Wednesday, 10 April 2024
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Hello. All is well. I'm now reading "Psychology 2e" by Rose M. Spielman, William J. Jenkins, and Marilyn D. Lovett. In chapter one, we look into the history of psychology and an overview of modern psychology.

Psychology is the study of mind and behavior. Before the 1800's this study was philosophical. We attempt to make the study scientific by empirical methods. As we learned from the knowledge book, this is obtaining knowledge by observation and experimentation rather than logical reasoning or rationality.

In early psychology, we have structuralism, functionalism, and behaviorism. Structuralism looked at the components of the mind, whereas functionalism looked at the overall function the mind serves. I guess you could say structuralism has similarities with essentialism. Functionalism is inspired from ideas of evolutionary theory, how behavior adapts for survival in an environment. We have psychoanalytical theory, which I gather is a bit of both, where Sigmund Freud is notable. Here we have ideas about relating childhood experiences and our unconscious mind to our adult behavior. The underlying driving forces of behavior. Both of these uses interception (internal perception) to gain knowledge, in opposition, behaviorism focuses on the observable behavior. Ideas such as conditioned reflexes, classical conditioning, the "Skinner box" where an animal is in an isolated environment with a lever or button to trigger a positive reinforcement (rewards) or negative reinforcement (punishment). In short, behaviorism looks at the observable relationship between actions and consequences.

Later on we get humanism, going back into studying the mind, viewing behaviorism as too reductionist, simplifying behavior to deterministic conditioning. Humanism takes a qualitative approach with ideas of humans having an innate potential to be good. Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes from here, and Carl Roger's ideas about client-centered therapy, influencing clinical psychology today. That therapists should have unconditional positive regard, genuineness, and empathy.

In the 1950's, the cognitive revolution begins. Psychology becomes more interdisciplinary, sciences intertwining, together knows as cognitive sciences, e.g. anthropology, linguistics, neuroscience. Noam Chomsky, a linguist, is an early notable person. We look into cultural over representation, most study was done in modern, industrialized societies, but we learn that differences in culture will impact our perception, cooperation, and reasoning.

In modern psychology, there's many specializations. American Psychological Association (APA) is an organization of people, divided into 54 specialities of psychology. We're introduced to 11 categories (overlapping).

1. Biopsychology looks at biological structures like our nervous system, consisting of the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) and the peripheral nervous system (body nerves). Neurodevelopment and neuroscience fit in this category.

2. Evolutionary psychology tries to find the ultimate causes, looking at genetics and adaptation ideas from evolutionary theory.

3. Cognitive psychology looks at relationship between cognition and behavior, interested in understanding attention, memory, problem-solving.

4. Developmental psychology studies maturation of mind and behavior from biological aging. How children and adults are different, for example young children do not have object permanence. Some never gain it, like me, forgetting the cup of tea outside my field of vision I had not intended to drink lukewarm.

5. Personality psychology identifies common patterns, personality traits. A popular model is the Big Five, which to my surprise, has five dimensions to factor personality: Conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extroversion. Our score on each factor is relatively stable throughout lifetime. I am conflicted on this one. I find myself scoring both low and high for each dependent on the social context. I'll probably talk about this later.

6. Social psychology looks at how we interact with each other, e.g. judgements, attractions, interpersonal conflicts.

7. Industrial-Organization (IO) Psychology is about management, structure, and environment at industrial scale. It's interesting the book only mentions the purpose is productivity and efficiency. No mention of resilience.

8. Health psychology looks at interaction between mental and physical health. How psychological, biological, and sociocultural factors relate.

9. Sport and Exercise psychology studies how our mind or mental state impacts our physical performance, e.g. motivation, anxiety. This is useful for sports, military, law enforcement, first respond, and other stressful high-demand activities.

10. Clinical psychology is what we know psychology as from popular media. Here we diagnose and treat psychological disorders or problematic patterns. Cognitive-behavioral therapists looks at emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Similar to counseling psychology.

11. Forensic psychology is used in the justice system. Psychological assessments are used for determining outcomes, sentences and treatments. In practice, person with knowledge of psychology and law acts as expert witness, or treating sentenced criminals, or consulting law enforcement as criminal profilers.

Of the above categories, I find my curiosity drawn to social and industrial-organizational psychology. I'm interested to learn about resilience in large-scale social systems. Its absolute definition and function in theory. Its relative levels of implementation in practice.