Psychology Assignment: Perspectives on Human Behavior, PSYCH11

This psychology essay, prepared for a PSYCH11 course, delves into the field of psychology, examining its evolution from antiquity to the present. It explores whether psychology qualifies as a scientific discipline, discussing its methodologies, limitations, and the replicability crisis. The essay then focuses on three key perspectives for understanding human behavior: the behaviorist perspective, emphasizing environmental influences and conditioning (classical and operant), and the cognitive perspective, which highlights the role of mental processes. The essay contrasts these approaches, highlighting their strengths, limitations, and practical applications, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The essay provides an overview of key psychological theories and their impact on understanding and treating mental health issues.

Running head: PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

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Task 1:
1. Psychology is the field of study that deals with examining human mind and the
behavioral characteristics of a person in relation to any activity. Mental processes such as
thoughts, memories and behaviors cannot be physical observed, however the field of
psychology enables understanding people’s internal mental process and rational for
specific behavior of individuals (Gerrig et al. 2015).
2. The field of psychology has three distinct eras whose timeline are as follows:
Antiquity to late 1800s- This period is defined as the pre-modern era when psychology was
regarded as philosophy and not science. Several intellectual elites like Plato, Aristotle, Heinrich
Weber, Democritus, Hippocrates and many others contributed to the development of key
psychological theories. In this period, psychology was defined from the ideas of philosophy and
a lot of discussion existed on the role and function of human thinking (Cohen 2017). Based on
difference discussions by philosophers, the human thought was defined as dual thought which
had both physiological as well as spiritual links. Starting from 1870s, the view regarding human
mind shifted from psychology to the current theories in conscious and unconscious level of
functioning (Strack and Deutsch 2015). In 387 BC, Plato regarded brain as the mechanism for
mental processes, whereas the heart was defined as the mechanism of the mental process by
Aristotle (Robinson 2014).
Late 1800s to 1980s- This period is defined as the modern era of psychology where the field of
psychology was fully regarded as a scientific concept instead of philosophical concept. The
developments in the field of psychology in this period resulted in addressing sufferings of people
with mental illness. The radical ideas regarding the psychological theories started in this period

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(Cohen 2017). For example, in 1886, Sigmund Freud laid the foundation for personality theory.
Many important psychology theory and modern frameworks was also given in this period by
B.F. Skinner, Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson and Carl Jung. I903, Ivan Pavlov explained classical
conditioning through a dog, whereas the Carl Jung explained about analytical psychology
theories. In 1983, B.F. Skinner defined the behavioral therapy, whereas by 1980, the DSM III
criteria for mental illness were defined by American Psychiatric Association (Brennan and
Houde 2017). Hence, the concept of duality vanished in this period and the task associated with
conscious and unconscious level of functioning was given much importance.
Pre-modern psychology: The pre modern era is the period of 1980s till existing date. In this
period, more clarity was seen in each of the psychological theories. More research also came up
and are coming to give more integrative understanding of the human mind than those given by
Freud. Many modern treatment options have now come in the field of psychology such as
behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, integrative psychology and the
collaboration with inter-disciplinary teams (Cohen 2017).
3. Yes, psychology can be considered a scientific discipline because apart from philosophy, it
also contains some elements of modern science. Science is referred as a systematic process to
acquire knowledge and learn about new things. Here the focus is on gaining and understanding
about cause and effect relationship through identification of the problem, formulating a
hypothesis, preparing strategy, data collection and interpretation of findings. Hence, psychology
can also be defined as science because it examines cause and effect relationship related to human
behavior and its findings can be verified too. However, it does not totally conform to the laws of
natural science and certain psychological issues cannot be directly studied in the laboratory.

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Hence, it is more of social science as it is related to scientific study of behaviors, experiences and
mental processes.
The disadvantage of psychology as a scientific discipline is that there is replicability crisis in
the field because several published results are not true and cannot be investigated in laboratory
setting. For example, several theories explain the effect of a condition on human behavior.
However, it is difficult to replicate them. Hence, in the field of psychology, replication crisis is a
well-known term because results of many psychology studies are difficult to replicate on further
investigation (Stroebe and Strack 2014). Review of several studies in the field of psychology
also highlights about the replicability issues in psychology research. There is a need to address
this methodological issues in psychology research because reproducibility is the cornerstone of
science and the effect is considered reliable only if another research can also get the same results
with the same procedure in another setting (Simons 2014).
To define psychology as a scientific discipline, it is also necessary that it includes control
in the research process. Control and replication are essential for true experiment and it is
reflective of the validity of the research study. Just like other scientific fields, the psychology
research also includes control condition in research to understand whether interventions like
psychotherapies can work on people with psychological disorders or not (Barker and Pistrang
2015). Hence, randomized controlled trial is a common research method in the field of
psychology. For example, a control condition was created in a clinical psychology research done
for evaluating the efficacy of mindfulness based cognitive therapy for chronically depressed
patients (Michalak et al. 2015).

