Re: What Is Psychology?

From: SAM HEIGHWAY (SKH197@psy.soton.ac.uk)
Date: Thu Oct 16 1997 - 16:14:55 BST


I hope this is sent to the correct address! I doubt I can shed any new
light on the subject, but here are a few of my ideas, as well as some
other people's.

Psychology could be said to be the interaction of the physiological
activity of the brain, mental processes and human / animal behaviour,
behaviour being something which can be observed, recorded or measured.
Obviously animal behaviour is different to that of humans in many ways,
and this is probably due to diferent, more simple, physiological brain
activity, as well as a more strongly developed sense of instinct.

According to Hetherington and Parke, the word psychology broadly covers
the biological, social, cognitive and emotional aspects of humans and
animals. It uses a scientific approach in as much as it offers
hypotheses which can be tested, although never actually proven to be
necessarily true. Whilst psychologists can base their knowledge on
results which give information based on the majority result, they can
not completely prove any hypothesis, as each human brain is unique, and
too complex to fall into any one uniform category.



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