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Principles of Human Behavior and Psychological Approaches

Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Behavior includes all the overt or
observable actions and reactions such as talking, facial expressions, and movement. Mental processes refer to
all covert or internal activity of our minds such as thinking, feeling, and remembering.

Most psychologists would argue that the field should be receptive to a variety of viewpoints and approaches.
Consequently, the phrase “behavior and mental processes” in the definition of psychology must be understood
to mean many things: It encompasses not just what people do, but also their thoughts, emotions, perceptions,
reasoning processes, memories, and even the biological activities that maintain bodily functioning.

Psychologist try to describe, predict, and explain human behavior and mental processes, as well as helping to
change and improve the lives of people and the world in which they live. They use scientific methods to finds
answers that are far more intuition and speculation, which are often inaccurate.

I. Goals of Psychology
A. The first goal of psychology is description because the first step in understanding anything is to give it
a name. When you observe a behavior and note everything about it: what is happening, where it
happens, to whom it happens, and under what circumstances it seems to happen, that is description.

B. The second goal of psychology is explanation. Finding explanations for a certain behavior is a very
important step in the process of forming theories of behavior. This answers the question: “Why is the
behavior happening?” But of course, psychologists use tests before being able to explain behavior.
They don’t just arrive at an explanation immediately after observation and description, unlike what we
did.

C. Prediction is the third goal of psychology. It is determining what will happen in the future. Here, you ask
the question: “When will it happen again?” It is from this goal that people usually think that a psychologist
knows what a person thinks. However, this is not the reality since psychologists has to do a series of
observations, description, and explanation of one’s behavior before being able to predict.

D. Control is the fourth goal of psychology. It is the modification of some behavior. Psychologists control
to change the behavior from undesirable to a desirable one. This goal answers the question: “How can
it be changed?” Remember that not all psychological investigations try to meet all of these four (4)
goals. There are some cases wherein a study aims to describe and predict only, for instance.

II. Roots of Psychology

Seven thousand (7000) years ago, people assumed that psychological problems were caused by evil spirits.
To allow those spirits escape from a person’s body, ancient healers chipped a hole in a patient’s skull with
crude instruments – a procedure called trephining.

According to the 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes, nerves are hollow tubes through which “animal
spirits” conducted impulses in the same way that water is transmitted through a pipe. So when a person got
close to a fire, heat was transmitted to the brain through the tubes.

Franz Josef Gall, an 18th century physician, argued that a trained observer could discern intelligence, moral
character, and other basic personality characteristics from the shape and number of bumps on a person’s
skull. His theory gave rise to the field of phrenology, employed by hundreds of practitioners in the 19th
century.

Although these explanations might sound far-fetched, in their own times, they represented the most advance
thinking about what might be called the psychology of the era. Our understanding of behavior has
progressed tremendously since the 18th century, but most of the advances have been recent. As sciences
go, psychology is one (1) of the new kids on the block.

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Furthermore, psychology, before it became an independent field of study, came from philosophy and
physiology. Psychology came from the words “psyche” and “logos”, which mean soul and study,
respectively. It was the philosophers who first wrote about the soul. These philosophers understood and
explained the human mind and its connection to the physical body.

Aristotle wrote about the relationship of the soul to body. He said that both were aspects of the same
structure. Plato, on the other hand, wrote about dualism, which tells us that the soul could exist separately
from the body. Descartes said that the pineal gland was the seat of the soul.

Conversely, medical doctors and physiologists studied the physical connection between the body and the
brain. Physician and physicist Gustav Fechner did the first scientific experiments on perception. This
became the basis for experimentation in psychology. Physician Hermann von Helmholtz performed
groundbreaking experiments in visual and auditory perception.

III. Early Perspectives in Psychology

A. Wilhelm Wundt, a physiologist, attempted to apply scientific principles in the study of the human mind.
He did his study about the structure of the human mind in his laboratory in Leipzig, Germany in 1879.
He said that the human mind consists of thoughts, experiences, emotions, and others. All these abstract
or non-physical elements could be and were studied through objective introspection. Objective
introspection is the process of objectively examining and measuring one’s own thoughts and mental
activities.

B. Wundt’s student, Edward Titchener, brought Wundt’s ideas to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
The focus of his study was still on the structure of the mind, meaning structuralism. He believed that
every experience could be broken down into its individual emotions and sensations.

C. William James focused on how the mind allows people to function in the real world – how they work,
play, and adapt to their surroundings. This field was called functionalism.

D. “Gestalt” is a German word meaning “good form/figure”. It was Max Wertheimer who adapted this idea
of psychology. He felt that psychological events such as perceiving and sensing could not be broken
down into any smaller elements and still be properly understood. This field of psychology was known
for the statement, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.

E. Sigmund Freud, a medical doctor in Austria specializing in neurology, focused on how the unconscious
mind controls much of the conscious behavior. Back in his time, the Victorian Age, there was an intense
sexual repression. This repression led to push all threatening urges and desires to the unconscious
mind. Some of these repressed thoughts eventually come out in different ways in a person’s life. This
could be treated through psychotherapy. Psychoanalysis explains that human behavior is dictated by
the unconscious mind where thoughts, feelings, memories, and other information are kept and cannot
be brought easily to consciousness. It sees human development as something linked to sexuality as it
is focused heavily on sex drive.

F. John B. Watson focused on the observable behavior including observable stimuli and responses. This
is called behaviorism. Ivan Pavlov experimented with dogs on conditioning. Knowing that dogs salivate
at the sight of food, he paired the food with the ring of the bell. Before, the ring of a bell would produce
no response to the dog. After conditioning – ring the bell, give the dogs food, and they would salivate –
the dog would salivate to the sound of the bell even if the food was not yet presented.

