Psychology For Dummies

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Major humanistic psychologists such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow believed that human beings were born with the desire to grow, create and to love, and had the power to direct their own lives. The humanistic approach has been applied to relatively few areas of psychology compared to the other approaches. Therefore, its contributions are limited to areas such as therapy, abnormality, motivation, education, and personality. Often, a person’s parts are all assembled, and he’s learning, growing, adapting, and adjusting to the best of his individual ability — but something’s off or he’s just not functioning properly. This is where physicians, psychotherapists, counselors, social workers, educators, and consultants enter the picture.

Equal intervals: This means that a unit difference on the measurement scale is the same regardless of where that unit difference occurs on the scale. What are some of the ideas that come to mind when people think about the topic of psychology? It depends on whom you ask. Sometimes, I imagine myself as a guest on a television talk show . I’m bombarded by questions from the audience that I can’t answer. My heart starts to pound. I begin to sweat. I start to stand up so that I can run off the set, but then something comes to me that keeps me in my seat. I imagine asking the people in the audience what they think psychology is and why they think a psychologist can answer questions about psychology. Whys, hows, and whats Human conduct is guided by codes of behavior known as ethics. Simply put, ethics refers to the prescribing of right behavior and the proscribing of wrong behavior. In addition to psychologists being guided by the principles of science, they are also guided by their own code of ethics, their own understanding of right and wrong behavior.

Independent variables

Benjafield JG. The long past and short history of the vocabulary of anglophone psychology. History of Psychology. 2012;15(1):50-71. doi:10.1037/a0023386 Distribution of scores: For the purposes of choosing a measure of central tendency, you need to know whether any extreme scores exist in your data set (often called outliers) or whether the distribution of scores is skewed. When you determine the level of measurement of your variable of interest and whether or not there is skewness and/or extreme scores in your data set then you can determine the most appropriate measure of central tendency, as follows: Smith KV, Thew GR. Conducting research in clinical psychology practice: Barriers, facilitators, and recommendations. Br J Clin Psychol. 2017;56(3):347-356. doi:10.1111/bjc.12142 The humanistic approach emphasizes the individual’s personal worth, the centrality of human values, and the creative, active nature of human beings. Metaphors abound in psychology. They are used to provide extremely oversimplified and overarching explanatory models of people. Psychologists Dedre Gentner and Jonathan Grudin conducted a review of the metaphors used in psychology and identified 256! Over the years, people have been likened to hairless apes, computers, machines, nervous systems, and a host of others. However, remember that people are not models, but the models can be helpful in understanding people!

The cognitive framework centers on the mental processing of information, including the specific functions of attention, concentration, reasoning, problem solving, and memory. Cognitive psychologists are interested in the mental plans and thoughts that guide and cause behavior and affect how people feel. Intelligence testing and information-processing theories are examples that fall within the cognitive metatheory. Of course, some psychologists fit in more than one of these categories, for example, clinical psychologists conducting research.As material beings, humans are made of flesh and bones. Any discussion of thoughts, feelings, and other psychological concepts that doesn’t factor in biological makeup and function, especially the brain and nervous system, ignores the fundamental facts of human existence. Remember So it’s finally time to define it: Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes. Psychology attempts to uncover what people do along with why, what, and how they do it. A useful metaphor: Building a person Rogers’ view of education saw schools as generally rigid, bureaucratic institutions which are resistant to change. Applied to education, his approach becomes ‘student-centered learning’ in which children are trusted to participate in developing and to take charge of their own learning agendas. His attitude to examinations, in particular, would no doubt, find a most receptive audience in many students: Generally speaking, the code of ethics is shaped by several overarching principles that compel psychologists to act in the best interest of the people they are working with or for (for example, clients, patients, students, or research subjects) and to avoid any harm. They are expected to act responsibly and with best practices in mind, with honesty and integrity. Basic human rights and dignity should be respected and justice should be preserved and pursued.

It seems that I’ve always been looking for the truth. When I was in college, I frequented a little bookstore near campus that specialized in spiritual, philosophical, and popular-psychology books. At least once a week, I would peruse the shelves looking for something interesting. The books were arranged by topic: metaphysics, Eastern wisdom, Western wisdom, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, new age, channeling, and so on. I read books from every section. I was searching for some kind of ultimate truth, some kind of answer.

Dependent variables

The point is, if they can cause it to happen, then they can un-cause it to happen, too. And that means they understand why and how it’s happening. This is a type of reverse psychological engineering for figuring out the why and how of human behavior. These three measurement properties enable you to classify the level of measurement of a variable into one of four types: Yes, this is the kind of blueprint or overlay I like to use to understand what psychology is: Why do the parts and processes do it? What are the parts or ingredients of a person? How do we go about performing functions using those parts and ingredients to achieve the why? Qualitative research is useful for studies at the individual level, and to find out, in-depth, the ways in which people think or feel (e.g. case studies).

Before I give you a definition, I’m going to engage in a therapy cliché: Tell me what you think? Tell me how you feel? (There’s an old joke about psychologists: How many psychologists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two! One to do it and the other one to ask, How does that make you feel?) What are some of the ideas that come to mind when people think about the topic of psychology? It depends on whom you ask. Sometimes, I imagine myself as a guest on a television talk show. I’m bombarded by questions from the audience that I can’t answer. My heart starts to pound. I begin to sweat. I start to stand up so that I can run off the set, but then something comes to me that keeps me in my seat. I imagine asking the people in the audience what they think psychology is and why they think a psychologist can answer questions about people. Whys, Whats, and Hows of PeopleData measured at the nominal level: Because all three measures of dispersion require data to be ranked or summed, none of them are appropriate for data measured at the nominal level. Remember We’re all psychologists really. Some of us just happen to be professional psychologists. The difference between a professional psychologist and a non-professional psychologist is really a matter of degree (get it?), separated by focus, time spent, materials consumed, and methods used. Over the years, I have been asked (sometimes respectfully and nicely, sometimes not) these questions: What makes you better at this than me? What do you know that I don’t? Well, I believe it’s really a matter of degree, perspective, and the psychologist tools I use to see and do the psychologist thing. Professionals in any field seem to immerse themselves in it. Again, it's a matter of degree. We all occupy the space of a psychologist to one degree or another. Psychologists just spend more time engaged in conscious and deliberate effort to stay in that space and look at the world from that viewpoint. We spend our time and careers occupying that space and doing the psychologist thing, occasionally coming out of the trance to share what we have seen, think, and found to be objectively true, at least as far as science allows us. But ultimately, psychology is only one way of looking at people and the world they interact with. Humanistic, humanism, and humanist are terms in psychology relating to an approach that studies the whole person and the uniqueness of each individual. Essentially, these terms refer to the same approach in psychology.