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Essay on In the many fields of psychology
Introduction
Psychology is distinctive in the rich and diverse range of attributes it develops, drawing, as it does, on skills that are associated both with studying the humanities (eg critical thinking, essay writing) and the sciences (hypothesis-testing, numeracy). To study psychology is to understand behavior, both what people actually do and the mental processes underlying their actions. The psychologist’s challenging job not only involves studying individuals and groups but also requires the researcher to take into account the environmental, physiological, and cultural factors that influence human behavior. Students of psychology employ a variety of clinical and scientific methods to discover how and why the human mind behaves as it does.
Psychology is a field that includes many vibrant areas of intellectual interest (Cassidy, Shaver, 1999). Clinical psychology studies normal personality as well as mental disorders and their treatment. Social psychology investigates significant social issues, and community psychology explores how community organizations develop to meet the changing needs of our society. Health psychology studies how to prevent and treat illness using biological, psychological, and social perspectives. Physiological psychology examines the biological bases of behavior, especially those involving the nervous system. Experimental psychology focuses on the basic processes of sensation, perception, learning, memory, thinking, language, emotion, and motivation.
Human-computer interaction and computer simulation of psychological processes bring students into the advanced area of artificial intelligence (Cassidy, Shaver, 1999). Developmental psychology looks at patterns of all psychological processes, including meta-cognition and insight, as they occur and change over the life span.
Nature and extent of the discipline
Psychology is an empirical science which aims to understand how and why people act in the ways they do and to apply that knowledge in a wide variety of settings. The discipline spans studies ranging from the observations of basic neural mechanisms to analyses of complex human relationships..................
