Psychology 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Sigmund Freud, Psychoanalysis, Pineal Gland

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Terry Biggs

Document Summary

What is psychology: scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Goals of psychology: to describe how people and animals behave, to explain and understand the causes of behaviors, to predict how people and animals will behave under certain conditions. The quest for knowledge purely for its own sake. Goals are to describe how people behave and to identify the factors that influence or cause a particular type of behavior: applied research. Uses principles discovered in basic research to solve practical problems. A framework of factors to understand why people behave, think and feel as they do. Biological level: behaviors and its causes (brain processes, genetic influences) Environmental level: past and current physical and social environments to which we are exposed to. The relations between mental processes in the brain and the functioning of other bodily systems. The interaction focuses on our attention on the interplay between psychological and biological levels of analysis: nature. Behavior shaped by biological endowment: nurture.