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Importance of psychology in society
Importance of psychology in society
Importance of psychology in society
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Psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and its function. Psychology is used to understand how human’s behavior is effected by their emotional and mental state. Some major contributions to psychology are Evolutionary, Cognitive, and Sociocultural Psychology. Evolutionary Psychology is an approach in the social and natural selection that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It’s a theory that studies how human behavior and mental process changes over time to help individuals adapt to their changing environment; through the principles of natural selection. The founder of Evolutionary psychology is Charles Darwin, but it has also been influenced by ethology, evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, genetics, and …show more content…
In his theory, Darwin argues that most of human behavior is an outcome of psychological adaptations, that are supposed to help solve recurrent problems in human ancestral environments. Evolutionary psychology has made major contributions to psychology. For example, it has helped psychologist figure out that the brain contains specialized neural mechanisms, that are designed to solve problems that recurred during evolutionary time. Evolutionary psychology has also helped psychologist create a hypothesis that states that humans have inherited special mental capacities for adaptations, that help them acquire languages, infer other people’s emotions, identify healthier mates, and help them cooperate well with others (Ghiselin 1973). Today, Evolutionary Psychology is used to identify emotional and cognitive adaptations that represent “human psychological nature” (last name, page # or year made) and its being applied to the study of many fields, including economics, aggression, law, psychiatry, politics, literature, and
Psychology can be broadly defined as the scientific and systematic study of people’s behavior and mental processes.
Psychology is a social science that aims to study the mind and the behaviors of humans. It aims to understand what drives humans to act the way they do. It differs from sociology and anthropology in that it takes accounts the individual rather than society as a whole.
Keith Henson a writer in evolutionary psychology once said that “Evolution acts slowly. Our psychological characteristics today are those that promoted reproductive success in the ancestral environment.” Evolution was first introduced by a naturalist by the name of Charles Darwin. Darwin had written an autobiography, at the age of 50, On the Origin of Species (1859) explaining how species evolve through time by natural selection; this theory became known as Darwinism. “Verlyn Klinkenborg, who writes editorials and vignettes on science and nature for the “New York Times”” (Muller 706) questions Darwin’s theory in one of his essays he wrote called Darwin at 200: The Ongoing Force of His Unconventional Idea. Both articles talk about the theory of Darwinism, but the authors’ use different writing techniques and were written in different time periods. Darwin himself writes to inform us on what the theory is, where as Klinkenborg goes on to explain why Darwinism is just a theory. Today, evolution is still a very controversial topic among many. It comes up in several topics that are discussed everyday such as in politics, religion and education.
Evolutionary theory is developed from Darwin’s argument that “suggests that a process of natural selection leads to the survival of the fittest and the development of traits that enable a species to adept to its environment. “ Many have taken this a step further by saying that our genetic inheritance determines not only our physical traits but also certain personality traits and social behaviors. There is such a controversy over significant behaviors that unfold because many believe that we are already pre-programmed human species. It has also been argued that evolution is reflected in functioning and structure of the nervous system and that is has evolutionary factors that have a significant influence on everyday behavior. With what is being said means that if we follow the evolutionary theory, then it would be said that we are already pre-programmed from before birth to follow certain protocols in life. Whether it is from finding a mate or by getting a job. It also believed that this theory gives use cues from our own system to follow, providing us with certain aspects of life from our ancestors. By believing in this theory we can determine that the importance of heredity when influencing human behavior. Behavioral geneticists and evolutionary psychologists have both agreed that not only do genetic factors provide specific behaviors or traits but it also shows the limitations on the emergence of such traits or behaviors. What this means is that our genetics will determine how tall we will be to how ...
The purpose of this academic piece is to critically discuss The Darwinist implication of the evolutionary psychological conception of human nature. Charles Darwin’s “natural selection” will be the main factor discussed as the theory of evolution was developed by him. Evolutionary psychology is the approach on human nature on the basis that human behavior is derived from biological factors and there are psychologists who claim that human behavior is not something one is born with but rather it is learned. According to Downes, S. M. (2010 fall edition) “Evolutionary psychology is one of the many biologically informed approaches to the study of human behavior”. This goes further to implicate that evolutionary psychology is virtually based on the claims of the human being a machine that can be programmed to do certain things and because it can be programmed it has systems in the body that allow such to happen for instance the nervous system which is the connection of the spinal cord and the brain and assists in voluntary and involuntary motor movements.