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Objectivity in a scientific research method is an approach to define the reliability and
validity of research studies. It is also linked to testability and reproducibility of the study. Hence,
objectivity is achieved when all source of biases are eliminated and there is great consideration
to address biases in research. This can be achieved when subjective ideas do not affect the results
of the study. However, while comparing the field of psychology with other scientific research
field, the limitation of scientific psychology becomes evident. High objectivity issues are seen in
the field of psychology because the scientific laws are generalizable however psychological
explanations are often limited to specific situation. It mainly studies the behavior of people,
however the behavior may change overtime (Gross 2015). Therefore, the finding of the research
becomes reliable only for a limited period of time and objectivity issues are seen when the
research is replicated again in a new setting.
Task 2: Discussion on three key perspective to investigate human behavior in psychology
Psychology is a field of study where human behavior and mental processes can be
evaluated to understand and predict behavior of individuals. Psychologist employs rigorous and
systematic methods to investigate about human behavior. In the pre-modern era of psychology,
many different perspectives or approach exist on the basis of which the psychologist evaluates
human behavior. The scope of this essay is to focus specifically on three different perspectives
that supports psychologist to understand behavior of people and define the best approach needed
to treat them.
Different types of approach exist in psychology to evaluate human behavior and each of
them takes into account a central idea or theme to explain the impact of certain activities on
human behavior. One of the modern and relatively effective perspective or approach in

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psychology is the behaviorist perspective where the main assumption is that people’s behavior
are influenced by their environment and people behave based on what they learn from their
environment (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2014). Hence, human behavior has been explained
through observation according to the behaviorist perspective. This is in contrast with cognitive
approach as cognitive approach focus on the thought process of individual to interpret distinct
behavior. Skinner and Pavlov are the main theorist who have demonstrated the role of classical
and operation conditioning respectively on the learning and behavioral response of individual
person (Grison, Heatherton and Gazzaniga 2015). Therefore, behavior is explained as a
consequence of stimulus response according to behaviorism perceptive.
The behaviorist perspective explains that people can learn from their environment either
by classical condition or operant conditioning. Ivan Pavlov explained classical conditioning
through a dog as he used natural reflexes and neutral stimuli to help the dog salivate on repeated
sound of bell and food. Here a biologically potent stimulus was the food and the neutral stimulus
was the bell. Through this experiment, Pavlov showed that just like the case of dog, all emotion
and other behavior response of human are nothing but simple patterns of stimulus and response
(Cambiaghi and Sacchetti 2015). Hence, the learning process and behavior of people results from
the pairing of neural stimulus and biologically potent stimulus. Unlike the cognitive perspective,
it simply denied the role of mind and consciousness in human behavior. On the other hand, B.F.
Skinner gave the concept of operant conditioning which is a learning process where behavior of
an individual is modified by means of positive (award) or negative (punishment) reinforcement.
He regarded classical conditioning as too simplistic to study about complex human behavior and
he assumed that human behavior can be understood by identifying the cause and consequence of
such behavior (Skinner 2014). Therefore, the operant conditioning was appropriate to study

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cause and consequence of human behavior as it focused on studying intentional actions that
affect surrounding environment. Hence, the advantage of using operant conditioning to study
human behavior is that it helps to identify the process that makes certain behavior more or less
likely to occur.
From the overview of behaviorist approach, it can be said that there are numerous
advantage of this approach for studying human behavior and enhancing the credibility of science.
This can be said because it provides strong arguments to explain different types of behavior by
means of observable traits. The arguments according to behaviorist approach is that mind and
consciousness cannot be observed, however people’s action, reaction and behavior can be
observed to make proper inference about them. There is wide application of behaviorist approach
today (Csikszentmihalyi 2014). For example it is practically used to change learning style of
students and manage symptoms of people with severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia.
Another important perspective used in psychological study of human behavior includes
the cognitive perspective. It comes under the broad field of cognitive psychology where
psychologist mainly explore people’s mind such as consciousness, thinking, perception and
memory to judge their behavior. It is also regarded as reductionist approach because all types of
complex behavior can be reduced and interpreted according to simple cognitive process like
perception and thinking of people. Cognitive perspective has gained much importance after
1950s because of the criticism behaviorist approach due to its focus only on visible behavior
without considering about the internal processes of individual. The cognitive approach is
regarded as an effective approach to study human behavior because thought process is the major
mediator that influences behavior of people. Unlike behaviorist approach which emphasizes on

