Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to remember or notice things that confirm our expectations and ignore the rest. A superstition is an unfounded belief held without objective evidence or in the face of falsifying evidence. If the unfounded belief system seems scientific, it is sometimes called a pseudoscience.
Introspection is personal observation of your own thoughts, feeling, and behavior. The cognitive unconscious is the part of the mind of which we are subjectively unaware and that is not open to introspection. Structuralism is the study of sensations and personal experience analyzed as basic elements. Gestalt psychology is the study of thinking, learning, and perception in whole units, not by analysis into parts. Functionalism is the school of psychology that considers behaviors in terms of active adaptations.
Behaviorism is the school of thought in psychology that emphasizes study of observable actions over study of the mind. Radical behaviorism is a behaviorist approach that rejects both introspection and any study of mental events, such as thinking, as inappropriate topics for scientific psychology. In Freudian theory, the dynamic unconscious are the parts of the mind that are beyond awareness, especially conflicts, impulses, and desires not directly known to a person. Psychoanalysis is the Freudian approach to psychotherapy emphasizing the exploration of unconscious using free association, dream interpretation, resistances, and transference to uncover unconscious conflicts. Humanistic psychology is the study of people as inherently good and motivated to learn and improve. Self-actualization is the process of fully developing personal potentials. Biopsychology is the study of the physical brain and body structures that underlie behavior and mental processes. Cognitive psychology is the study of information processing, thinking, reasoning, and problem solving. An operational definition defines a scientific concept by stating the specific actions or procedures used to measure it.
Today, one overarching perspective has gained prominence. The biopsychosocial model is an approach acknowledging that biological, psychological, and social factors interact to influence human behavior and mental processes. The biological perspective is the attempt to explain behavior in terms of underlying biological principles. The psychological perspective is the traditional view that behavior is shaped by psychological processes occurring at the levle of the individual. The social perspective is the focus on the importance of social contexts in influencing the behavior of individuals.
—September 2020
Lance Jones 