An Introduction

In this post we shall enlighten you on the concept of psychology, highlighting the meaning and its nature as a social science.

The term ‘Psychology’ comes from two Greek words ‘Psyche which means ‘mind’ or ‘soul’ and ‘logic’ which means the study of. Therefore, in Greek, the original meaning of psychology means “the study of mind or soul”. Minds or souls are elements believed to differentiate inert objects and plants from animals and human beings.

Psychology is presently defined as the scientific study of behaviour and mental processes. Such a study can involve both animal and human behaviours. When applied to humans, psychology covers everything that people think, feel, and do. Issues regarding behaviour and mental processes are inevitable issues for human beings as well as animals. Every day, in our lives we portray behaviour which means ‘actions’ or responses that come unconsciously or in a conscious way. As human beings, we also portray mental activities such as thinking, memorising, understanding and perceiving. Based on the scope of the field, you can agree that every moment we encounter psychology in our lives.

Psychologists explore such concepts as perception, cognition, attention, emotion, phenomenology, motivation, brain functioning, personality, behaviour, and interpersonal relationships. They also consider the unconscious mind. Most psychologists employ empirical methods to infer causal and correlational relationships between psychosocial variables.

Psychology is a popular major for students, a popular topic in the public media, and a part of our everyday lives. Television shows such as Dr. Phil feature psychologists who provide personal advice to those with personal or family difficulties. Crime dramas such as CSI, Lie to Me, and others feature the work of forensic psychologists who use psychological principles to help solve crimes. And many people have direct knowledge about psychology because they have visited psychologists, for instance, school counsellors, family therapists, and religious, marriage, or bereavement counsellors.

Because we are frequently exposed to the work of psychologists in our everyday lives, we all have an idea about what psychology is and what psychologists do. In many ways I am sure that your conceptions are correct. Psychologists do work in forensic fields, and they do provide counselling and therapy for people in distress. But there are hundreds of thousands of psychologists in the world, and most of them work in other places, doing work that you are probably not aware of.

Most psychologists work in research laboratories, hospitals, and other field settings where they study the behaviour of humans and animals. Other psychologists study such topics as alcohol and drug addiction, memory, emotion, hypnosis, love, what makes people aggressive or helpful, and the psychologies of politics, prejudice, culture, and religion. Psychologists also work in schools and businesses, and they use a variety of methods, including observation, questionnaires, interviews, and laboratory studies, to help them understand behaviour.

Description of the Concept of Psychology

There are various reasons for popular misconceptions e.g. (frequent appearances in the mass media) of statements about what psychologists tell us. These are often one-sided views exaggerating some opinions held by only a few psychologists or even by some who are not properly qualified psychologists. This is because human behaviour can be observed by all and sundry who attempt to explain occurrences from their own intuition, or belief. In other branches of science, for example physics and chemistry, common sense or intuition does not help observers to explain why diatomic hydrogen behaves differently from a monatomic one, when these are bombarded by neutrons.

Another explanation of such differential judgments is traceable to the fact that whereas human behaviour may be a matter of common observation, scientific facts are only understood after sustained learning. Many writers also think that the labels, especially labels of definitions and constructs, in psychology, are derived from the daily usage of many common words while those used in pure science have separate origins and they are of restricted use. For example, intelligence is a psychological construct which implies one thing to a psychologist and another to a layman, and a typical word thermocouple of pure science means a very special thing to scientists and students of science but, perhaps nothing to a layman.

Furthermore, Psychologists differ in how much importance they place on specific types of behaviour. For example, some psychologists believe that you should study only behaviour that you can see, observe, or measure directly. Ruth’s behaviour of selecting and paying for her food, choosing a table, and refusing to lend her notes to Kalenga are all examples of observable behaviours. Some psychologists believe that our fantasies, thoughts, and feelings are also important, even though these behaviours are not directly observable. Ruth may infer or guess that Kalenga is sad by the expression on his face, but she cannot actually know his emotional reaction.

Psychology, like any other scientific fields, evolved in time and underwent significant changes in its conception. According to earlier psychologists, the function of psychology was to study the nature, origin and destiny of the human soul. But the soul is something metaphysical. It cannot be seen, observed and touched and we cannot conduct scientific experiments on the soul.

Psychology as the Science of Mind

In the 18^th century, psychology was understood as the ‘Science of Mind’. William James (1892) defined psychology as the science of mind and mental processes. But the word ‘mind ‘is also quite ambiguous as there was confusion regarding the nature and functions of the mind.

Modern psychologists defined psychology as the “Science of Consciousness”. James Sully (1884) defined psychology as the “Science of the Inner World”. Wilhelm Wundt (1892) defined psychology as the science which studies the ‘internal experiences’. But there are three levels of consciousness namely, conscious, subconscious and the unconscious and so this definition also was not accepted by some.

Thus, in this way, psychology first lost its soul, then its mind and then its consciousness. At present only its behaviour exists. William McDougall (1905) defined psychology as the “Science of Behaviour”, W.B. Pillsbury (1911) and J.B. Watson (1912) also defined psychology as the science of behaviour. Behaviour generally means overt activities which can be observed and measured scientifically. But one’s behaviour is always influenced by their experiences. So, when we study one’s behaviour, we must also study their experiences.

Considering all the above views pertaining to the makings and orientation of psychology, we can define psychology as a scientific study of humans’ and animals’ overt and covert behaviour as well as mental processes.

While people have been interested in human behaviour for thousands of years, psychology has only become a discipline in its own right in the last 100 years. For many years, philosophers puzzled over the nature of the human mind and people’s motivations. However, philosophers’ accounts were essentially speculative and they made no attempt to prove whether their views were correct or incorrect.

