Student Essay on What Is Psychology?

What Is Psychology?

Essay

Psychology is the study of the behavior of living organisms. The people that study the behaviors are called psychologists. There have been many studies done by these people to try and figure out why people or animal do the things they do. Psychology's four main goals are to describe what occurred, explain why it occurred, predict what event is likely to occur next, and to change to prevent unwanted outcomes. Psychologists study the process of thinking, learning, cognition, emotions, motivations, and personalities. An example of one study that has been done would be why a dog salivates to the sound of a bell and show. This behavior is due to a conditioned stimulus becoming a conditioned response. Another experiment done was with a baby and a white mouse to see if the baby would be scared if something happened while grabbing for the mouse.

There are several different types of psychologist for different problems. One example is a school psychologist. In education and school psychology, they study the process of education and works to promote the intellectual, social, and emotional development of children in the school environment. The main type of psychology is called clinical psychology, which specializes in the evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of mental and behavioral disorders.

Behavior is any observable action or reaction of living organisms. There are many levels of behavior that is studied in psychology. Some psychologists concentrate on the behavior that at a high level like having aggression or being prejudice. There are four main characteristics needed to be an observable behavior, which are: the organism itself, motivation, knowledge, and competence. Behavior cannot be studied without the organism there in body. Also, motivation must be in place for the study of behavior because it is an immediate cause of a behavior. Knowledge is something that the organism already knows. In order to examine it, you need to understand the environment and what he/she/it knows, thinks, and remembers. The last factor to understand behavior is competence, which has to do with the organism's skills and abilities.

Psychology has been studied for hundreds and hundreds of years and is still hard to grasp. You need a great deal of understanding many of the scientific fields. You have to be very aware of your surroundings and what you are dealing with.