Chapter 1Dimensions of Psychology

• Definition:

- “It is the study of behavior and mental processes”

• Main goals:

• 1- Describe behavior and mental processes.

• 2- Explain behavior and mental processes.

• 3- Predict the mental characteristics in specific circumstances.

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* Importance of studying this course?

• 1. Helps the student to understand their own behavior and others’ behavior, and reasons for that behavior.

• 2. Helps the students to develop insights, and suggests how applied in the problem solving (personal and social)

 

• 3. Helps you in your future work as dealing with different types of patients.

 4. Helps you to be more perceptive in evaluating psychological information’s, you read or hear about.

• 5- Assess and relieve stress in the different clinical situations.

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*Aspects of psychology:

• I -Psychology is a science

• -May not seem to you as much of a science like chemistry or biology. ( psychologists study things

that can’t be put in a tube or under a microscope).

• -Psychologists try to understand behaviors, and relations between variables and issues (deal with sensations or perception).

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• *Examples: -

-Why twins develop different personalities?

-Why women are more emotionally? expressive than men are?

• Psychology: deals with (why and how).

• Psychologists use systematic method to gather data, analyze them and interpret the meaning of their findings and developing theories.

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• A theory: (attempt to fit all known, relevant facts into a logical explanation).

- can serve as framework for collecting more data.

- Findings of different investigators lead to new problems, new directions and new possibilities, (so there is always more to learn. (

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• II –Psychology promote human welfare: by:

- a) Basic science aims to understand a subject regardless to whether will have immediate practical effect e.g. emotions, attitudes, motivations, and thoughts.

• -Some people thinks that basic science is a wasting of time and money.

• b) Applied science: the research findings are used to solve practical problems or improve the quality of life e.g. poor academic achievement of students, decrease productivity of the workers.

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Past history of Psychology:

• Wilhelm Wundt (1832- 1920)

- German -professor participated in establishing psychology as a separate science.,

- Built the first psychology laboratory in 1879 for the purpose of doing psychological research

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• William James (1842- 1910) :

- American psychologist published the most influential text book in psychology "principles of psychology", he believed that human mind was constantly evolving as it adapted to new information of the environment.

•  N.B.: "Al- Ghazaly“ is the first Islamic scientist who named this science as psychology.

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Questions?