Many writers agree that the birth of psychology as we now understand the concept was in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany. At this time, Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory devoted to experimental psychology. Over the next 40 years, many universities throughout Europe and the United States set up their own laboratories. The main belief shared by these early pioneers was that human psychological processes could be studied objectively using the same experimental methods developed over the years by the natural sciences (for examp1e physics and chemistry). The first recognized book on psychology was written by William James and published in 1890.

From these early beginnings, psychology expanded quite rapidly and achieved various important milestones in its history. Many see the writings of Sigmund Freud as very significant in the development of psychology, although as you will see later, his work has been criticized for lacking in sound scientific basis. Psychology today encompasses a wide range of perspectives and has been applied to a large number of different areas of human functioning. You will learn about some of these in what follows. I know you now find our discussion meaningful and interesting. Let us continue.

Any dictionary and almost all introductory psychology textbooks will contain a description of the word psychology. Unfortunately, you may find that there are almost as many different descriptions of the subject area as there are textbooks. This may not however be as confusing as it might at first appear as many descriptions will share common elements, or say basically the same thing in slightly different ways. Why do psychologists differ in their descriptions?

There are at least two reasons why psychologists do not always agree on a simple common description of psychology.

1. The first is that psychology is a relatively new discipline. Compared with sciences such as chemistry and physics, psychology is in its infancy and its theories and methods are still being developed.

The second reason is that psychology already covers a diverse range of subjects, and psychologists working in different areas see psychology in slightly different ways. Let us cite an example so that you can have a clear understanding. Educational psychologists will be mainly concerned with the way in which children learn, and how to help children who are not doing well at school. By contrast, a clinical psychologist will deal almost exclusively with people who are mentally ill or who are experiencing behavioural problems.

Is Psychology more than just ‘Common Sense’? Nature of Psychology

One reaction that people have when they hear of the results of psychological research is that it is all just ‘common sense’. While it is true that psychologists do sometimes confirm what people may already believe, their research also allows them to ascertain the conditions under which certain events do or do not occur. Different people have different views of how the world works and may presume different things about ‘human nature’.

Sometimes common sense appears to be contradictory. For example, if you were asked to speculate as to why some people enjoy each other’s company and others do not, you may fall back on the proverb ‘Birds of the same feathers flock together’. In other words, people with similar interests, habits, and personalities tend to be attracted to each other. However, you might equally have provided an alternative theory which is that ‘opposites attract’. Both of these expressions are well known, yet surely both cannot be true. A psychologist may wish to examine this and determine whether one is more accurate than the other, or identify the circumstances under which one is truer than the other.

There are many other examples of ‘common sense’ which turn out not necessarily to be true. As you read more about psychology, you will come across a number of such challenges. For example, some police officers may believe that they can persuade a reluctant suspect to confess or believe that only a guilty person would sign a confession. We will see in another unit of this course that both of these presumptions may not actually be true.

It is important for you to remember that psychology is the science that studies behaviour and what goes on in the mind that causes behaviour to occur. Psychology has to do with the concepts of learning, memory, perception, motivation and personality traits. All these concepts lead to behaviour. Behaviour in this context may mean anything that we do such as thinking, sneezing, laughing, sleeping and even falling in love.

Because we are unable to see the mind, we have to study it through the ways in which it manifests itself. And so the branch of knowledge which deals with the study of this mind is psychology. Dennis Child (1977:1) sees behaviour to include ‘all those aspects of human activity which we can observe’. He does not however exclude behaviours that are not observable hence he went further to involve ‘personal experience which can only be studied by asking individuals to express their feelings and thoughts’ as part of behaviour.

Psychology as an ancient discipline was part of philosophy. Orji (1986:2) submitted that philosophical views would appear relevant because psychology has to do with the behaviour and to some extent, the nature of man and how he relates to his environment. Iwuji (1981:63) stated categorically that ‘psychology cannot explain human behaviour without some philosophical assumptions about human nature’.

Let us cite an example to ensure you understand our discussion. For example, for the psychologists, the varieties of human conduct are morally neither good nor bad. They are simply forms of behaviour to be studied. But for the philosopher, some forms of behaviour are morally good and others are bad. Philosophy seeks to discover and to recommend principles for deciding what actions and qualities are good and why they are so.

Psychology studies such actions or behaviour empirically. This may be why Child (1977) saw psychology as a discipline with a wide area of interest. It covers, according to Child, from the scientific study to all kinds of pursuits including making dogs salivate at the sound of a bell and a study of the growth of intelligence in human beings.

From our discussion, it is clear that there are many definitions of psychology. Here is an interesting question for you: Are there common elements in these definitions? You are eager to know the correct response. Pay attention to the next section.

While many writers of psychology textbooks give differing definitions of the subject area, a common thread still runs through these definitions. Zimbardo (1992) captures the views of many by suggesting that the goals of psychology are:

1. To objectively describe the behaviour of individuals.
2. Developing an understanding of the causes and consequences of that behaviour using explanations which are based upon the best available evidence and creative imagination?
3. To predict accurately if, when, how and in what form from a given situation.
4. To demonstrate that it is possible to control a given behavioural response by making it start, stop, or vary in some predictable way.

Zimbardo also suggests using psychology in ways that can improve the quality of the lives of individuals and of society in general. it is important for you to note that part of the problem with offering a simple but an all-embracing definition of psychology is that the concept ‘psychology’ includes a number of different approaches.