Psychology has now developed into a discipline that extends and concerned with understanding the behavior and mental processes from multiple perspectives. As the name suggest, biological psychology is a branch of science that tries to explain behavior in terms of biology, and because the most important structures controlling the behavior of the brain, Biopsychology is the study of the brain and how it produces behavioral and mental processes. Implicit in this definition is the assumption that every mental process, feeling and action must have a physical or neural basis in the brain. This is much the same as saying that the mind is the product of the brain’s electrical and neurochemical activity. Although there are philosophical grounds for …show more content…
In fact, any attempt to do so requires a very good understanding of the biology of the brain. Traditionally, the two disciplines most relevant to the biological psychologist have been neuroanatomy (the study of neural architecture of various brain regions together with mapping the route that connects them) and neurophysiology (the study of how neurons generate action potentials and neural information). However, in the last few decades the study of brain function has grown rapidly and attracted experts from many other fields, including biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, pharmacology, and computer technology. Not all scientists working in this field should be interested in behavior, although their findings may sometimes be of interest to those working in the field of biological psychology. Thus, in recent years, psychologists interested in brain had been acquainted with many other areas of biological science that lies outside the traditional domain of anatomy, physiology and …show more content…
These may be misleading. For most of the twentieth century , the study of brain and behavior is called physiological psychology because investigators often use the technique of ' physiology ' as lesioning ( removal of various parts of the brain ) and stimulus, both electricity and chemistry , as their primary means of experiments. This approach is often complemented by examining the human subjects who have suffered brain damage due to accidents, strokes , and others. These areas are known as clinical neuropsychology. Although the term is still used, there is a growing acceptance that they did not quite cover many disciplines and newer techniques are being used to study the brain. Because of this, others have argued for broader terms such as ‘biological psychology’ or ‘behavioral neuroscience’ to describe modern day research (Davis et al. 1988; Dewsbury 1991). Whatever the arguments for and against these conditions, they mean roughly the same thing, they are trying to give an appropriate name for a scientific discipline that tries to link the biology of the brain and
The two topics that I will discuss are the biological theory focusing on structures of the brain and also
The brain accounts for the main portion of one’s personality: “The cerebrum is also the seat of intelligence and personality.” More specifically, the prefrontal cortex of the brain accounts for the personality of one person; therefore, biology is the reason for decisions as biology determines personality, and personality is a part of the decision making process. One instance of this may be seen in the Stanford Prison experiment, an experiment complete at Stanford, where several college students played the guards and some prisoners. From the experiment extreme treatment and abuse from the guards to the prisoners was seen; however, this abuse depended on the guard, “Not all of the guards showed sadistic tendencies, with some seeking to actively help prisoners and show sympathy towards them.” (Shuttlewarth).
Psychology and its Implications Student’s Name Institution Affiliation Psychology and its Implications Introduction Psychology has been used for a long time to understand human behaviour. Basically, this is how human beings react to various stimuli. The reaction can originate from a past experience, for instance, death, sickness, and so forth. In the book The Perk of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (2012), Charlie can be seen to be faced by psychological problems. Charlie is the major character in the novel.
The human mind is one of the most intricate structures that God has ever created. Understanding that each and every individual holds their own thought pattern with varying degrees of complexity is difficult. Nothing has more influence over a person greater than the influences of the mind. It is responsible for behavior, which then turns into characteristic habits. Psychology as we know it today has only been in practice since the early 1900’s.
There is only one approach in psychology that studies thoughts, feelings and behaviour. The biological approach believes that the way we are is due to our genetics and physiology. They believe that the activity going on our nervous system’s is what affects the way we think, feel and behave (Sammons, 2009). The physiology in the biological approach looks into how the brain functions. The brain is a very complicated machine as such, the brain is what controls our every move, every feeling and every action.
Audrey Nunez 21 July 2015 Psychology 2301 Dr. Alvarado Chapter 1 1. What is psychology? Psychology is not only the study of behavior and of the mind. It is also the scientific study of the brain and of why we do certain things. 2.
Psychology is the science of the mind; the human psyche is the most complex subject in science. It gives us the understanding of behaviour and thoughts. Psychologist focus their interest on researching human behaviours, they do this by analysing human development and social behaviours, this can be relatively difficult because we cannot observe an individual’s thoughts, dreams, emotions or memories. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/articles/psychology/what_is_psychology.shtml) The behaviourist perspective Theories must be supported by the empirical data collection, this is the "research based on experimentation or observation (evidence)’’ (https://explorable.com/empirical-research))
It examined how the nervous system develops, it’s structure, and what it does. It also focuses on how the brain impacts on behavior and cognitive functions. People in that field might research anything from the cellular, functional, evolutionary, computational, molecular, cellular and medical aspects of the nervous system. Evolutionary Psychology is the science that tries to explain through a universal mechanism of behavior, why humans act the way they do. In this field of work one might seek to reconstruct problems that our ancestors faced in their primitive environments, and the problem-solving behaviors they created to meet those particular challenges.
Psy20150 Essay. Name: Clodagh Finnerty Student Number: 13362386 ‘It has been argued that two events led to the development of the modern discipline of Psychology: the foundation of Wilhelm Wundt’s Institute of Experimental Psychology, and the introduction of a new theory of evolution, described in Darwin’s Origin of Species. Critically assess the impact of these events on Psychology and society.’
And the other reason was that they realized that psychological processes must have a physiological basis. In the past, researches were carried regarding the
The emphasis upon infancy and early childhood may align serial killers with the Biological Trait Theories. These theories focus upon biological conditions that may control human behaviors. Neurophysiology is the study of brain function. It has uncovered neurological and physical abnormalities that may begin as early as the prenatal stage in some humans. There have been links between the impairment of executive brain function and aggression through such research (Aynesworth 1999).
However, due to the limitation of skills, most of the researches done are not well designed. A main limitation of psychology as a field of study is that it never captures the nature of consciousness (Willig, 2013), as human mind is bound up with meanings and interpretations which differ from one individual to another
The main aim of this assignment is to find out the strength and weakness, similarities and differences between the different approaches of psychology such as biological approach, behavioural approach and psychodynamic approach. I have chosen mental illness to evaluate these approach. The biological, behavioural and psychodynamic approaches of psychology are connected to the nature and nurture argument. The biological approach highly talks about nature side of the argument and states that all behaviour is biological and is treatable.
Rachel Danzig AP Psychology Dr. Eisen August 20, 2015 I. Psychology’s History A. Psychology’s Roots 1. Prescientific Psychology a. Socrates and his student Plato stated that the human mind is separate from the body and our knowledge is born within us b. Aristotle, Plato’s student, disagreed, concluding that knowledge can not be preexisting and we grow it from our experiences within our memories c. In the 1600s Rene Descartes believed that the mind can survive the body’s death and our brain holds animal spirits in its fluid and flow from the brain through nerves enabling reflexes d. In 1620 Francis Bacon established that humans functioned around order and patterns e. Adding to Bacon’s ideas was John
The Traditional Western approach to modern psychology considers psychology as a science. The knowledge obtained needs to be free of values or predispositions as this could impact the theory or research completely. Our personal feelings need to be set aside to ensure accurate results. Psychology needs