What Is Psychology?

What is psychology? This question is hard to answer, but it is also very easy to answer at the same time. Psychology is the study of the brain and behavior of individuals or groups. Essentially, the goal of psychology is to understand the mechanisms of the mind, whether they are biological, personality, social, or other mechanisms, and the effects that these mechanisms have on behavior. When thinking about psychology, many people, both the average citizen and professionals in the academic world, come across one question that is common to all... Is psychology a science? Many academics in other fields (such as biology, chemistry, physics) would say no. However, this is false. Psychology is a science, with its roots in physiology, chemistry, anthropology, and philosophy. Psychology, as a science, uses the scientific method to conduct research, utilizing hypotheses testing, statistical analyses, and often delving into the biological, physiological, and chemical components of behavior. Although, psychology does indeed conduct research, many academics fail to acknowledge psychology as a science, as many times "causality" (meaning the ability to cause something) is nonexistent. However, despite this, psychological science uses various methodologies to describe, explain, and predict human behavior and mental processes. Thus, psychology IS a science.

There are various fields in psychology that each take a specific approach to the aforementioned goal. These approaches include the behavioral (focusing on the causes and explanations of human behavior and how to change it), cognitive (focused on mental processes as a format of information processing), psychodynamic (this is one most people have heard of and includes the unconscious motives of an individual), social (this is the study of social processes and their effects on individuals and group dynamics), and developmental (the field of psychology focused on the development of mental processes across the lifespan), but are not limited to these, as there are many others. Each area has a broad set of theoretical foundations from which they work and a particular goal in the research that is conducted. Oftentimes, these areas overlap and integrate with each other, such as Social Psychology, Community Psychology, and Industrial/Organizational Psychology, which all focus on individuals and groups and can be used in conjunction with one another to provide a broader understanding of a question or topic.

Understanding what psychology is and what it entails is just the first step, however. Psychology is much more than just “the theory of this” or the “this and that approach.” Psychology is a scientific field of inquiry which publishes research and theoretical papers in scientific journals both domestically and internationally. The field of psychology utilizes many different methods, such as experiments (testing a hypothesis in an independent/dependent variable approach), case studies (which focus on one individual or a few individuals to gain an in-depth understanding of the behavior or underlying mental processes that occur, observation, and surveys. Each method has its pros and cons, and the design of the research study depends entirely on the question trying to be answered.

Research also utilizes different analysis methods. First, much psychological research is correlational in nature. That is, no potential “cause and effect” relationships can be determined, but strong correlational relationships (e.g., I drink coke and burp, the more coke I drink, the more I burp) can be used to draw conclusions about what might happen. The stronger the correlation, the more likely it is to happen. Analysis methodologies (sometimes correlational, sometimes not) are quantitative, qualitative, and mixed method. Mixed method research, or MMR, is a combination of both quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative research utilizes numbers and statistical analyses to draw conclusions, often to generalize results to a wider population. Qualitative research focuses on the nitty-gritty details that often go unnoticed in numeric analysis.

Throughout the Psychology Review series, different aspects of psychology, from the various approaches, notable figures, different fields, and concepts, will be covered in greater detail, giving further insight into the question of “What Is Psychology?”

Information obtained from my own education in psychology. Further blogs will include cited references using the American Psychological Association's reference rules.