Psychology class starting up. Professor is Michael Hunt.
I’m generally looking forward to this class. There’s a lot of uses for a better understanding of learning. Particularly when I’ve been running training and support staff.
Two primary sources of behavior: Inborn behaviors (nature) and acquired behaviors (nurture). Learning is a major means of acquiring behaviors.
Grading is on a cumulative point system. Two exams, including the final. One “self-observation” project, and two virtual rat projects. Grades for the projects will specifically be for reports on those projects.
Learning has gotten a lot of attention historically. Questions about how much behavior is learned vs. inborn, whether learning can be consciously controlled, and so forth have been raised since the Greek philosophers.
Sources of Behavior
- Acquired through Inheritance
- Acquired through Experience
- Acquired through Psychodynamic Processes (Controversial. Freud)
What is Psychology?
Psychology is the scientific study of behavior. Psychology is not yet really a science, according to Hunt. Partially, this is because most people who go into psychology do not go into research or scientific fields; rather, they go into clinical psychology/psychopathology. Clinical psychology is a very small subset of the field of psychology, but an inordinately large portion of active psychologists. The majority of psychologists are practicioners, not scientists.
Psychology also lacks a dominant paradigm for study. Sciences usually have one strong paradigm. Psychology has approximately five.
Sciences have four main goals.
- To define, that is, to objectively and unambiguously describe something
- To explain, or understand why a phenomena occurs or exists
- To predict the response of something to changes
- To control that phenomena