent variable. The control group is the group of people who are not exposed to the independent variable, the comparison group. Three ethical concerns in psychological research experiments are: do no harm, maintain confidentiality, and the use of deception only when absolutely necessary. In a depression experiment, the do no harm would be observed by only interviewing the subject. The researcher should refrain from any activity that would cause physical, emotional, and or psychological harm to the subject(s) in any of the groups.
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