Psychology Chapter Summary

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Psychology is about People The book addresses various social issues spanned across different topics that can be understood independently. However, as a whole, the book covers several concerns that are common to each issue raised in each topic. The first concern Eysenck addressed is the scientific study of social problems. He argued that psychology should be subjected to scientific methods of investigation and that there are indeed psychological concepts and theories that can be applied to this rigorous process. For instance, he suggested that the concept of personality can be based on biological and experimental findings through the considerations of the anatomical and physiological structure of the brain. The basal ganglia and the cortex …show more content…

This theory focuses on the individual traits of a person that form his personality; meaning every individual is unique.
What three points in the book/theorist were most significant to you?
a) The author’s proposal and defense of personality as the central concept that should underlie psychology as a science (pg. 7)
b) The emphasis, across all topics, on the fact that people are different therefore we cannot assume that one solution fits all as far as solving social problems is concerned.
c) Almost all concepts and theories in psychology can be subjected to the rigidly accurate methods of scientific investigation to come up with solutions to common social problems e.g. the behaviorist solutions to learning problems (p. 100-159)

With which aspects of the book/theorist did you agree? I agreed with the author that doing laboratory experiments to gain insight into trivial social problems is not enough; neither is coming up with untested theories to solving significant social problems. There is need for both the experimental and social psychologists to work together to achieve lasting solutions to these issues (p. …show more content…

146-147). Some of the old conventional ways of teaching such as essay writing were, and still are, a good way of evaluating a student’s understanding on a given subject. They may be tedious and time-consuming but the way out is not to scrap them off entirely but to find ways of making them more efficient and reliable such as increasing the number of teachers, standardizing the essays or even setting different deadlines for handing in essays for marking. Also, in his examples of how token economies can be applied in marriage therapy, it was clear that this method was infallible to preventing divorce in marriage (p.143-144). Therefore, it is evident that some psychological theories and applications are not suitable to some social

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