First Steps into Psychology

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First Steps into Psychology

Throughout the past seven or so months, I have done quite a bit of writing on psychology for the level Zero series in Project PsychSeeing. But they are actually meant to help individuals decide whether committing themselves to psychology is the choice they want, along with my personal philosophical ramblings that simply do not belong anywhere else. In fact they did not exactly shed any light on what exactly do psychology students learn.

In other words, we are just getting started!

Adapted from: http://www.fortunebuilders.com/

This piece indicates the beginning of a series of writings that will introduce readers to first year psychology content and lay down the building blocks to understand more complex psychology phenomenon later on. These are some of the things I intend to cover: the definition of psychology, the perspectives of psychology, a brief history of psychology, then introductions to each field of academic psychology, and finally some introductory research methodology. Here are some of the questions we will be coming across.

‘What is psychology really about?’

Is it about talking to people on couches? Studying mental illnesses? How do we form a discipline out of studying things that we cannot see?

Adapted from http://i.imgur.com

‘Where did psychology come from?’

Hermann Ebbinghaus described this best: Psychology has a long past but a short history.

Adapted from http://media.web.britannica.com/

‘How does psychology has anything to do with the brain?’

When we get stumped and frustrated by the complexity of the biological brain, we will need reasons to understand why is it important to study it in order to continue.

Adapted from: http://www.firstpersonpolitics.com/

‘Is personality natural or molded by the environment?’

It makes you wonder, if Hitler got accepted into art school, will whatever evil that follows still happen?

Adapted from: http://www.dagens.dk/

‘How do we think, learn and remember?’

Adapted from: http://mconnex.engin.umich.edu/

The human mind is capable of many incredible feats that we take for granted. We can learn or encode information, we can process information in a way that make sense to us, and we can provide information that make sense to others. We will explore how all of these things happen in the same picture.

‘Why do people form groups and divisions?’

Adapted from: http://www.professionalacademy.com/

People can create alliances over very petty similarities like the type of afterlife they are looking forward to, and can becomes enemies over very petty differences like dietary preferences. Social psychology holds answers on why are human beings the most awesome and terrible species on the planet, and why are interactions with others matter a lot.