Psychology Today Topic FAQ.

1. What is psychology?

Not a typical format answer. Just a light of words in my own way on this wonderful topic ‘PSYCHOLOGY’ hidden someway or the other in the darkness of our day to day life.

Scientific definition:

It's a science of behavior and cognitive process of an individual. Behavior means all those observable changes in one's life and way of living, while cognitive process means mental phenomenon of a person to handle different situations. Wilhelm Wundt is considered as the Founder of Experimental Psychology.

My definition:

In reality, psychology is not only about that perception that people often form saying, “Ohh!! I have to take care of my words and actions, you can read me like an open book. Tell me, being a psychologist what do you think of me?” There is nothing like that. Being a psychologist does not give us the right to judge someone, but it enhances our own perspective towards situations, working of mind, behavior tactics… et cetera.

Basically, 3 simple aspects of studying psychology according to my point of view are:

1. One understand the dynamics of human behavior and thinking: This is what makes a psychologist quite understandable. We don't label a person as good or bad, but try to analyse the situations that makes them what they are. This characteristic plays a crucial role for the aspirants who are interested in counselling healing field.
2. A vast field for research and development:Just think, isn't it cool how one can do researches and understand those experiments on electric functioning working deep inside your mind, making you react as per day to day situations? Laboratory experiments and field experiments both are conducted in their own manner.
3. At the end, it's all about your mind and heart : Being Homo sapiens, you cannot deny the fact that we all are driven by emotions, even in case of animals as well. Psychology is all about balancing and studying emotional characteristics. Whatever you think, do, believe, suffer, enjoy, like…everything is connected to your intellect. Each field has its own understanding towards issues of life and humans.

I have just started my journey in this field. So, this is a small perspective about psychology. One thing that is quite uncertain about this field is...it is not very much spread and vast in current scenario with respect to job giving opportunities. So, considered as non-existent sometimes. But, things are changing although slowly but change is happening.

2. Why is psychology important?

Psychology is the scientific study of human mind and behaviour.

Psychologists work in many different areas of society and are concerned with practical problems. Below are only a few examples:

• Helping people to overcome depression, stress, trauma or phobias
• Easing the effects of parental divorce on children
• Speeding up recovery from brain injury
• Helping to stop or prevent bullying at school or in the workplace
• Ensuring that school pupils and students are being taught in the most effective way
• Making sure that people are happy at work and perform to the best of their abilities
• Helping the police, courts and prison service to perform more effectively
• Helping athletes and sports people to perform better

For more information about the discipline, check out our ten things you might not know about psychology section.

Many of the challenges we face in the modern world are rooted in human behaviour, so psychological knowledge can help us find solutions.

People with all sorts of problems seek the help and support of psychologists. For example:

Adult mental health problems

Every day counselling psychologists and clinical psychologists help a wide range of people of all ages with all sorts of problems.

Some people have particular emotional or mental health problems, such as depression or schizophrenia. Others have difficulties with their thinking, which is also known as ‘cognitive’ problems. These can take many forms, such as problems with memory or perception after a head injury, a learning disability or dementia.

There are many more areas of life where a psychologist can help. These could include helping people manage and live with health conditions such as HIV, cancer or chronic pain, assisting people who have difficulties in maintaining relationships or providing advice about how to care for a child who has been abused.

Whatever the problem, the psychologist will consider what scientific research says about its probable cause and what will be likely to help.

Sometimes the psychologist will be the one who then provides the help. Examples of this include seeing the person for a number of sessions to provide psychological therapy or giving advice on how to manage memory problems.

Sometimes the psychologist will recommend other people who can help, perhaps advising them on the best way forward for the client.

3. What psychology books can help me understand myself?

Understanding oneself is an intellectual exercise of less value than choosing who and how you would like to be and taking the steps to get there.

For instance, often when I see clients who suffer from panic attacks, they'll ask me why they get panic attacks. They ask this because dealing with it on an intellectual, cognitive and rational level is easier than doing the necessary work to learn to turn off the panic attacks. 

That client could spend 10 years exploring why they have panic attacks... and when figure out why, they'll still have panic attacks!... or 3 to 6 weeks learning how to turn them off for good. The fact is... making the work an intellectual exercise is easier... safer.

Three things make us who we are: Genetics, our upbringing and our own choices. I can safely blame my personality quirks and my ability to cope emotionally on the latter two. But knowing the specifics fixes nothing. I have to do the work if I want to improve my own functioning. Understanding, while safe and easy, isn't enough.

4. What are the major areas of psychology?

I'll start, at the request of Lorenzo Peroni, with an informed opinion.

For me, the most interesting areas and ways of practice are:

Organisational psychology: not the traditional path where someone who studied this becomes an assessor of some kind, but rather does organisational psychology by applying the learning to how teams work, culture influences performance and organisational design shifts negative patterns through pinpointed interventions. Action research furthers the field.

