Psy140 Essay: Psychological Concepts, Theories, and Processes

This essay delves into various psychological concepts, theories, and processes, including problem-solving, decision-making, cognitive and social psychology, conformity, memory (sensory, short-term, and long-term), and perception. It provides examples of how these concepts apply in real-world scenarios, such as in organizational settings, highlighting their importance in understanding individual and group behavior. The essay emphasizes the practical applications of psychology in fields like education, sports, and business, and underscores its role in promoting effective decision-making, time management, and overall well-being. Desklib provides students access to this assignment and a wealth of other resources to aid in their studies.

Running Head: Psychology
Psychology
Concepts, Theories and Processes

Psychology 1
Psychology is the wide study which ranges from hypothetical and theoretical analysis of the data
including work in statistics and the understanding of the quantitative and qualitative data. This
essay focuses on the psychological concepts, theories and the processes of psychology (Lee,
Gino, & Staats, 2014).
Problem Solving: This is a mental process which refers to problem solving by learning and
analyzing the issue. This is about finding out the best solution to the problem. There is no such
thing as the best way. There are unique problems and every single has a different solution.
Psychology does not say that the problem is to be solved with the brain. It just wants the process
to be done in a proper manner (Toharudin, 2107). Hence, it is overall mental process.
Decision Making: This process is about deciding something important especially in a group or in
any organization. This includes the action which is to be chosen from the alternatives a person
has so that he can arrive on a certain solution which is the best. Decision making has always
been a part of managerial process in organizations. Decisions are to be made in favor of the
organization always. It is actually a part of cognitive psychology (Barry & Halfmann, 2016).
Example: Being the manager of the Café, he was the in charge of operations that goes in the café.
It is a small business café and he is the only one to take care of every single decision. Recently,
there are some issues which are faced by him. The customers were getting lesser day after day.
Hence, less revenue was generated. To understand the problem he induced feedback system. This
was a new idea or might be a solution to know as to what is wrong. This decision was in the
favor of the café and it helped too. The feedbacks were filled with the issue that the customers do
not like the quality of food. By analyzing the problem and solving it by taking a new decision
helped the café to grow.
Cognitive and Social Psychology: This theory is a learning theory. It refers to the idea of
learning that occurs in the human social environment. People become knowledgeable by
observing others. They learn about rules, strategies, beliefs, attitudes of the individuals and also
about the value and aptness of the behaviors with the observation of models and the behaviors of
the models (Aldous, 2007). This is direct answer to behaviorism. This was proposed by Bandura
and he proposed that learning about observing can be done by 4 aspects: attention, retention,
motivation and reproduction. When people observe but selectively and still able to take out

Psychology 2
information from the ongoing activities is known as the process of Attention. Retention process
consists of restructuring and the transformation of the information which will be seen in form of
conceptions. Reproduction is performing the behavior which is real and that was observed too.
Motivation pushes the learner to pay attention, practice and retention (Unsworth, Brewer, &
Spillers, 2011).
Example: It is important to observe people as it helps in knowing what another person is all
about and what he is thinking. In a small café, the manager has to do all the tasks as well as
manager the team. It is important to know about the team members as they are the key factors
with which the café works well. Retention was the issue in such kind of café where the manager
as well as the HR was concerned about such issue. With the help of Social cognitive theory, they
could observe people and started knowing as to what exactly their subordinates are up to and
they were also able to help the team as they knew the problems from each one of them.
Conformity: It is the act which refers to the behavior of individuals so that they can match up to
the responses of others. Hundreds of years prior, Deutsch and Gerard proposed that there are two
types of conformity. One is informational and other is normal. Informational conformity refers to
the desire of forming the accurate interpretation of the reality and the behavior. Second is based
on the approvals of the society which an individual seeks (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). This
theory is usually taken as the disapproved feature of the human belief information. This can also
be taken as the bad influence over reliability (James, 2008). Conformity is said to be act of the
group of people or the individuals in which they try to seek the same behavior as others and they
try doing this by changing their behavior and attitudes. This can occur in small groups or in the
community. Individual or in front of people, it can occur anywhere.
Example: In a huge team of 20 people, the manager of the company was at power as he had 20
people to manage. Whenever any decisions were made, they were made by the manager. The
team had to conform just to fit in the team. New members were agreeing to every decision as
they were new, hence, they had less information available. The older people confirmed as they
knew, they needed their manager in work as well as for promotions and future growth etc. This
issue was somehow resolved to a little extent when a few people were given rewards for their
work. The manager was at helping the team but his decisions should not necessarily be liked by
everyone. Hence, at last the team understood the value of conformity.

