Psychology 101

What is Psychology?

I thought I would do a quick post on the main areas of study within Psychology so you can all get an idea of what Psychology students actually end up learning about! Trust me it's not all about 'figuring you out' and 'analysing you'! 

Well, Psychology is the study of the mind and of human behaviour. This can involve the very namby famby aspect of psychology such as the question "Who am I?" or our thinking processes. This could also involve looking at how children first realise that they are different from everyone else, that they are an individual <-- as you can tell from my previous post, this is more the area of Psychology I get drawn to & the only way I enjoy any of this area of Psychology! To this day, the 'only based on theory, non in reality' side of Psychology has never been attractive to me, I very much struggled to learn this stuff and I barely believed it! Sounds awful to say! 

But Psychology is actually a very scientific subject, you can also learn about topics such as Neuropsychology which is from the branch 'Biological Psychology' - basically brain structure, how areas the brain of involved in the production of different forms of behaviour, senses, memory etc, simply trying to answer the question "What does the brain actually do?" Very very interesting, and very difficult! I think to me, when I studied this module it was more 'real' biology than I had actually learnt during my whole A-Level in Biology, too much plants. 

There's also Cognitive Psychology which is more involved in mental processing, so looking into the process of memory, sensation, perception and attention. These are obviously linked to biological psychology, but come from a Cognitive perspective that focuses on the interaction of neural circuits and the transfer of information! Again very very interesting when you read about them, but my experience, I used to get a headache after about 1 hour of study & would have to switch to something lighter to ease my own neural circuit activity! 

Then you have Social Psychology which is another area I find fascinating as it involves the study of Social groups and looks at how we interact with one another. I think this area of study stood out to me so much, because it was so intricately involved in our day-to-day lives! So topics that are discussed within Social Psychology involve as I said, how we behave in groups, our ability to 'deindividuate' ourselves - which means to sought of relinquish responsibility for our behaviour if acting in a group, they also look at behaviour between groups, such as prejudice and discrimination, finally, a topic I found very interesting, was Pro-Social behaviour, it's always a topic that is taught in Psychology, always came up in exams, and involves discussing whether truly Altruistic behaviour exists, so can you carry out a completely un-selfish act without gaining and form of reinforcement for doing so, as many people think giving to charity is un-selfish, but psychologists found it actually makes us feel better about ourselves to give money to those in need, so not necessarily doing it just for them! Very interesting as I said!

Developmental Psychology is again one of my favourite areas of study! This looks at how we develop from infants up to adults. I love this area of Psychology, because this can involve, biological development, cognitive, our social development, and also we study atypical development - so when children's development does not follow the most common routes, for example genetic disorders etc. From infancy, we look at infants relationships with their parents in the form of Attachment studies, when they begin to go to Nursery and eventually Primary School, we look at their interaction with their Peers, how they mould into the person they are going to be as an adult, what factors might affect this growth? We also look at their social reasoning and the development of morals! It is very exciting field of study, as it would sort of be comparable to Paediatrics of the Medicine world, where you specialise in little people, but study everything you would for adults and just relate it back to them. 

These are the four main schools of thought in Psychology, but one other topics that is very interesting and important to mention is the study of Individual Differences. Now as we all individuals, we are all different, we might react to things differently to everyone around us, we have different thoughts which result in different actions. Therefore, in the study of Individual Differences, they take into account the  Personality of Individuals, they also look at Intelligence and how we can actually measure it - IQ is not an accurate measure, apparently. Also they look at the Self - how we perceive ourselves could affect how others look at us, and this all links back to Social Psychology and the development of a Social Identity - so where we think we fit in within Society, what groups do we hang out in? Who do we pick to be our friends? Who do we dislike and so on! 

I hope you have enjoyed this post! I tried to make it as short as possible whilst actually explaining everything and giving you a taster of what Psychology has to offer! :)

xoxoxoxo