Psychological Perspectives

1. Psychological Perspectives

2. Different Perspectives • 9 Different Perspectives or viewpoints characterize modern psychology. Each viewpoint sees psychology in a slightly different way.

3. Biological Perspective • Emphasizes how our physical makeup and the operation of our brains influence our personality, preferences, behaviors, and abilities • Study nervous system, glands and hormones, genetic factors, and heredity in attempt to understand the causes of behavior.

4. Variations of the Biological Perspective • Neuroscience – The enterprise of biological psychology, coupled with biology, neurology, and other disciplines interested in the brain processes. • Evolutionary Psychology – Suggests that Human traits arise from hereditary characteristics established in our remote ancestral past. • Genetic makeup (both the good and bad) shed by the conditions our ancestors faced thousands of years ago.

5. The Developmental Perspective • Change is a constant part of human life. • Developmental Perspective – States that psychological change results from an interactions between the heredity programmed in our genes and the experiences presented by our environment. • Nature vs. Nurture • Studies how we change throughout the course of our lives.

6. Cognitive Perspective • Emphasizes that our actions are profoundly influenced by the way we process information from our environment. • Thoughts and actions arise from the way we interpret our experiences. • Study all sorts of mental processes. • Thoughts, expectations, perceptions, memories, and states of consciousness.

7. Psychodynamic Perspective • Stresses that we are motivated primarily by the irrational desires generated in our unconscious minds. • Study unconscious processes, early childhood experiences and their impact on behavior. • Psychoanalysis

8. Humanistic Perspective • Stresses that our actions are hugely influenced by our self concept and by our need for personal growth and fulfillment. • Free will. • Study subjective experiences.

9. Behavioral / Learning Perspective • Emphasizes that rewards and punishments shape how we act. • Looks for causes of behavior in the environment rather than in the mind. • Study environmental influences, habitual behavior, observational learning.

10. Sociocultural Perspective • Emphasizes the effects of ethnicity, gender, culture, and socio-economic status on behavior. • Makes the idea of social influence the focus of psychology. • Study ethnicity, gender, culture, and socioeconomic status.

11. The Evolutionary/Sociobiological Perspective • Looks at behavior as both adaptive and hereditary. • Applies the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin to individual behavior. • Looks at genetics not as the key to what makes people different, but as the means by which we have evolved.

12. The Trait View • Traits – Long-lasting personality characteristics. • Example – Introversion and Extroversion • Trait View – Psychological perspective that views behavior and personality as the products of enduring psychological characteristics.