It is the scientific study of mental processes and behaviour. Psychology observes and records how people and other animals relate to one another and to the environment. They look for patterns that will help them understand and predict behaviour, and they use scientific methods to test their ideas.
The origins of psychology are often traced back to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who was interested in what the human mind could accomplish. He even believed that the mind or soul called the psyche, was separate from the body. Hence the word psychology comes from the Greek words psyche(mind or soul) and logia(study).
The research findings of psychology has greatly increased the understanding of why people act the way they do.
Psychology and other sciences-
1. Psychology is closely related to biology as it too studies the abilities, needs, and activities of humans and animals while only restricting to the analysis of the brain and nervous system.
2. Psychology is also related to the social sciences of anthropology and sociology as it too investigates the attitudes and relationships of humans in the social settings and are interested in the beliefs and feelings that influence a person’s actions.
The major fields of psychology are-
1. Abnormal psychology- (deals with behaviour disorders and disturbed individuals)
2. Clinical psychology- (makes a diagnose and treats mental disorders, emotional illness and adjustment problems)
3. Comparative psychology- (explores the differences and similarities in the behaviour of animals of different species)
4. Developmental psychology- (studies the emotional, intellectual, and social changes that occur across the life span of human beings)
5. Educational psychology- (attempts to improve teaching methods and materials, to solve learning problems and to measure learning ability and educational progress)
6. Industrial psychology- (concerned with people at work and how to make jobs more rewarding or how to improve worker’s performance)
7. Learning- (examines how lasting changes in behaviour are caused by experience, practice or training)
8. Motivation- (study of what conscious and unconscious forces cause humans and animals to behave as they do)
9. Perception- (study of how an organism becomes aware of objects, events, and relationships in the outside world through its senses)
10. Personality- (refers to the characteristics that make individuals different from one another, it investigates the development of a personality, the chief personality types, and the measurement of their traits)
11. Physiological psychology- (examines the relationship between behaviour and body structures or functions, especially the nervous system)
12. Social psychology- (studies the social behaviour of individuals and groups, with special emphasis on the effect on behaviour by the presence or influence of other people)
13. Neuropsychology- (combined study of actual neural processes with their subjective mental effects produced)
There are other myriad specialties of psychology now, namely, cognitive, mathematical, and quantitative analysis of behaviour.
Psychology is a discipline of not just academics but of its actual application too and incorporates the practical appliance of its enriched knowledge to the many spheres of life. The various insights provided by psychology have helped people function better as individuals, friends, family members, workers and to fulfill their potential as thinking, feeling, understanding and responsive beings.
We at EDULINK seek to tackle the subject psychology as not descriptive but explanatory by foreseeing its relevance to various other realms of the literal and the real. Psychology pertains to a strong natural science base with a social science inclination and concentration hence making it a broader field of study. The assignment help includes in its research the chief techniques of naturalistic observation, systematic assessment, and experimentation by also assimilating in its answers the hypothesis of the four major schools of psychology, namely, structuralism, behaviorism, gestalt psychology, psychoanalysis.