Psychology

There are many factors that can influence social perception. Social perception can be defined as the process of perceiving other people. It is the process by which we look at other people and...

Old Psychology was seemingly pioneered by Freud and Freud alone (in reality, there were many contributors, but Freud is far and away the most prominent). Between himself, Jung, and others, they...

Linguistics is already an interesting field. It has the unique disposition of branching out into various interdisciplinary fields, such as computational linguistics (computer science and...

One major criticism of person-centered therapy is that in many cases, therapists still let their patients open up before providing any input during their sessions. Therefore, many people view the...

The psychodynamic, behaviorist, and humanistic approaches all look at eating disorders and their treatment from different perspectives. The psychodyamic perspective seeks to recognize longstanding...

Developmental psychology is the study of patterns of normative development across the lifespan. Early childhood education often focuses on a subset of developmental psychology called discontinuous...

Lev Vygotsky developed a theory of cognitive development that focused on a child's sociocultural situation and how that influences his or her thinking. Let's look at that theory and then identify...

Melissa Ditman’s article summarizes an address given by psychologist Philip Zimbardo, former president of the American Psychological Association and an emeritus professor at Stanford University....

A proponent of the psychoanalytic school of thought would not consider environmental stimuli to be important. Psychoanalytic theory argues that people’s personalities are results of unconscious...

Animals are used to study human behavior and psychology because both species exhibit behavior with similar characteristics. Humans as a group are hard to observe;therefore, researchers have...

Harry Harlow was one of many twentieth-century psychologists who believed that studying animal psychology could provide insights into human psychology. Under the general heading of comparative...

Some psychologists break the process of concept formation into four steps. The following are examples of these steps: 1. Observation A young child observes a horse in a pasture near her house. She...

Psychosocial and Socioemotional theories are relevant in every stage of development because they reflect years of empirical and quantitative research done exclusively to extrapolate what are the...

A research project always begins with a question, something the researcher wants to know more about. Often, that researcher has also developed a hypothesis, a general answer to the question that...

Psychology has always walked a dangerous line between being a natural science and a social science. A natural science, of course, deals in the natural world. Examples would be physics, chemistry,...

Erik Erikson created a theory of development that traces human life from infancy all the way through mature adulthood. Let's look at this theory and examine some of its strengths and weaknesses....

Classical conditioning is one of the earliest theories of education and behavioral psychology. Pavlov first established it through his famous studies of the salivation of dogs. Since that time,...

Basic psychology focuses primarily on research and theory, while applied psychology uses the result of the research and ideas of those theories to try to solve psychological problems in real world...

Just like any theory of cognitive development, Jean Piaget's theory has strengths and weaknesses. Let's review the theory, then reflect on its pros and cons. Piaget's theory involves four stages...

The psychoanalytic approach is Freudian: it divides the human psyche into the three elements of the id, the ego, and the superego. According to Freud, behavior and thinking are based on instinct...

A social worker has a duty of care to act in the client's best interests. In normal circumstances,* the client has the option to discontinue the relationship, but the social worker should always...

C. G. Jung's book Psychological Types has had a great influence on everyone interested in classifying people according to their personality types. Jung distinguished two kinds of "attitudes,"...

I have to preface by saying that I'm a rule-follower and try my best to uphold the laws of the land, which may be what you are struggling with as well. If you don't regularly participate in...

Aggression is a state that is chronic in some people, occasional in others, and a rare event in a few. In some cases, especially when aggression is rare, there can be a proposed biological...

It is worth emphasizing that Bhutanese views on happiness are diverse and complex and have been expressed in the religious and cultural traditions of Bhutan for many centuries. The majority of...

Almost all children engage in observational learning throughout their childhoods. Observational learning simply refers to the learning that is achieved through witnessing the behavior and actions...

Abraham Harold Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was a psychologist best known for creating a theory of a hierarchy of needs moving from basic survival needs to ones of self-actualization....

To give a diagnosis means that the psychologist is identifying the condition that a patient has. While a diagnosis may, over time, come to be seen as incorrect or incomplete, there is no "right or...

The concept of shifting standards is defined as the idea that our judgements are based on something we hold to be standard, and these standards may shift depending on multiple factors. For example,...

In his article "Orphans' Lonely Beginnings Show How Parents Shape A Child's Brain," Jon Hamilton tells the story of Izidor Ruckel. Ruckel contracted polio when he was six months old, and his...

Culture and diversity impact a clinical psychologist's insights into their clients' concerns, influence the strategies they might use to counsel a client, and perhaps shape the eventual diagnoses a...

According to the biographical caption accompanying "Thai cave boys: the psychology of surviving underground," Sarita Robinson is a university lecturer in psychology. The title itself suggests an...

The Magic of Thinking Big is a self-help book written by David J. Schwartz in 1959. It is meant to inspire the reader to achieve greater things and rise above being average. Chapter Five is titled...

Psychoanalysis focuses on people's unconscious minds and how they influence human behavior. Led by Sigmund Freud, the psychoanalytic school identifies the roles of the id, the ego, and the...

Freud is both the father of modern psychology and the progenitor of psychodynamics, a field of study related to the personality of a person. Freud theorized that the personality of every person is...

Overdiagnosis is an established issue in medicine. According to a journal of the Public Library of Science, The harms of over-treatment arise from situations where normal life experiences (such as...

In psychology, the concept of conformity is defined as fitting in with a group. People can change their behavior, attitude, beliefs, opinions, and values to align them with the general behavior and...

The three general types of personality, according to Hans Eysenck, were neuroticism (a tendency towards emotion and "moodiness", including anxiety, fear, worry, and the like), extroversion (a...

Nancy Chodorow's object relations theory is related to the ideas and psychoanalytic techniques of Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein, but it reaches out in a new direction that is particularly...

This is a term that is misused and overused a great deal today. Essentially, a critical thinker asks questions, seeks evidence, assesses the nature and weight of the evidence, considers opposing...

This could be a tough question because the dividing line between biological and psychological is somewhat blurry. For instance, depression may be a psychological disorder, but to the extent that it...

First, we will briefly overview both therapies and then compare and contrast their perspectives. Narrative therapy is a form of counseling that approaches a person’s life as a series of stories....

It can be dangerous for people to become paranoid and fearful, because then it is possible for the government to manipulate and take freedoms away. After 9/11, people became fearful of Al Queda...

Human behavior can be explained through both through the study of the brain and through examination of the environment in which an individual exists. One or both can contribute to behavior....

Behavioral psychology is a branch of psychology that seeks to explain how the way people behave is a product of their environment. Environmental factors, known as stimuli, affect our behavior and...

According to psychological theory, memory, as a function of the mind, can be broken down into three separate functions. All of them are necessary in order for memory to work. The first function is...