Video Lesson

Lesson Objectives

• Have you ever ad anything about  psychology?
• What was its content about?
• heard or What do you think bout psychology?
• Did you appreciate it?
• What do you expect from psychology course?

Brain storming questions

• What comes to your mind when you hear about the word psychology
• Have you ever heard about, read or listened to anything related to psychology?
• What was its content about?
• Did you appreciate it? Why?
• What do you expect from the course in psychology?

Key terms and concepts

Historical development of psychology

•Psychology as a science was started in 1879 in Leipzig Germany by a man called Wilhelm Wundt (known as  “the father of modern psychology”)

•There, Wilhelm Wundt, setup a laboratory in 1879 to study conscious experience to study introspection,Until 1920, psychology remained as the science of mental life.But later [1920-1960] psychology becomes a science of behavior.

•From 1960 onwards psychology becomes a science of both mental process and behavior.

Early schools of psychology

Each school of psychology  has it own peculiar ways of studying a psychological points of concern

•Each five early schools of psychology differ in three significant ways.

·The object of the study or  what they studied (conscious mind, unconscious mind, and overt behavior).

·The goal (analyzing the components of mind or observing the effect of the environment on behavior). The method they uses (Introspection, observation, clinical case studies, …)

Structuralism

focused on uncovering the fundamental mental components or units or elements of perception, consciousness, thinking, emotions, and other kinds of mental states and activities.

•Analyzing mental structure alone was found to serve little purpose in helping humans deal with the environment and later a new school of thought emerged.

•Functionalism

•American psychologist William James

•Functionalism concentrated on what the mind does and how behavior functions in the real world.

•functionalism examined how behavior allows people to satisfy their needs and how our “stream of consciousness” permits us to adapt to our environment.

•It focuses on how the mind allows people to function in the real world,  how people work, play, and adapt to their surroundings.

•He developed many research methods including questionnaires, mental tests and objective descriptions of behavior.

•Both structural and functional stances found to be simplistic to understand the complex human being.

. Gestalt psychology

•Max Wertheimer and his colleagues from Germany in 1911.

•The German word “gestalt” refers “whole”, “configuration” or “pattern”

•Gestalt psychology views psychology as a study of the whole mind and argued that the mind is not made up of combinations of elements.

• they asserted that mind should be thought of as a whole pattern of sensory activity and the relationships and organizations within their pattern

• they acknowledge consciousness. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” →Means mind is greater than its parts (images, sensations, and feelings)

The Goals of Psychology

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”

The Goals of Psychology

1.Description: includes naming and classifying, is typically based on making a detailed record of behavioral observations.

What is the nature of this behavior? What is happening? Where does it happen? To whom does it happen? And under what circumstances does it seem to happen? 

2.Explaining: usually implies when we state the causes of a behavior and find explanations for the observed behavior by referring some theories of behavior.

Why does it occur?

3. Prediction: is the ability to forecast behavior accurately

t is about determining what will happen in the future. 

Can we forecast when it will occur?

4. Control: imply to altering conditions that affect behavior.

•It encompasses Controlling or modifying  or changing the behavior from undesirable one to a desirable one .

•It is about how can the behavior can be changed?

The Importance of Psychology

Psychology is an important and influential field of study for several key reasons:

1.Understanding human behavior and mental processes:

• Psychology provides insight into the complex factors that shape our thoughts, emotions, and actions.
• By studying the underlying mechanisms of behavior, psychology helps us better understand ourselves and others.

2.Improving mental health and well-being:

• Psychological research and clinical practice have led to the development of effective treatments for mental health disorders, such as depression, anxiety, and trauma.
• Psychologists work to promote mental health, prevent psychological problems, and enhance overall well-being.

3.Enhancing personal and interpersonal relationships:

• Knowledge of psychology can help individuals improve their communication, conflict resolution, and empathy skills.
• Understanding the social and cognitive factors that influence human interactions can lead to more fulfilling and meaningful relationships.

4.Informing educational practices

• Psychological principles and research have shaped teaching methods, curriculum design, and learning environments to better support student development and academic achievement.

5.Guiding organizational and workplace dynamics:

• Industrial-organizational psychology applies psychological theories and methods to improve employee motivation, job satisfaction, leadership, and organizational performance.

6.Addressing societal issues and informing public policy:

• Psychological research can inform policies and interventions related to topics such as public health, criminal justice, environmental sustainability, and social justice.

7.Expanding our understanding of the human experience:

• Psychology contributes to our overall knowledge of the human mind and behavior, expanding our appreciation for the diversity and complexity of the human condition.