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stimuli and response pattern to interpret behavior, it further expands the concept by generating
stimuli and response by thought processes.
There are several strengths and limitation of the cognitive approach in psychology. The
key strength of cognitive perspective is that it is a viable process that that can easily combined
with several other approaches such as behavioral approach. For example, the cognitive
behavioral therapy (CBT) has found wide application in mental health service to treat patients
with drug abuse and other mental health issues. It is regarded as an alternative treatment option
for patients with treatment resistant depression. It has also become a first-line psychosocial
treatment for patients with chronic pain. When patients do not respond to antidepressant,
combining CBT with pharmacotherapy is found effective in addressing depression in affected
individual (Wiles et al. 2013). The efficacy of such therapy is high also because it can be tailored
according to the needs of specific population group such as children and older adults. Research
also proposed that for increasing the efficacy of CBT-based programs, it is necessary to integrate
psychosocial intervention into routine health care (Ehde, Dillworth and Turner 2014). Despite
the advantage, the cognitive approach is criticized by certain psychologist because it does not
consider genetic factors for diagnosis of mental disorder in patients.
From the overview and discussion about cognitive perspective to study human behavior,
it can be concluded that cognitive approach is beneficial as it has found many practical
application in health care field. Jean Piaget is also an eminent psychologist who has given
cognitive understanding about human behavior. Jean Piaget mainly has the opinion that how
people remember things or how they feel about any event affect their future action in the same
event (Oléron et al., 2014). Despite several advantages, the limitation of cognitive approach is
that it depends a lot on inference because cognitive process cannot be directly observed. On this

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basis, it cannot be regarded as a scientific approach as relying on subjective data might lead too
internal validity related issues. The reductionist approach in cognitive perspective is also a
disadvantage because it just focuses on five cognitive processes of thought, attention, memories,
language and perception and ignores other factors like upbringing and socioeconomic factor of
client (Habekost and Nielsen 2014). However, reductionism is still an advantage for cognitive
approach because it enables understanding complex human behavior in simple terms.
The third most important approach in the field of psychology is the psychodynamic
approach proposed by Sigmund Freund. The usefulness of the psychodynamic approach is that
it incorporates all important psychology theories and tends to study human function by means of
interaction with key drives and forces within the person. Hence, it is a combination of not just
Freud’s idea, but also Jung and Erikson’s theory. Unlike the environment or the conscious mind
in behavioral and cognitive perspective respectively, the psychodynamic theory focuses on
analyzing the unconscious mind to interpret and analyze human behavior. It considers the
unconscious mind by focusing on feelings and decision that influence past experience (Luyten et
al., 2017). Therefore, the core assumption of psychodynamic approach is that behavior and
feelings are rooted in childhood experience and the childhood experience shapes the lives and
personality of people.
The cognitive perspective is regarded as reductionist approach in psychology, whereas
the psychodynamic theory is strongly regarded as deterministic. It is said so because individual
do not have control over unconscious factors and unconscious thought and feeling becomes part
of the conscious mind resulting in different behaviors. There are three important assumptions
related to psychodynamic approach. The most important assumption is that activities of mind
are largely unconscious. Another unique assumption is that childhood experience shapes the

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personality of people. The last assumption is there is no scope of random thought or feelings and
every behavior and emotion has a psychic causality to it (Gabbard 2014). Hence, negative or
positive thought in human can arise due to combination of biological and psychological
processed.
The strength of psychodynamic perspective is it has found wide application in health and
social care because it has addressed the limitation of other approach and incorporated
unconscious mind as well apart from conscious mind and stimuli to understand complex
behavior. For instance, research has proved that short treat psychodynamic therapy in patients
with psychotic disorder has resulted in termination of symptoms on patient and reduction in
hospitalization and treatment cost (Abbass et al. 2015). Therefore, the benefit of psychodynamic
perspective is that it studies psychological forces underlying human behavior and helps to go
back towards abstract concept that affects concrete behavior and action of an individual.
Sigmund Freund had classified the conscious mind into three levels of conscious,
preconscious and the unconscious mind. It also overlaps with the three parts of the personality
such as the id, ego and super-ego. While conscious level comprises all those factors which
people are aware of, the preconscious level stores those things which can be easily retrieved. The
most important is the unconscious mind which includes those memories which one is not aware
of but which highly affects behavior of individual. Hence, the balance between the three
personality traits on the level of consciousness and unconsciousness has been achieved by
psychodynamic perspective and the theory has helped to define whether a person is mentally
healthy or suffering from mental distress (van der Hart 2016). This explanation also gives idea
about the core strength of psychodynamic approach and the reason for it to be regarded as one of
the best theory in the field of psychology to treat people with mental illness. However, the

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criticism that has been received for this approach is that Freud’s concept are subjective and
unscientific as it cannot be scientifically tested. Hence, there is scope for further improving the
psychodynamic approach so that it can be v tested and validated in future research work.
The essay gave an insight into three different perspectives given by key psychologist to
study human behavior. These include cognitive, behavioral and psychodynamic approach to
study human behavior. The core assumptions of each approach with evidence about its
application have been discussed. There are strength and weakness of each approach, however in
the field of psychology, cognitive and psychodynamic approach has been favored a lot as it pays
emphasis on conscious and unconscious mind to interpret behavior of people and this is essential
because people thoughts and emotions evokes different types of response from an individual.

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