Psychology

A Beginner's Guide

G. Neil Martin

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781780740461
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

A riveting exploration of who we are and why we behave the way we do. Why do we become aggressive? How does the brain allow us to see, hear, and feel? Can listening to Mozart improve IQ? How do babies learn to perceive and think? How can we reduce obesity and cigarette smoking? Is being physically attractive an advantage? Psychology, the scientific study of the mind and our behaviour, has never been more popular. From TV experts to the amateur musings of your best friend, the language of psychology has permeated all aspects of everyday life. Here Martin reveals that modern psychology concerns far more than the everyday stereotypes of Freud, Jung, and 'common sense' advice. This Beginner's Guide is informed by the latest cutting-edge research and provides a vibrant and witty exploration of our senses, how our memory works, and what determines our intelligence, development, and personality.

1

What is psychology?

Like reality television, politicians, art and Paris Hilton, everybody seems to have an opinion about psychology and what it means. We think we understand people well, that we can predict their behaviour – say that person X has such-and-such a personality, that person B would ‘never do something like that’ or ‘does not suffer fools gladly’. Even when people’s behaviour falls short of our predictions, we still cling onto our beliefs about the way that others behave. In a sense, we behave like lay scientists (but sometimes very bad ones): we create predictions or hypotheses (‘Sarah is the life and soul of the party’) that are supported by evidence (‘Sarah engages in raucous karaoke and customarily drinks everyone under the table’). If these predictions are not supported, however, we sometimes feel that it is not the hypothesis that is at fault (after all, we can’t be wrong) but the subject of the testing (Sarah is usually the life and soul of the party but something must have happened today to make her unwilling to belt out Aqua on the karaoke machine). That Sarah may be erecting a sociable, extravert facade because she is a lonely person, ravaged by self-doubt and is trying to cope with her pain through drink and partying isn’t normally considered. Psychologists try and see beyond the obvious.

Psychology has been defined in many ways but the most succinct is: the scientific study of human and non-human behaviour. The word comes from the Greek, psukhe, meaning ‘breath’ or ‘soul’, and logos, meaning ‘word’ or ‘reason’, and its subject matter can range from the physiological and neural (heart rate, say, or the activation of various parts of the brain) to the overtly, physically observable (responding to a stimulus, using a computer keyboard or responding to other people) to the indirectly observable (memory processes, reasoning, personality, emotion).

The important part of the definition is ‘scientific’ because psychologists approach the study of behaviour in a specific way. They construct hypotheses (ideas about the world that can be tested) and then create experiments in which these ideas are tested. If the experiment supports the hypothesis, all well and good – the hypothesis is probably correct. If not, the hypothesis needs to be modified. (Evidence in a well-conducted experiment cannot be ignored, even if you do not like the conclusion.) Psychology occupies an interesting position in the science hierarchy. A recent study by Dean Simonton in the USA compared the scientific status of psychology, biology, physics, and sociology. Simonton looked at the number of theories and laws mentioned in introductory texts, the number of graphs in journal articles, the impact of young researchers, perceived difficulty of the subject, as well as factors such as ‘lecture disfluency’ (the number of ums and ahs in lectures – these are more common in less structured and factual disciplines). Taking all these into account, psychology was ranked alongside biology and between physics, which was top of the hierarchy, and sociology, which was at the bottom.

Let’s apply the scientific method to a potentially important issue. Imagine you want to test the hypothesis that cannabis use makes you an inattentive or dangerous driver. A psychologist might set up an experiment in which randomly chosen, experienced men and women drivers in a given age range receive different doses of cannabis (or none, or a substance they think is cannabis but isn’t – a placebo) while aspects of their driving performance (such as speed, attention, lane drifting, braking, etc.) is assessed in a driving simulator, over a period of time. The psychologist’s approach to understanding behaviour, as this fairly common example shows, is different – more complex and methodical – to that of the layperson (although, in fairness, the layperson is probably not supported by a multi-million pound university laboratory, nor has access to a huge sample of participants, plentiful computing and statistics software, nor has the time to do this).