8.Fostering personal growth and self-awareness:

• Studying psychology can help individuals gain a deeper understanding of their own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, leading to personal development and self-improvement.

By providing a comprehensive and scientific approach to the study of the mind and behavior, psychology plays a crucial role in enhancing our understanding of ourselves and the world around us, ultimately leading to improvements in individual and societal well-being.

Research Methods in Psychology

A. Definition of terms

Before getting into research methods, it is important to start with discussion of scientific
method. At the beginning of this chapter, we said that psychology is the scientific study of
behavior and mental processes. This means, in psychology, researchers want to see only what
is there, not what their biases might want them to see. Researchers do this by using the
scientific method (a system for reducing bias and error in the measurement of data). Hence,
before discussing the types of research methods; we try to see the following terms

• Scientific method – a process of testing ideas through systematic observations, experimentations, and statistical analysis.
• Theory – is an integrated set of principles about observed facts that is intended to describe and explain some aspects of experience
• Hypotheses – is a tentative proposition about the relationship between two or more variables or phenomena. E.g. Males have high self – confidence in making decisions than females.

B. Major types of research method

Although all psychologists pursue the same scientific method, there is, however, diversity in
what psychologists do to achieve the different objectives and goals. Hence, there are three
major types of research methods: descriptive, correlational and experimental research
methods.

Descriptive research – in this type of research, the researcher simply records what she/he has
systematically observed. Descriptive research methods include naturalistic observation, case
studies, and surveys.

• Naturalistic observation: is a descriptive research method in which subjects are observed in their natural 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 systematically or he/she may observe behaviors he/she wants to observe and ignores others).
• Case study: is a descriptive technique in which an individual is studied in great detail. Its advantage is that it provides tremendous amount of data about a single case or individual. 18 The 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 necessarily apply or generalize to others.
• 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) behaviors 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. A variable is anything that can change or vary –scores on a test, the
temperature in a room, gender, and so on. For example, a researcher might be curious to
know whether or not cigarette smoking is connected to life expectancy.
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). This means, 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 relationship between variables. In experimental research, a carefully regulated
procedure in which one or more factors believed to influence the behavior being studied are
manipulated and all other factors are held constant. Experiments involve at least one
independent variable and one dependent variable. The independent variable is the
manipulated, influential, experimental factor. The dependent variable is the factor (behavior)
that is measured in an experiment. It can change as the independent variable is manipulated.
For example, a researcher may need to know whether or not class size has an effect on
students‘ academic performance and hypothesizes as ―do students in small class size have
better academic performance than students in large class size?‖ In this question, the
researcher has two variables: class size, which is the independent variable to be manipulated
and students‟ performance which is the dependent variable to be measured while class size
is changed.
Experiments also involve randomly assigned experimental groups and control groups. An
experimental group is a group whose experience is manipulated. In our example, the
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experimental group is students who are assigned in small class sizes. A control group is a
comparison that is treated in every way like the experimental group except for the
manipulated factor (class size). The control group serves as a baseline against which the
effects of the manipulated condition can be compared. In this example, the control group is
the group of students who are assigned in large class sizes.
Although experimental research is useful to discover causes of behaviors, such research
must be done cautiously because expectations and biases on the part of both the researcher
and participants can affect the results.

C. Steps of scientific research

Step one – Defining the Problem – noticing something attention catching in the surrounding
for which one would like to have an explanation. For example, you may notice that children
seem to get a little more aggressive with each other after watching practically violent
children‘s cartoon videos. You wonder if the violence in the cartoon video could be creating
aggressive behavior on the children. Hence, you may raise a research problem focusing on
the effect of aggressive videos on children‘s behavior.

Step two – Formulating the Hypothesis – after having an observation on surroundings
(perceiving the problem), you might form an educated guess about the explanation for your
observations, putting it into the form of a statement that can be tested in some way. For our
example above, you might formulate a hypothesis ―children who watch violent cartoons will
become more aggressive than those who watch non-violent cartoons‖.

Step three – Testing the Hypothesis – at this step, the researcher employs appropriate
research methods and collects ample data (information) to accept or reject the proposed
statement. For instance, in the above example, the data will be gathered from children who
watch aggressive videos and from those who do not watch aggressive videos and make
comparisons between the behaviors of the two groups to determine whether watching
aggressive video makes children more aggressive.

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 already accomplished, or failed to accomplish. This allows others to predict and
modify behavior based on the findings.

Early school of Though

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