Clinical psychology: the application of insights to help individuals and family systems reinvent themselves where necessary. Again with a bias for action, where the purpose is not necessarily to follow a set methodology or to figure out how our parents did us wrong (they did, now let's deal with that), but to find ways to quickly and lastingly improve clients situations.

Neuroscience: strictly not a discipline within psychology, but its cross-fertilisation with psychology fascinates me because of the wealth of insights about how we tick at the level of our nervous system are starting to influence developments in many fields.

Here's a comprehensive overview of the major fields: 

• DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY: Developmental psychologists study how we develop intellectually, socially, and emotionally over the lifespan. Some focus on just one period of life (e.g., childhood or adolescence). Developmental psychologists usually do research and teach in academic settings, but many act as consultants to day care centers, schools, or social service agencies.
• EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY: Educational psychologists are concerned with the study of human learning. They attempt to understand the basic aspects of learning and then develop materials and strategies for enhancing the learning process. For example, an educational psychologist might study reading and then develop a new technique for teaching reading. They are typically trained in Schools of Education and employed in academic settings. (See also School Psychology.)
• EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY: This area includes a diverse group of psychologists who do research in the most basic areas of psychology (e.g., learning, memory, cognition, perception, motivation, and language). Their research may be conducted with animals instead of humans. Most of these psychologists work in academic settings.
• FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY: Forensic psychologists are involved in analyzing crime evidence and aiding law enforcement agencies in criminal investigations.
• HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY: Health psychologists are concerned with psychology's contributions to the promotion and maintenance of good health and the prevention and treatment of illness. They may design and conduct programs to help individuals stop smoking, lose weight, manage stress, and stay physically fit. They are employed in hospitals, medical schools, rehabilitation centers, public health agencies, academic settings, and private practice.
• HUMAN FACTORS PSYCHOLOGY: Human Factors researchers study the human/machine interface. They may help make appliances such as cameras user-friendly, or they may do studies of safety-related issues in the design of machinery, airplane controls and instrument layouts, or they may do basic research on human perceptual and motor abilities as they relate to the operation of machines, computers, and other mechanical devices.
• INDUSTRIAL/ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY: Industrial/organizational psychologists are primarily concerned with the relationships between people and their work environments. They may develop new ways to increase productivity or be involved in personnel selection. They are employed in business, government agencies, and academic settings.
• PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY: Physiological psychologists study the physiological correlates of behavior. They study both very basic processes (e.g., how brain cells function) and more readily observable phenomena (e.g., behavioral changes as a function of drug use or the biological/genetic roots of psychiatric disorders). Most are employed in academic settings.
• SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY: School psychologists are involved in enhancing the development of children in educational settings. They assess children's psycho-educational abilities and recommend actions to facilitate student learning. They are typically trained in Schools of Education and work in public school systems. They often act as consultants to parents, teachers, and administrators to optimize the learning environments of specific students. (See also Educational Psychology.)
• SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: Social psychologists study how our beliefs, feelings, and behaviors are affected by other persons. Some topics of interest to social psychologists are attitude formation and change, aggression, prejudice, and interpersonal attraction. Most social psychologists work in academic settings, but some work in federal agencies and businesses doing applied research.

5. Why did you like studying psychology?

Psychology has always been my second topic of interest after Chemistry.

I always wonder why people do what they do, knowingly and sometimes unknowingly. Why they feel proud as punch and sometimes get drowned into their self-made guilty?

That WHY question always wonders me.

I usually focus on the logical reasoning behind the human emotions and resulting behaviors rather than an empathizing way carried out by females.

6. What is the psychology behind love?

Psychology is the study of human behavior and Love is a feeling that all of us want to feel.

At the age of 5 you are in love with your parent (mom/dad) and look up to them as your hero, idol and someone whose sole presence makes you jump with joy.

At age 14 you are in love with an art. You’ve developed a new skill for an instrument or hobby and you enjoy doing it whenever you get the time. You’ve found Love in something you do.

At age 18 you are in Love with the cute guy from science class. Why? Maybe he looks good or smells nice or maybe you like the way he looks at you. There is no specific reason but you like the way he makes you feel.

At age 25 you are in Love with your baby. Unconditional Love it is called when you expect nothing in return but give all you have and yet feel happy.

Hence, the Psychology of Love changes at every age but one thing remains constant: The Feeling.

Every time you are in Love you feel happier, joyful and more productive. Your mind helps you conquer problems with ease and your heart is healthier. This is because you smile a lot and you are happier from within. I am sure there are various chemicals involved in the way we feel when we are in Love but in very simple terms the psychology of Love is the effect of the sensation on your mind when you do something you enjoy and allow your heart to take over.

7. What is learning and how do humans learn?

Learning is cognition.

This is the process by which ones brain assimilates. The hypocampus of the brain is where this happens as one keep assimilating new information on any subject one is trying to skill oneself in. The unconnected neurons there connects together as the learning progress and remain in position, so that ones expertise rise to new information formed in the brain.

