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1. Introduction to Psychology
By: Abdikadir Omar Farah
PD-Psychology

2. Course Plan
• Focus on application
• student centered
• Assignments will be live assignment
• Presentations
• Observe my presentations
• Class discussions
• No right or wrong answer
• Small group discussions
• The two rules

3. What is Psychology?
• Psychology is the biopsychosocial and spiritual study of human
behavior.
• Example: Anger
• Biology: lack of sleep
• Psychology: displacement
• Social: conformity
• Spiritual: be patient

4. Four Goals of Psychology
• Describe, Explain, Predict, and Control human
behavior
• Answer the question:
• What is the person doing?
• Why he is doing what he is doing?
• Can we predict what he can do in future?
• How we can control what he is doing?

5. Why studying psychology?

6. Branches of Psychology
• Clinical psychology deals with the study, assessment, diagnosis, and
treatment of psychological disorders.
• Counseling psychology focuses primarily on educational, social, and
career adjustment problems.
• Evolutionary psychology considers how behavior is influenced by our
genetic inheritance from our ancestors.
• Experimental psychology studies the processes of sensing,
perceiving, learning, and thinking about the world.

7. Cont…
• Cross-cultural psychology investigates the similarities and differences
in psychological functioning in and across various cultures and ethnic
groups.
• Developmental psychology examines how people grow and change
from the moment of conception through death.
• Educational psychology is concerned with teaching and learning
processes, such as the relationship between motivation and school
performance.

8. Cont….
• Forensic psychology focuses on legal issues, such as determining the
accuracy of witness memories.
• Health psychology explores the relationship between psychological factors
and physical ailments or disease.
• Industrial/organizational psychology is concerned with the psychology of
the workplace
• School psychology is devoted to counseling children in elementary and
secondary schools who have academic or emotional problems.
• Social psychology is the study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and
actions are affected by others.
• Sport psychology applies psychology to athletic activity and exercise.

9. Paradigm
• Paradigm
• Framework containing the basic assumptions, way of thinking, and
methodology that are commonly accepted by members of a scientific
community.
• Red lenses
• The Blind Village
• Earth flat vs spherical

10. Theory
• Theory
• An explanation for facts
• Theories never become facts themselves, no matter how well they are
established
• A theory is never just a theory, because always have data
• Theories can’t be proven, but are judges by:
1. how good their data is,
2. and whether they fit the data
• Evolution theory

11. Cont…
• Theories don’t go away just because you find data that don’t fit them
• The only way to make a theory go away is to find a better theory
• Hypothesis
• A possible way things could be
• May or may not have supporting data

12. Evolution of Psychology
• Wilhelm Wundt laid the foundation of psychology in 1879, when he
opened his laboratory in Germany.
• Early perspectives that guided the work of psychologists were
structuralism, functionalism, and gestalt theory.
• The neuroscience approach focuses on the biological components of
the behavior of people and animals.
• The psychodynamic perspective suggests that powerful, unconscious
inner forces and conflicts about which people have little or no
awareness are the primary determinants of behavior.

13. Cont…
• The behavioral perspective deemphasizes internal processes and
concentrates instead on observable, measurable behavior, suggesting
that understanding and control of a person’s environment are
sufficient to fully explain and modify behavior.
• Cognitive approaches to behavior consider how people know,
understand, and think about the world.
• The humanistic perspective emphasizes that people are uniquely
inclined toward psychological growth and higher levels of functioning
and that

14. Major Psychology Debates
• Nature Vs Nurture
• Identical twins, adoption
• Free Will Vs Determination
• Addiction
• Conscious Vs Unconscious
• Anxiety
• Individual Differences Vs Universal Principle
• Emotion experience and expression
• Observable Behavior Vs Internal Mental Process
• Conditioning