Psychology 3
Memory: This is one of the interesting topics that anyone can study. This is always related to the
aspects of daily life. Each person relies on it. Without the memory, there can be no existence of
life. Survival of a human being depends upon the capability to remember things like which we
are, past experiences, ability to judge danger and safety etc. The importance of memory cannot
be underestimated (Middlebrooks, Murayama, & Castel, 2017).
There are three stages of memory in Psychology which are known as Sensory, Short Term and
Long term.
Sensory Memory: This is the very first stage of memory. The function of this memory is to
allocate time to the brain so that it can process information. It cannot be controlled consciously.
Still this memory is capable of gathering information from the surroundings by taking help of the
five senses. After the original stimulus stops working, the information which is given by those
five senses to the brain, holds impressions of that sensory information. This information is held
by the brain for a very short period of time. Usually the information only stays there for a
second.
Short Term: This memory works in the present time and the present day. What a person is
working on and what information he has is what is known as the short term memory. It stays for
a short time and could be retained after thinking a lot.
Long Term: This memory is for the storage of the information for the long period of time. This
memory helps the brain to store the information longer than the seconds. The information can be
store for days, months and even years sometimes. Little information could be forgotten with the
span of time and when new things come in brain (Lew, Pashler, & Vul, 2015).
Perception: It is a cluster of processes which a person uses in accordance of the stimuli that is
given. It depends upon the person as to how he interprets those stimuli. The individual takes the
stimuli from the outside environment and always ends with interpreting that stimulus. This type
of process happens thousands of time in a day. Anything that a person attends or does this
automatically converts in stimuli as every action has a reaction (Sweeny, Haroz, & Whitney,
2012).

Psychology 4
Example: The issue that sometimes is face by any individual in the organizations is that they can
lose track of any important information from their brain. Here perception can help as the brain
had already analyzed that information and made a perception out of it. With the help of that
perception, individuals can make their way out of the issue. This will work only when the
perception made is factual and apt.
Psychology has many concepts, theories and processes out of which this essay focuses on a few
of them such as cognitive social theory, memory, perception, problem solving, decision making
and conformity. All these psychological definitions help in solving the issues in any kind of
organization as psychology is always related with the individuals. Psychology can be used in any
field such as education, sports, business etc. Hence, it is one of the important things in any field.
The study of psychology in any form helps in understanding the work of body and mind
together. Knowledge of it can help people in avoiding the situations that are stressful and help in
making righteous decision (Avais, Wassan, Chandio, & Shaikh, 2014). Time management can
also be done rightly with psychology. Goals can be achieved and individuals can work
effectively.

Psychology 5
References
Aldous, C. R. (2007). Creativity, problem solving and innovative science:Insights from history,
cognitive psychology andneuroscience. International Education Journal , 8 (2), 176-186.
Avais, M. A., Wassan, A. A., Chandio, R. A., & Shaikh, M. Z. (2014). Importance of Social
Psychology in the Society. SSRN Electronic Journal , 3 (5), 63-67.
Barry, C., & Halfmann, K. (2016). The effect of mindset on Decision making. Journal of
Integrated Social Sciences , 6 (1), 49-74.
Bernheim, D. B., & Exley, C. L. (2015). Retrieved February 19, 2018, from hbs.edu:
http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/16-070_1d8d5b51-93dd-4906-b811-
4436813d55db.pdf
Cialdini, R. B., & Goldstein, N. J. (2004). psych.ubc. Retrieved February 12, 2018, from
psych.ubc.ca:
http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/Psyc591Readings/CialdiniGoldstein2004.pdf
James, K. (2008). kevinzollman. Retrieved February 12, 2018, from kevinzollman.com:
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_social_structure_and_the_effects_of_conformity.pdf
Lee, J. J., Gino, F., & Staats, B. R. (2014). Rainmakers: Why Bad Weather Means Good
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Lew, T. F., Pashler, H. E., & Vul, E. (2015). Fragile Associations Coexist With Robust
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Psychology: .
Middlebrooks, C. D., Murayama, K., & Castel, A. D. (2017). Test Expectancy and Memory for
Important Information. Journal of Experimental Psycholog .

Psychology 6
Sweeny, T. D., Haroz, S., & Whitney, D. (2012). Perceiving Group Behavior: Sensitive
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(3), 6-391.
Unsworth, N., Brewer, G. A., & Spillers, G. J. (2011). Variation in working memory capacity
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Dilution model. Journal of Cognitive Psychology , 23 (2), 243-255.

Psychology 7