Psychology For Dummies

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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.

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: Take the mind for example. Most people agree that they have a mind and that others (well, most others) have one too. But where does this mind exist? Psychologists accept that the mind exists in, or is synonymous with, the brain. The biological metatheory is integrated into the biopsychosocial model because of this component. You may say that, just as digestion is what the stomach does, mind is what the brain does. Thinking about the role of the mind Therefore, psychology can be defined as the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes. Psychology attempts to uncover what people do along with why and how they do it. Building a person I’ve talked about the why and the what, so what about the how? This is where psychology can get extremely interesting. This is where the rubber meets the road, how whys and whats interact through the operations and processes of the mind and behavior. Here is a list of some of those operations and processes:Phenomenenological means ‘that which appears’ and in this case, it means that which naturally appears in consciousness. Without attempting to reduce it to its component parts – without further analysis. 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). Humanistic psychologists also believe that the most fundamental aspect of being human is a subjective experience. This may not be an accurate reflection of the real world, but a person can only act in terms of their own private experience subjective perception of reality. Is psychology right about people? It may or may not be, but in an attempt to live up to that challenge, psychology uses the standards of science to do so, and if conducting and practicing psychological science lends itself to some use, exposes someone to one new idea or way of thinking, and helps just one person live a better life, then it has served a valuable role in the world. It is not privileged per se. It cannot explain everything about being human. Come on, that would just pompous and downright impossible.

In therapy, when people try to explain a particular behavior or situation to me, I often say, Can you make it happen, now? Can you show me? For example, a parent may be telling me how his child hits him when he tells the child to do something. And I’ll say, Show me. Make it happen. The most common response is a puzzled or disturbed look on the parent’s face. Personal agency is the humanistic term for the exercise of free will. Free will is the idea that people can make choices in how they act and are self-determining. Another limitation is the humanistic approach is that it is ethnocentric. Many ideas central to humanistic psychology, such as individual freedom, autonomy and personal growth, would be more readily associated with individualistic cultures in the Western world, such as the United States. Independent variables are sometimes referred to as predictor variables . Strictly speaking, an independent variable is a variable that you manipulate so that you can study how the changes in the independent variable influence changes in other variables.

When to call a mental health professional

I think that everybody is interested in people, their thoughts, emotions, and behavior. People are fascinating, and that includes you! Humans often defy explanation and evade prediction. Figuring people out can be pretty hard. Just when you think that you’ve figured someone out, bang, he surprises you. Now I know that some of you may be thinking, Actually, I’m a pretty good judge of people. I’ve got a handle on things. If that’s the case, that’s great! Some folks do seem to have a more intuitive understanding of people than others. For the rest of us though, there’s psychology. About This Book