Linda Brannon, Dena Matzenbacher, and Lester Lefton

Psychology is not like calculus or chemistry. When students begin their first course in these subjects, few imagine that they already know much about them. Psychology is different; when students enroll in their first psychology course, many know a great deal about psychology. Their knowledge of psychology presents problems—for them and for their instructors. As Mark Twain said, “The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain’t so.” This saying applies to the knowledge that students bring to psychology: Much of what they know about psychology is incorrect.

Students are not flooded with tidbits of knowledge about calculus or chemistry. These subjects are not prominent topics in movies and television, but these media use information (and misinformation) about psychology as part of entertainment programming. Unfortunately, the media have created and promoted some inaccurate and exaggerated ideas of what psychology is and what psychologists do.

The Image of Psychology

A prominent image of psychologists involves a patient lying on a couch while a therapist listens and takes notes. This image appears in hundreds of movies but only partly reflects reality; the image of lying on the couch comes from Sigmund Freud and his approach to therapy, which was important in pioneering therapeutic methods for helping people understand and deal with psychological problems. Many psychologists offer therapy to individuals, but few psychologists today use Freud’s therapeutic techniques. Despite the prominence of the image that psychologists are professionals who provide help for people with problems, many do not fit that model.

Another image of a psychologist is a man in a white coat, running rats through a maze. Though such experiments do take place, today the researcher is almost as likely to be a woman, and the white coat is not a necessary part of the process. During the 1940s and 1950s, white rats were the most common experimental subjects in research on learning, the most popular focus of research at the time. But this situation has changed—humans have replaced rats as the most common participants in psychology research (Plous, 1996), and learning is only one of many areas of study for psychology researchers. The role of the psychologist is much more varied than either of these popular images implies.

A third view holds that psychology is nothing more than common sense about how people behave. This view proposes that “everyone is a psychologist” because all people observe behavior and become experts by just interacting with others. What this view fails to acknowledge is the amount of hindsight and second guessing that people do when interpreting the behavior of others and the rigorous procedures that differentiate psychology research from common sense. The people who hold this view overlook how many times common sense fails to make correct predictions about behavior.

Defining Psychology

Psychology is the science of behavior and mental processes. Behavior includes a variety of obvious actions such as walking and gesturing, social interactions such as talking to someone, and emotional reactions such as laughing or frowning. Certain physiological reactions, such as heart rate and patterns of brain activity, must be measured with instruments, but they still fit within the category of behavior. Mental processes include thoughts and ideas as well as more complex aspects of reasoning. Psychologists make inferences about mental processes by studying behavior.

Psychology differs from common sense precisely because it is a science. Rather than observing casually, psychologists use rigorous, systematic observation that yields reliable knowledge, which has led to comprehensive theories. The many subfields of psychological research have produced information on how people grow up and become independent, how people interact in relationships, and how they learn and remember, sleep and dream, perceive the world, and live fulfilling lives. Psychology also explores problem behaviors such as violence and drug abuse. Every day, this exciting field stretches the boundaries of what we know about people, their relationships, and their inner worlds of thoughts and feelings.

Psychology differs from its popular image by being both less and more than people imagine. Psychology is less than people imagine because psychologists cannot perform feats of mind reading or telepathy. However, psychology is also more than some other people imagine because the field is so large and varied. Those who want to understand real human behavior and relationships need to look further than television and movies for their images of psychology. Taking a course in psychology and studying this book is a good way to begin. In this chapter, we introduce the discipline of psychology, beginning with how psychology is a science. The image of psychologists as scientists differs from the popular perception; yet, psychology is defined as a science.

Psychology Is a Science

Psychologists use scientific principles, methods, and procedures to develop an organized body of knowledge and to predict how people will behave. Psychologists often think of themselves as detectives, sifting through data and theories in an orderly way to uncover the causes of behavior (Smith & Davis, 2013). When psychologists conduct research, they follow a series of steps that define science. Those who follow these steps are considered to be “doing science”; those who do not, are not (McCain & Segal, 1988). Psychology is classified as a social and behavioral science because it deals with both human behavior and mental processes. Behaviors include a wide range of actions: walking and gesturing, social interactions such as talking with someone, and emotional responses such as laughing. These responses are called overt behaviors because they are directly observable. Certain physiological responses, such as heart rate and patterns of brain activity, are reactions, which are not easily observable. To make these reactions observable, researchers must use instruments to make measurements of these reactions.

Like other modern sciences, psychology is based on two premises—empiricism and theory development. According to the premise of empiricism, knowledge must be acquired through careful observation rather than from logic or intuition. After gathering and studying data, psychologists are able to formulate theories. A psychological theory is a collection of interrelated ideas and observations that together describe, explain, and predict behavior or mental processes. Empirical observation leads to theories; thus, empirical data and theories are basic to the science of psychology.

References

McCain, G., & Segal, E. M. (1988). The game of science (5th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Plous, S. (1996). Attitudes toward the use of animals in psychology research and education: Results from a national survey of psychologists, American Psychologist, 51(11), 1167–1180.

Smith, R. A., & Davis, S. F. (2013). The psychologist as detective: An introduction to conducting research in psychology (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.