Biological Perspectives Of Psychology Essay

There are seven different perspectives in modern psychology, in which help us to try to understand and explain human behavior in different ways. The biological perspective looks at the physical causes of behavior. Evolutionary perspective looks at evolution and how natural selection influences one’s behavior. Both the biological and evolutionary perspective sees that behavior is effected by one’s biological background. Cognitive perspective is based on how the behavior is influence by a person’s mental process. Psychodynamic perspective looks ones unconscious mental process and how their childhood can have impact on their behavior. Both the cognitive and psychodynamic perspective looks study inside the mind. Behavioral perspective looks at

how the external environment, and seeing other people’s behaviors plays a role in one’s behavior. The Sociocultural perspective looks at how behavior is influenced by society and culture. The humanistic perspective looks at how others view themselves and how that takes tolls on their behavior. Both the Behavioral and Sociocultural perspectives suggest that behavior is influenced by others around them.
There are many specialty areas in psychology.

There is cross-cultural psychology that studies behavior under different cultural environments. The area in psychology that researches how genetics and brains influence our behavior as humans is biopsychology. Clinical psychology observes and treats people that have problems functioning or people that have mental health disorders. This study is interesting to me because my mother and brother both suffer from bipolar disorder. As I have grown up with them, I see how the illness affects them in similar ways and how it effects them differently. My mother is also a schizophrenic. I observe her and most of the time predict episodes. Growing up, I saw how their illness differed from others with the same illnesses. There are many specialty views in the field of psychology. I’m sure as time runs on there will come more points of view of trying to understand why human behave the way we do.

All of the perspectives of psychology share the same goals. The four goal of psychological research are to describe, predict, explain and control or change behavior. They describe behavior by observations made, predict behavior based on the observations, and explain behavior by suggesting a reason for the behavior being observed. Then, by finding a reasonable explanation and understanding a treatment can be formed to help control or change the

behavior.

I think that Sigmund Freud was a great influence of psychology. Sigmund Freud opened up the views of psychology to take a look at the unconscious mind. Freud figured that “uncovering unconscious motivations” (Pastorino) was a strong explanation of understanding human behaviors. His studies formed the psychoanalytic theory. This theory showed how people have common tendencies as animals when it comes to sexual and aggressive behavior. As I read in the textbook, humans are greater than animals, “unlike animals, humans can reason and think, especially as they mature.” (Pastorino). From a young age people develop unconscious instincts to act and behavior in a manner that is acceptable by others.
If I were to conduct a psychological study, I would study the impacts of being home (as in close to your family) or being far away when women are pregnant. I, myself was in another state throughout my pregnancy. I always longed for my mom and felt I had a very emotional pregnancy. I always wondered if it would have been a better experience for me, if I was able to go home to my mom and be comforted by her. I always had this feeling and often thought to myself that all this is temporary. I feel like most young women when they get pregnant would prefer to be close to their mothers, even some who don’t have a good relationship with their mothers.