This is basically achieved in the academia or otherwise through 'reiteration' and 'fixation' on and for the subject one is learning.

This is why sometimes in scientific speak sometimes we hear some one mentioning something is at the beginning of the 'learning curve'. This means the learning curve is an Exponetial curve, and one moves up from the bottom of the curve and move upward as the skill through learning improve. One can track ones progress by checking up where on the curve one is, if one really marked ones position in the beginning of the learning process. Then this is an involved process and only experts handle this. 

The rate at which one learns is called 'learning rate' which can be deduced from the above curve, which is expressed in percentages

So learning or cognition is the 'material change taking place inside the brain as one keep progressing through ones efforts in learning something one feels important'.

8. How is psychology related to neuroscience?

Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. A behavior is any directly observable action or reaction, and metal processes include internal processes such as: thinking, feeling, and desiring. Historically, these mental processes could only be observed indirectly. Advancements in neuroscience and neuroimaging have made it possible to look at these internal processes more directly (assuming the scientist has designed a valid experiment). 

Importantly, our neurobiology constrains our behaviors and mental processes. Since psychologists aim to explain, predict, and control (e.g., preventing unwanted behaviors and promoting desirable behaviors) psychological phenomenon, an understanding of the neurobiological and neuropharmacological underpinnings of behavior and mental processes can help scientists make better predictions and design better interventions/treatment plans (e.g., targeting the neurological mechanisms or brain networks that underly speech problems in an individual with parkinson disease) . 

When psychology and neuroscience get together, they can tackle the following topics:

• Psychophysics and Perception
• Behavior/Systems/Cognition (I personally analyze data from this domain)
• Plasticity and Neural Development
• Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology
• Neuropsychopharmacology.

Ultimately, psychology and neuroscience challenge, clarify, and inform one another's theories, hypotheses, and methods. The idea that psychology and neuroscience are completely at odds with one another is a false dilemma.

9. Which pyschological novel is the best?

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Ernest Riera, Josep M. Fonalleras: The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.

10. How can you increase your IQ?

The easiest change that is likely to improve cognitive performance is in the area of diet. In particular, a proper ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acids in the diet is needed for proper cortical brain function. While these benefits have been proven in clinical trials only in young children - incidentally likely accounting for part of the 7 IQ point advantage of breastfeeding, which has also been proven - they likely apply to adults as well.

The ideal ratio of omega 3s to omega 6s is about 1:1 or 1:2. These days, most people get most of their dietary fat from vegetable oils which have an unbalanced ratio in the range of 1:20 or 1:30. Getting rid of the vegetable oils in favor of animal fat from pastured animals is ideal. Failing that, getting some omega 3s from fatty fish, the best source, can partially offset the poor fatty acid balance of vegetable oils.

For people older than the onset of metabolic syndrome, typically in the 40s, excessive blood sugar levels and swings tends to become an issue. A reduction in dietary carbohydrate intake - less sugar and starch - can help avoid this issue. There may be some additional benefit to going to a ketogenic diet, which provides an alternative source of energy to the brain - ketones instead of glucose - especially as ketones provide more usable energy per unit of oxygen.

The next easiest change is exercise. For older adults - again, roughly those of us past the onset of metabolic syndrome - exercise is useful, probably because it helps burn off excessive blood sugar levels and stores. Anaerobic exercise is especially effective since it burns blood sugar less efficiently, and thus uses more of it.

Then, there are changes in intellectual habits. In particular, it’s likely worthwhile to do a lot of reading. This is partly because reading builds vocabulary, which contributes to most peoples’ definition of intelligence and also is an element in many IQ tests. In addition, though, critical reading - thinking about what is read and its implications - helps one practice logical and rational analysis. Don’t worry about reading things that you think are good for you; just read what you enjoy enough to think about analytically. Find quiet, undisturbed time to do your reading.

Learning math through calculus is probably also useful. Math at these levels - arithmetic through algebra to calculus - is applicable to all sorts of everyday issues. Do you have enough money to make it through payday? Arithmetic. What combination of potluck dishes do you need to make sure everyone has enough main course and dessert at that party? Algebra. Can you make it through the yellow light before it turns red? Calculus. I’m not saying you should break out the pencil and paper and write down equations for all these things, but if you’ve fully learned the math, you should be able to apply the concepts to these and many other everyday problems, even if your goal is not an exact numerical answer.

Finally, there are other people. The more time you spend in the company of people smarter than you are - but not so much smarter you can’t understand them - the more opportunity you have to learn things from them, including thinking habits. Perhaps this one should have been first.

So this is all I can basically write for now. Fan of psychology? Join Our Telegram Chat or Channel.

Don’t expect an overnight change. Even babies take years to demonstrate the benefits from that initial year of breastfeeding. Keep up the good habits year after year, though, and you’ll likely see some benefits.

PS: if you're interested with our other partners here is a complete list:

Have anything to add? Drop it here...