Smith, S. & Stevens, R. (2002) Evolutionary Psychology, in Miell, D., Pheonix, A. and Thomas, K. (eds) Mapping Psychology 1, Milton Keynes, The Open University.
The term psychology has many meanings to different people, even to those who work within the psychological field. The word psychology derives from two Greek roots; 'psyche' refers to 'soul' or 'mind' and logo refers to 'the study of'. A more update definition of the word psychology can be found from Atkinson, et al (1991) “The scientific study of behaviours and mental processes.” However on Google Definitions the definition of psychology is “the mental characteristics and attitudes of a person” [accessed 16 September 2011], which gives somewhat of a contradiction. In this assignment I will be outlining and evaluating four key psychological perspectives. The psychological perspectives I have chosen are the behavioural approach, biological approach, cognitive approach and the psychodynamic approach.
Crawford, Charles and Dennis L. Krebs. Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology: Ideas, Issues, and Applications. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998.
An evolved psychological mechanism is a set of processes during which a historically recurring specific survival or reproductive problem faces an organism, this allows narrow information to bring about a determined output behavior that leads to solving the problem. An example of a human trait that follows this definition would be a human’s fear of snake. Throughout human history, humans have been innately scared at the site of snakes. When a snake is spotted, a human is put in a specific “survival” situation, during which the human is triggered to be scared of the snake. This leads to the human avoiding the snake to
According to David Funder, evolutionary psychology attempts to explain behavioral patterns by analyzing how they have many been used for survival and reproduction in past generations. Evolutionary psychology gave special attention to sex differences in mating behaviors, including differences in what men and women find most attractive in each other and the strategies they use to seek and keep mates. In the book The science of Psychology by Laura A. King, stats that psychologists argue, the way we adapt is traceable to problems early humans faced in adapting to their environment. Decisions like aggressiveness, fear, our physical features and body shapes all were had the influence of what our ancestors had to do to survive.
Evolution is consider to be the process in how organisms, like ourselves have grown and changed from other organisms before us. Psychology is the study of the human mind and the functions that would come with it. Since the theory of evolution came about in the biology world, a lot of psychologists believe that evolution has to do a great deal with how we can explain psychological and social behavior. Evolutionary psychology has been a theoretical approach to psychology that tries to point out the traits, like memory, perception, and language as changes to natural selection. Throughout history psychologist all ask the same question to whether or not evolution is a good explanation for the concepts of psychology and even today it is still considered
When asked to define psychology there so many thoughts that runs through my mind. Psychology is the scientific study of ones thoughts and behavior. People think psychologically every day for example when you try to explain what someone else is doing to another person. There are many fields of study that try to understand how people think and the actions they take. Psychology is used for many different reasons not only do they study the human behavior they also help mental patients and try to figure them out and a problem that they have. Learning the scientific perspective on human behavior can help you develop a curiosity for how the human behavior works (Feist 2013). When studying psychology it not only makes you more aware of how people work in a general setting it also makes you more aware of how you work yourself.
The central purpose of this essay is to critically discuss the importance of understanding human evolution and the history of psychology for the modern psychologist. For the human evolution, the essay will be addressing on how we and other species descended from our ancestors and how the different environment has helped to us to become more adaptable. Regarding the history of psychology, the essay will be discussing on how psychology branched off from the philosophy approach to become its own science. The essay will then go on discussing how the understanding of both human evolution and history of psychology would be used by modern psychologist.
Nature versus nurture remains one of the oldest philosophical debates within the field of psychology. Nature refers directly to the genes and the hereditary factors that directly influence who we are, ranging from our individual physical appearance to our personality traits and characteristics. What is interesting to note, is most branches of psychology tend to take one side versus the other kind of approach. Examples of this can be seen in biological psychology where they tend to stress the significance of genetics and biological influences on a person’s behaviors. While behaviorism tends to focus more on the impact that a person’s environment has on their behaviors. Theorist such as John B. Watson believed that people could be trained
Humans have eloped in many different ways through childhood all the way into adulthood though time. Since the beginning of time humans have always been evolving and adapting to changes in environments or their culture. According to Leda Cosmides & John Tooby “The goal of research in evolutionary psychology is to discover and understand the design of the human mind”.which mans that while studying the evoloution of phsycology you also study the human mind.Different populations have changed over time due to regional effects and different lifestyles. Acco...