This approach means that much of what is discovered can be counter-intuitive or contradicts ‘common-sense’. According to the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘common sense in an uncommon degree is what the rest of the world calls wisdom’. Common-sense answers in psychology, however, tend to be the wrong ones. Probably the greatest British psychologist of the twentieth century, Hans J. Eysenck in his 1957 book, Sense and Nonsense in Psychology, summed it up in this way:

It appears to be an almost universal belief that anyone is competent to discuss psychological problems, whether he or she has taken the trouble to study the subject or not, and that while everybody’s opinion is of equal value, that of the professional psychologist must be excluded at all costs because he might spoil the fun by producing some facts which would completely upset the speculation and the wonderful dream castles so laboriously constructed by the layman.

Consider lying, for example. A standard policing manual, as well as a survey conducted by the Global Deception Research Team in 2006, considered ‘averting gaze’ to be the best clue to a person’s guilt/deception. Other clues were placing the hand over the mouth or eyes and playing with hair. Research, however, has revealed very different behaviours to be better predictors of mendacity. In fact, the two best predictors of lying (at least, according to recent studies) are described in chapter 9.

You can probably tell where this line of thinking is going, but take a look at the following statements. Which do you think are true and which are false?

• A person with schizophrenia has a split-personality.

• Women are more likely to conform than are men.

• When making decisions, committees tend to be more conservative than individuals.

• Dangerous riots are more likely to occur in very high temperatures (e.g. 30 degrees Celsius).

• The more motivated you are, the better able you are to solve complex problems.

• A mild electric shock directly administered to the brain leads to pain and neural tissue destruction.

• People who threaten to commit suicide rarely do.

• We only use ten per cent of our brain.

• Astrology is a good predictor of personality.

• When feeding infants, ‘breast is best’ in terms of psychological development.

• Traffic accidents and murders are more likely to occur when the moon is full.

• The saying ‘opposites attract’ in romantic relationships is generally true.

• Psychology and psychoanalysis are the same.

If you thought that all of these were false – well done! Most research indicates that all of these statements are untrue (and the first and last statements are simply factually inaccurate). If you thought the majority of them were true, you have made a common-sense mistake. Don’t worry – you’re in good company. Studies of undergraduates find that even psychology students sometimes get at most only fifty per cent of answers right when asked questions about psychological research where the obvious answer, the common-sense one, is the wrong one. Sociology students perform even worse. And engineering students clearly live on some well-oiled planet of their own. This little exercise shows that common sense is not an entirely accurate predictor of findings in psychology.

What do psychologists do?

Nowadays, hardly any person calls him or herself a psychologist. The breadth of the subject matter in psychology means that psychologists specialise in a specific field and are known by a specialism – they may study memory, say, or the workings of the brain or the senses, or how people interact with each other. In these examples, they would be called cognitive psychologists, neuropsychologists/biological psychologists and social psychologists, respectively. The different branches of psychology (and, by extension, the different types of psychologist) are described in table 1.

Psychologists conduct experiments, advise on health and educational issues and on better ways of working for local and national government, help treat and diagnose people with psychological disorders, are involved in assessment of personality and intelligence (children’s and adults’), teach and undertake research. They work in universities, industry, commerce, hospitals, advertising, schools – any arena where an understanding of behaviour can be applied or studied. Psychologists usually have a first university degree in psychology or a related subject, a postgraduate research degree such as an MSc and a higher degree or doctorate (PhD). They are different to psychiatrists, who hold medical degrees and specialise in mental illness/disorders (and can, therefore, prescribe medication). The work of psychiatrists is similar to that of clinical psychologists, except that the former have a medical degree and can prescribe medication and the latter a postgraduate doctorate in clinical psychology (called a DClinPsy).

