What is Psychology?
Dictionaries define psychology as the science of mind and behavior. Based on this definition, psychology is a science that deals with how people think and act. It’s a science because it uses scientific methods in observing and analyzing people’s behavior and helping them overcome any psychological issues that they may have. Psychologists are people who practice psychology.
There are different branches of psychology. Some of these are behavioral psychology or behaviorism, abnormal psychology, cognitive psychology, comparative psychology, cross-cultural psychology, educational psychology and experimental psychology. Behaviorism is the conditioning of mind to help the person learn what you teach or help him alter his wrong ways.
Abnormal psychology deals with abnormal behavior and mental disorders.
Cognitive psychology deals with the internal state of mind like decision making and problem solving. This is helpful for leaders and managers or supervisors who handle people under them.
Comparative psychology deals with the observation of the behavior of animals and how it can be compared with human’s behavior.
Cross-cultural psychology deals with the effect of differences in culture. This is helpful especially that racial discrimination is still rampant at school and even in the workplace.
Educational psychology deals with everything that has to do with school and the students, like teaching methods of teachers, school environment and school rules and policies.
Experimental psychology deals with research on human mind and behavior with the use of scientific processes.
Organizational Psychology is meant to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of business organizations while solving the organizational problems. Not only it’s concerned with business development but also the effectiveness and efficiency in terms of employees’ performance.
Social Psychology is focused on how the role of society and its culture influence in the development of one’s personality. This field of psychology is interested to identify the social situations and the attitudes of the people towards them so as to help the people in altering and improving their attitudes while trying to reduce tensions and making them better human beings.
Clinical Psychology deals with mental, emotional and abnormal behavior of the people. It seeks to help the people come out of their mental disorders. Its practice involves psychological assessment and psychotherapy while various training programs and personality and intelligence tests are conducted under this branch of Psychology for the treatment of mental problems. Mostly, the psychologist of this field work with psychiatrists.
- Dr Smita Pandey
