Psychology Assignment Discussion Project

Introduction to psychology

Holley Simmons

Walden University

Introduction to psychology

Psychology deals with the scientific study of the mind and the behavior of a person. The word psychology is derived from two Greek words, “psyche” and “logos” which mean life and explanation respectively. Therefore, psychology generally is the meaning of life where we endeavor to understand life. In everyday life we apply psychology either knowingly or unknowingly with popular television shows such as Dr. Phil utilizing psychologists to help people understand what they are going through. There are many types of psychologists, each dealing with a certain specific aspect of life (Mangal, 2019). Examples of this include school counselors, marriage and family therapists, religious therapists among many others.

Engagement statements/ questions:

· What is your opinion on what psychology is?

· What do you expect to learn in this course?

Point 1. Why is using intuition about everyday behavior insufficient for a complete understanding on the causes of behavior?

Psychologists rely on existing research which is based on scientific methods to understand the causes of a behavior. Therefore, utilizing intuition to carry out an activity which is achieved using scientific methods is not possible. However, human being is often compelled to utilizing their intuition to understand their behavior and in essence, they get to learn the principles of human behavior (Ross, 1977).

Examples of this instances include:

· Tendency to be depressed after failing at something important

· Giving bad news often leads to being blamed even in instances where one is not responsible for the bad news.

Scientific data is based mostly on these observations. However, it is not advisable to utilize intuition because it is not particularly thorough. Often one explanation of a behavior is taken as long as it seems right, however, there exists other explanations which are not taken into consideration. An example of this is where eyewitnesses are overconfident in the identification of a crime perpetrator. However, research has shown that they are often overconfident in incidences where they are wrong. Psychology Assignment Discussion Project

When using intuition, there are cognitive and motivational biases which may influence the way we interpret a behavior. This often led to drawing of erroneous conclusions. Therefore, it is important to accept the explanations of events after they have been scientifically tested to ensure that the conclusion made is not erroneous but the facts.

More often, after being presented by the results of a scientific research, one believes that they would have made a similar inference. Therefore, many people tend to disregard the importance of research since they believe that research arrives at similar conclusions as theirs. However, this feeling is caused by hindsight bias where after learning the results, we often connect it with examples in real life which support the findings. These examples may not come into mind without having read the examples and consequently, one may not have arrived at similar conclusions as the research (Krueger & Funder, 2004).

Questions for interaction:

· Can you provide examples where hindsight bias might come into play?

· An exercise of this is where students are presented with findings on a research on the attraction between people. 50% of the students are presented with research findings that opposites attract while the other 50% are presented with research findings that birds of a feather flock together. In both instances, the students are likely to agree with the findings of the research and would believe that they would have arrived at a similar conclusion. However, it has been proven that the findings of birds of a feather flock together is the correct inference.

Point 2. Difference between values and facts and how scientific method is used to differentiate between the two

Values are personal statements which are not based on facts while facts are objective statements which have been proven to be accurate trough an empirical study.

Ask the class to provide examples of statements that portray values and those that portray facts (Cohen, 2011).

Examples

· Values: Studying psychology is important, I am a good person

· Facts: the heart normal resting heart rate is 60 to 100 beats per minute

Values should not be the basis for the creation of facts. However, people often utilize facts to create their values. This would consequently inform their decision-making process. An example of how facts may impact values is an incidence where research has proven that capital punishment leads to a reduction in the crime rate. Making this research finding known may lead to people developing the value that capital punishment is good.

Research may prove a point and it is taken as a fact. However, advances in technology and upon further research, this may be proven to be incorrect and hence it be classified as a value rather than a fact. This proves that scientific methods are not always correct, however, they provide the best approach to drawing objective conclusions and understanding what is going on around us (Cohen, 2011).

Psychology utilizes levels of explanation which provides perspectives towards understanding a behavior. The lower levels explanation is influenced by biological factors such as genes and hormones, the middle levels explanation is influenced by individual characteristics while the higher-level explanation is influenced by social groups, organizations, and cultures. While intuition may take one approach only, psychology takes a multilevel integrative analysis which enables the conclusion to be more reliable (Cohen, 2011). Examples of this levels using depression:

· Lower level. Depression is partly influenced by genetics

· Middle level. Depressed people interpret events in a negative manner.

· Higher levels. Women are more susceptible to depression than men.

The application of the results of a research in psychology may prove to be problematic. The predictions which are made are mostly probabilistic. An example of this is where people who score highly in intelligence tests are predicted to do better as compared to those who score lower. This might be the case for a majority of the people, but there is a defiant population where even with a high score in the intelligence tests, they do not do better when compared to those who score lower. Psychology Assignment Discussion Project

Point 3: The many disciplines of psychology

Contrary to the belief of many, psychology is not one but rather a collection of many sub disciplines. They share a common some common approaches and exchange knowledge to arrive at one coherent discipline known as psychology (Gangestad, & Tybur, 2016). They include:

· Cognitive psychology. This is field of psychology which utilizes brain imaging and reaction time to study memory, language and thinking.

· Developmental psychology. These deals with the cognitive, notional and social changes which take place in the life of an individual.

· Health psychology. These deals with the impact that biology, behavior and social situations impact health and illness.

· Personality psychology. These aim at understanding people and the differences which occur between them.

· School and educational psychology. This field helps to study how people learn in school, the effectiveness of the school programs and the psychology of teaching.

Give the class an opportunity to provide other examples of sub disciplines of psychology.

As you can see, there are many areas in which one can choose to study psychology. This is an interesting field and it allows one to get an understanding of what happens in a specific area of life.

Activity

The activity to utilize in this case is the use of a quiz to test the understanding of the students. The score of the quiz will be used to determine whether or not the students have been able to understand the learning activities. The answer the the quiz will be graded depending on how comprehensive it is.

1. What is psychology?

2. Why is using intuition insufficient to predict everyday life?

3. Why is it important to utilize psychology to predict everyday life?

4. What are the differences between values and facts?

5. What are the disciplines of psychology?

Rationale

The approach taken in this lesson is systematic and allows for the students to be introduced to the topic slowly. With the examples, the students are given an opportunity to better understand the concepts which are being introduced. There is also the use of questions during the lecture to encourage interaction rather than just dictating to the students. Each part of the lecture will be carried out for 10 minutes allowing for the contributions of the students. Being a large class of 200 students, 20 minutes will be allowed for interaction with the class where the students will be allowed to ask any questions they might be giving. The quiz will be a takeaway quiz which will allow the students to extensive reading and hence comprehensive answers will be required. Psychology Assignment Discussion Project

References

Cohen, M. F. (2011). An introduction to logic and scientific method. Read Books Ltd.

Gangestad, S. W., & Tybur, J. M. (2016). Editorial overview: Evolutionary psychology.

Krueger, J. I., & Funder, D. C. (2004). Towards a balanced social psychology: Causes, consequences, and cures for the problem-seeking approach to social behavior and cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27(3), 313-327.

Mangal, S. K. (2019). An introduction to psychology. Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd.

Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. In Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 173-220). Academic Press.