Psychotherapists can be psychologists but you do not need to be a psychologist to be a psychotherapist. A psychotherapist aims to understand and treat mental distress from a particular theoretical/ideological standpoint. Psychotherapy is usually called the ‘talking cure’ (although it rarely cures) because it primarily involves talking through a person’s problem, but some forms are much more methodical and involve changing the client’s way of thinking and behaviour, not just listening to his/her outpouring. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), for example, which has been used to treat certain forms of depression successfully, involves getting the patient to think differently about how he/she thinks (why he/she thinks negatively) and to make explicit plans to change the way he/she behaves. There is even evidence to suggest that CBT can help unemployed people find work (because of its emphasis on doing, as well as thinking). There are hundreds of different types of psychotherapy and we’ll return to the most reputable in the last chapter.

Table 1 The major branches of psychology

Branch	Subject of study
Psychobiology/Biological psychology	Biological basis of behaviour
Psychophysiology	Psychophysiological responses such as heart rate, galvanic skin response and brain electrical activity
Neuropsychology	Relationship between brain activity/structure and function
Comparative psychology	Behaviour of species in terms of evolution and adaptation
Ethology	Animal behaviour in natural environments
Sociobiology	Social behaviour in terms of biological inheritance and evolution
Behaviour genetics	Degree of influence of genetics and environment on psychological factors
Cognitive psychology	Mental processes and complex behaviour
Cognitive neuroscience	Brain’s involvement in mental processes
Developmental psychology	Physical, cognitive, social and emotional development from birth to senescence
Social psychology	Individuals’ and groups’ behaviour
Individual differences	Temperament and characteristics of individuals and their effects on behaviour
Cross-cultural psychology	Impact of culture on behaviour
Cultural psychology	Variability of behaviour within cultures
Forensic/criminological psychology	Behaviour in the context of crime and the law
Clinical psychology	Causes and treatment of mental disorder
Health psychology	Impact of lifestyle and stress on health and illness
Educational psychology	Social, cognitive and emotional development of children in the context of schooling

Psychoanalysis, probably the name most commonly confused with psychology (never confuse the two when talking to a proper psychologist – it won’t be a happy conversation), has little to do with modern scientific psychology. It takes the thought and work of early twentieth-century physicians such as Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler and Karen Horney, and applies it to understanding and managing emotional and behavioural problems. Most of these theories describe the workings of the ‘unconscious’ which is argued to influence our conscious life. Few psychologists take psychoanalysis seriously. It is also a very difficult field to which to apply scientific standards because some parts are untestable. If, for example, you admit that your unusual behaviour is due to some traumatic event in your childhood, that fits the theory. If you do not, it still fits the theory because you are simply repressing the memory of the event that caused your mental turmoil. We’ll come back to Freud and colleagues in the chapter on individual differences.

Ideas and schools of thought in psychology

Psychology likes to regard itself as a young science and the regard is not unfounded. The first person to call himself a psychologist was still living in 1920; the first modern laboratory in experimental psychology was set up in 1878, in Germany; even at the beginning of the twentieth century, some universities would offer courses in ‘mental philosophy’ (rather than what we’d now call psychology). The discipline has, therefore, travelled phenomenally quickly in a short space of time. But it is not only psychologists who think about psychological issues. The history of psychology goes beyond 1878, and its historical milestones and influences have shaped the way the discipline has developed.

Like all of the sciences, psychology has its roots in philosophy and the schools of philosophical thought with which it has been most closely associated are animism, dualism, empiricism, idealism, and materialism. In short, this is what each contributed.

Animism – a primitive philosophy (from the Latin animare, ‘to enliven, endow with soul’) in which animate and inanimate objects were thought to have a spirit that guided movement. Because bodily movement was thought to be controlled by the mind or spirit, so were other moving objects such as the sun and moon (and even a falling rock). Of historical interest...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Illustrations
• 1. What is psychology?
• 2. The nervous system: biological psychology in action
• 3. Sensing and perceiving the world
• 4. Learning, remembering, forgetting
• 5. Language and communication
• 6. Individual differences: intelligence and personality
• 7. The development of behaviour
• 8. Influencing others: social psychology in action
• 9. Emotion, stress, and health
• 10. Mental illness
• Coda
• Further reading
• Index