Psychological Approaches

Psychology is the study of the human mind and behaviour. Through this science, we have been able to understand the effects on the mind caused by routine, experiments, disease, emotion, logic and behaviour. Psychology can be used to explain how we act and why we do what we do.

Since psychology is a multifaceted discipline, it includes many fields and sub-fields that could be studied. These include, but are not limited to human development, health, sports, clinical, social behaviour and cognitive processes.

In the duration of this class, we will be looking at the foundation of psychology – psychological approaches. There are six main approaches when it comes to analysing human behaviour. These will all be explored during the course.

• The psychodynamic approach has two key features: It divides the mind into the conscious, unconscious and preconscious. It states that the personality is made up of three components – the id, ego and superego.
• The physiological approach investigates brain functions in healthy and impaired individuals, studying brain chemistry and psychology. The common assumption is that biology underlines behaviour.
• The behaviourist theory rejects the investigation of internal mental processes.
• The humanist approach rejects determinism and emphasises free will.
• The cognitive theory focuses on active mental processes.
• The social approach believes that we construct our world view through social interactions.

During the module, our students will:

• Learn about the main psychological approaches.
• Understand the history of the psychological approaches.
• Describe how behaviour changes and how it is affected through scientific theories.
• Explain how human behaviour relates to these theories.
• Learn about critical experiments that took place in the field.
• Adapt the psychological approaches to everyday life.