IV. Modern Perspectives in Psychology

A. Psychodynamic perspective/psychodynamics is the modern version of Freud’s psychoanalysis. Its
focus is still on the unconscious mind and its influence on the conscious behavior and early childhood
experiences, but less emphasis on sex and sexual motivation, and more on the development of a sense
of self and the discovery of other motivations behind a person’s behavior.

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B. Behavioral perspective/behaviorism was continued by B.F. Skinner through operant conditioning. Here,
behavior is either reinforced or punished. Reinforcements increase the behavior while punishments
decrease it.

C. Humanism emphasizes free will and human potential. The famous founders of this view were Abraham
Maslow and Carl Rogers. They believed that people have free will, the freedom to choose their own
destiny, and people have human potential, the ability to be the best person one could be.

D. Biopsychological perspective/biopsychology sees behavior as a direct result of events in the body. Part
of these biological causes of behavior and mental events are hormones, brain chemicals, activities of
the nervous system, genetic influences, tumors, and diseases.

E. Cognitive perspective puts focus on memory, intelligence, perception, thought processes, problem
solving, language, and learning. Famous cognitive psychologists were Piaget and Chomsky.

F. Sociocultural perspective sees the relationship of social behavior and culture. It combines social
psychology, the study of groups, social roles, and rules of social action and relationships and cultural
psychology, the study of cultural norms, values, and expectations. It tries to answer whether a
generalized behavior applies to a particular culture or not.

G. Evolutionary perspective focuses on the biological bases for universal mental characteristics that all
humans share. It seeks to explain general mental strategies and traits, such as why we lie, how
attractiveness influences mate selection, why fear of snakes is so universal, and why people like music
and dancing, among many others.

V. Subfields of Psychology
A. In the most fundamental sense, people are biological organisms. Behavior neuroscience is the subfield
of psychology that mainly examines how the brain and the nervous system – but other biological
processes as well – determine behavior.

B. If you have ever wondered why you are susceptible to optical illusions, how body registers pain, or how
to make the most of your study time, experimental psychology can answer these questions. It is the
branch of psychology that studies the processes of sensing, perceiving, learning, and thinking about
the world.

Several subspecialties of experimental psychology have become specialties in their own right. One is
cognitive psychology, which focuses on higher mental processes including thinking, memory,
reasoning, problem solving, judging, decision making, and language. For example, a cognitive
psychologist might be interested in what the survivors of the downed flight remembered about
experience.

C. A baby producing his/her first smile… taking his/her first step … saying his/her first word, these universal
milestones in development are also singularly special and unique for each person. Developmental
psychology studies how people grow and change from the moment of conception through death.
Personality psychology focuses on the consistency in people's behavior over time and the traits that
differentiate one from another.

D. Frequent depression, stress, and fears that prevent people from carrying out their normal activities are
topics that would interest a health psychologist, a clinical psychologist, and a counseling psychologist.
Health psychology explores the relationship between psychological factors and physical ailments or
disease. For example, health psychologists are interested in assessing how long-term stress can affect
physical health and in identifying ways to promote behavior that brings about good health (Belar, 2008;
Yardley & Moss-Morris, 2009, as cited by Feldman, 2011).

Clinical psychology deals with the study, diagnosis, and treatment of psychological disorders. Clinical
psychologists are trained to diagnose and treat problem that range from the crises of everyday life, such
as unhappiness over the breakup of a relationship, to more extreme conditions, such as profound,
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lingering depression. Some clinical psychologists also research and investigate issues that vary from
identifying the early signs of psychological disturbance to studying the relationship between family
communication patterns and psychological disorders.

Like clinical psychologists, counseling psychologists deal with people's psychological problems, but the
problems they deal with are more specific. Counseling psychology focuses primarily on educational,
social, and career adjustment problems. Almost every college has a center staffed with counseling
psychologists. This is where students can get advice on the kinds of jobs they might be best suited
methods of studying effectively, and on strategies for resolving everyday difficulty such as problems
with roommates and concerns about a specific professor's grading practices. Many large business
organizations also employ counseling psychologists to help employees with work-related problems.

E. Our complex networks of social interrelationships are the focus for many subfields of psychology. For
example, social psychology is the study of how people's feelings and actions are affected by others.
Social psychologists concentrate on such diverse topics as human aggression, liking and loving,
persuasion, and conformity.

F. Cross-cultural psychology investigates the similarities and differences in psychological functioning in

and across various cultures and ethnic groups. For example, cross-cultural psychologists examine how
cultures differ in their use of punishment during child rearing.

VI. Importance of Psychology

A. Self-knowledge. We can gain a better understanding of who we are and the causes of our behaviors by
learning about psychology findings. Randomized experiments can provide us insight into the true
causes of our behaviors. Moreover, personality tests may give us knowledge of our own personality
helping us to develop our personal goals.

B. Learning about others. We can gain an understanding of others to improve our social relationships.

C. Solving important problems. Theories and findings in psychology may help us to solve important
problems. Some psychological studies may be able to make causal conclusions about whether certain
strategies are likely to be effective.

References:
Bell, Brad. (n.d.). Importance of psychology. Retrieved from
www.psychologyandsociety.com/psychologyimportance.html
Ciccarelli, Saundra & Meyer, Glenn. (2007). Understanding psychology. Singapore: Pearson Education South
Asia.
Feldman, Robert. (2011). Essentials of understanding psychology (9th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc.
Haper, Douglas. (2001-2012). Psychology. Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved from
www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=psychology
Myers, Anne & Hansen, Christine. (2006). Experimental psychology (6th ed.). Singapore: Wadsworth Thomson
Learning Asia.

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