What Is Psychology?

Psychology evolved from the Greek word “psyche” meaning “soul” or “spirit” and “logos” meaning language. It is an academic and applied field concerned with the study of the mind, brain, and human and non-human behavior. Psychology also refers to the practical application of this knowledge to various areas of human activity, including problems of people’s daily lives and the treatment of mental illness.

Psychology differs from anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology in that it attempts to capture graphic generalizations about the mental functioning and explicit behavior of individuals. In contrast, however, other disciplines rely more heavily on field studies and historical methods to extract meaningful generalizations. In reality, however, there is a great deal of “cross-pollination” taking place between different areas. Psychology differs from biology and neuroscience in that it primarily deals with the interface between mental processes and a person’s behavior. It also refers to the common workings of a system and not just to the biological or neural workings themselves.

However, subfields of psychology, such as neuropsychology, combine the study of actual neural processes with the study of the mental effects they intuitively produced. Psychology in its literal sense means the study of the human mind. It illustrates and attempts to explain consciousness, behavior and social interaction. This investigation can be structured purely according to phenomenological descriptions of inner experiences or according to behaviors, which include social behavior. Empirical psychology is primarily devoted to describing human experiences and behaviors as they actually occur.

The study of the correlation between consciousness and the brain or nervous system has only recently been undertaken. However, it is not yet clear how they interact.

Psychology is a particularly vast field that encompasses various approaches to studying mental processes and behavior. An understanding of brain function is gradually being incorporated into psychological theory and practice, particularly in areas such as artificial intelligence, neuropsychology, and cognitive neuroscience. Mechanical and electronic computing has played an important role in the development of the mind’s information-processing hypothesis.

#Psychology

Thanks to Peter Emerson