CHAPTER 1 PSYCHOLOGY AS A SCIENCE

Some people says that psychologists read people mind but the truth is its not like that. Psychology is a study of behavior and mental processes. They study behavior and mental processes that's why they can understand or distinguish what kind of personality of an individual have. Behavior includes our actions and reactions such as the way talk, our facial expressions, and our movement. Mental processes refers to the activity of our minds such as thinking, feeling, and remembering. As a psychologists or a person studying psychology, you need to be an observer so that you can understand and explain the behavior of an individual. Another one is to be imaginative or simply predictable because you need to predict what will happen in the future.

There are classifications of behavior, first is overt behavior that can be observed by anyone and second one is the covert behavior that is characterized by a behavior that is known to the individual performing it only or simply not obvious. Other classifications are conscious means aware, unconscious means unaware, rational means reasonable, irrational means unreasonable, voluntary means freewill and involuntary means force.

The schools of psychology are structuralism, functionalism, psychoanalysis, gestalt, and behaviorism. Structuralism is about the structure of te brain while functionalism refers to the function of the brain. Psychoanalysis gives emphasis on the influence of sexual and aggressive impulses on the way people think, feel and behave. Gestalt concentrates on how people consider individual elements together as units or wholes. Behaviorism focuses on how stimulus-response would produce a behavior.
The areas of psychology are Physiological Psychology, Comparative Psychology, Genetic Psychology, Experimental Psychology, Committive Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Personality Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Counselling Psychology, Education Psychology, Social Psychology and Industrial Psychology.