What is Psychology? 5 keys to discover this science

We take a look at what defines this science of the mind and behavior and refute some myths.

Psychology is a discipline that is much talked about but not easily understood but not easily understood in its entirety.

Some people believe that it is part of the field of health, others assume that its main contribution is "talking cure" or that psychologists know how to read the thoughts of others by analyzing what they say and how they move, and not a few continue to confuse it with philosophy.

All this is indicative of one fact: although psychology is a young science, the large number of currents and professional outlets that stem from it has led to confusion about its raison d'être.

Understanding Psychology

What exactly is psychology? The answer to this is both simple and complicated, so to understand it in a simple and organized way, we will look at it in 5 key points. Let's start with the basics.

1. A simple definition of "Psychology".

We can start with a simple explanation of what psychology is. This definition would be as followsPsychology is the scientific discipline that studies and analyzes people's behavior and mental processes.

This is a rather superficial explanation of what is meant by psychology, but at least it serves as a starting point and, moreover, allows us to put aside one of the most frequent myths about this discipline. This myth is that psychology is understood as one of the sections of the health sciences.

Certainly, the first psychologists were strongly linked to medicine and neurology, but from the beginning there was already a desire to understand the human mind in its most universal aspectsnot only in illness. Even Sigmund Freud, whose theories are now outdated, not only sought to understand psychopathology, but the "psychic structures" and the mechanisms through which they function in any human being.

Thus, this science deals with the study of mental processes in general, not only psychological disorders, although clinical and health psychology are its two best known and most popularized areas of intervention. This means that the idea that many people have of it focuses on only one of its facets and leaves out many of its components, such as social psychology, organizational psychology, etc.

2. The study of behavior

As we have seen, the basic definition of psychology is surprisingly broad. However, this creates some problems. For example, there is no absolute consensus as to what is the object of study of this discipline, i.e., that which it seeks to understand.

We have seen that, theoretically, psychologists study mental processes and behavior, but this simple distinction is already controversial.

For some, clarifying that mental processes and behavior are two separate things is necessary in order not to neglect the objective of understanding feelings, beliefs and, in general, everything that happens, so to speak, "behind closed doors", inside our heads.

For others, especially the heirs of the behaviorist current, distinguishing between mental processes and behavior is unjustified.Does what happens inside our head occur in parallel to what the rest of our body does? If we do not want to fall into dualism, we should start from the idea that our mental life is not born spontaneously somewhere in our "psyche", as if it were some substance disconnected from the cells that compose us. According to this perspective, everything that we usually attribute to the mental is also a form of behavior: a type of response that appears before a certain stimulus, produced in turn by a chain of causes and effects that is always connected to our environment and, therefore, to the non-mental.

3. Studying humans and non-humans

The definition mentions the relationship between psychology and the study of aspects of the human being, but this is not entirely true. In practice, psychologists research and intervene with a focus on our species, but many of them also work with ethologists, neuroscientists and biologists in general studying all kinds of animals. After all, many of them also have a nervous system, a mental life and the propensity to learn new behaviors.

In addition, it is also possible to study animals with an eye to our own species in order to better understand who we are and where we come from. Comparative psychology is largely concerned with this; for example, looking at how certain groups of primates react to a mirror helps us learn more about the nature of consciousness and self-concept.

Does psychology focus on individuals?

Earlier we saw that psychology studies "persons". If this way of putting it seems ambiguous, it is simply because it is; there are an infinite number of aspects on which this discipline can intervene, and some of them have to do with the social, while others do not.

Nowadays it is widely assumed that our way of thinking, feeling and acting is not only social, but also social. has a lot to do with the social interactions in which we have participated. We do not exist as individuals living apart from society; we are part of it, whether we want to be or not, from the moment our minds are shaped by something jointly created: language.

However, in order to focus on one of the facets of what makes us human, some psychologists choose to fix their attention on one of the facets of what makes us human, some psychologists choose to fix their attention on the person understood as an individual, while others study the person as a person.while others study the person as an entity participating in a network of social interaction. For example, it is possible to study the intelligence or memory of individuals with certain characteristics, and it is also perfectly legitimate to analyze how the fact of participating in group work causes us to reason and construct proposals collectively.

5. Do psychologists do science?

Another hot point when it comes to understanding what psychology is is whether or not it belongs to the world of science. It is true that this discipline has a facet that is not part of science in the strict sense of the word, but more in any case to the applied sciences, since it uses scientifically generated knowledge to apply it and achieve certain effects. However, the controversy does not come from that side, but the degree to which it is possible to predict behavior, especially human behavior.especially human behavior.

The power to predict what is going to happen and the way in which people react when predictions fail is something to which much attention is paid to determine what is science and what is not. In the end, seeing how predictions about an element of nature are confirmed is a sign that its functioning is well understood and that, at least until a better theory appears, it is reasonable to rely on the existing one. It is on this aspect that the discussion about the scientificity of psychology is centered.

• Related article, "Is psychology a science?"

Predicting behavior

Compared to chemistry or physics, psychology has many more problems in establishing concrete and accurate forecasts, but this cannot be otherwise: the nervous system of the human being, which is the main component of behavior and mental processes in our species, is one of the most complex systems in nature, and it is constantly changing.and, moreover, it is constantly changing. This has two effects.

The first effect is that the number of variables that influence what we think, what we feel and what we do is overwhelming, practically infinite. The simple fact of having met an intimidating dog at the door of the psychology lab will influence what happens next. That's why psychology can claim to know statistical patterns and some of the most relevant variables in understanding psychological phenomena, but it does not aspire to know virtually everything that comes into play, something that chemists studying molecules can aspire to.

The second effect is that behavior and the mental are the result of a historical process. This means that we are always different, we are never again identical to our "I" of the day before. What implications does this have for deciding whether psychology is science? Very simple: what we make a prediction about is never the same as what we have studied before and whose information has allowed us to establish the prediction. The person or group of people about whom we are trying to predict things has already changed since the moment we last analyzed it.