Class 11 Psychology Chapter 1 What is Psychology? Notes in English

1Introduction: Why Study Psychology?

When students are asked why they chose psychology, answers range from “to know what others are thinking” to “to know myself”, “why people dream” or “why some people help others while some fight”. Questions about human nature are very old. The Indian philosophical traditions in particular ask why people behave the way they do, why they are unhappy and what they should change to be happy.

• Like all knowledge, psychological knowledge is meant to add to human well-being. Much of the misery in the world is caused by humans themselves, so psychologists ask, for example, what experiences turn young men into terrorists.
• Human nature also has a bright side. Major H.P.S. Ahluwalia, paralysed below the waist after a war injury, climbed Mt. Everest. Psychology asks what drives a person to such heights.
• Psychology also studies finer things such as consciousness, keeping attention in noise, or fans who riot even after their team wins.

2What is Psychology?

Any subject is hard to define, for two reasons: it keeps evolving, and the range of things it studies is too wide for one definition. This is even more true of psychology.

Psychology has since moved away from that focus and become a scientific discipline dealing with the processes behind human experience and behaviour. What it studies is spread over several levels, and has both biological and social bases:

A discipline is defined by what it studies and, even more, by how (the methods) it studies it. Keeping this in mind, the book gives the formal definition:

2.1 The three key words of the definition

2.2 Mental processes, brain and mind

• One level at which mental processes show up is brain activity. While we solve a maths sum, our brain activity can be seen with brain imaging techniques.
• But brain activity and mental processes are not the same. They are interdependent and overlap, yet they are not identical.
• The brain is a physical organ, but the mind is not a thing you can point to: it has no body of its own and sits in no particular place. The mind emerges and grows as our interactions and experiences in the world get organised into a system that produces mental processes.
• Brain activity gives important clues about how the mind works, but our consciousness of our own experiences is much more than brain activity.
• Mental activity goes on even in sleep: we dream, we may register a knock on the door, and some psychologists have shown that we also learn and remember in sleep.
• Psychologists study these processes to understand how the mind works and to help us use these mental capacities better.

2.3 Experiences

• Experiences are subjective. We cannot directly observe or know another person’s experience.
• Psychologists study, for example, the pain of terminally ill patients, the psychological pain of losing a loved one (bereavement), and positive feelings such as in romantic encounters.
• Some unusual (esoteric) experiences also interest them: a Yogi meditating to reach a different level of consciousness, or a drug addict taking a drug to get a “high” (such drugs are extremely harmful).
• Experiences depend on internal and external conditions. A crowded bus on a hot summer day may not feel uncomfortable if you are going on a picnic with close friends.

2.4 Behaviour: overt and covert

Behaviours can be simple (your eyes blink when something is thrown at you, a reflex) or complex (deciding which movie to see with a friend). Your heart pounding in an examination is also behaviour.

3Psychology as a Discipline

Psychology seeks to understand and explain how the mind works and how different mental processes lead to different behaviours. When ordinary (lay) people judge others, their own point of view colours what they see. Psychologists try to reduce such bias in two ways:

Either way, psychologists explain behaviour, mental processes and experience in a systematic and verifiable manner.

• An old discipline but a young science: counted from the first psychology laboratory, set up in 1879 in Leipzig.
• Psychology is generally placed among the social sciences, yet in India and abroad it is also offered in the faculty of science (B.Sc. and M.Sc.).
• Two fast-growing fields keep borrowing from psychology: Neuroscience (brain imaging such as fMRI and EEG studies brain processes in real time) and Computer Science (human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence cannot grow without knowledge of cognitive processes).

So psychology today runs in two parallel streams, which sometimes meet and then drift apart again:

3.1 Psychology as a natural science

Psychology has its roots in philosophy, but modern psychology grew by applying the scientific method. Science stresses objectivity, which comes when there is agreement (consensus) on how a concept is defined and measured. Ideas from Descartes, and then the progress of physics, shaped this growth; the model psychology took over is called the hypothetico-deductive model.

Using this approach psychologists have built theories of learning, memory, attention, perception, motivation and emotion, and most psychological research still follows it. Psychologists have also been influenced by the evolutionary approach of the biological sciences, used to explain things such as attachment and aggression.

3.2 Psychology as a social science

Psychology is recognised more as a social science because it studies human behaviour in its socio-cultural context. Humans are shaped by their society and culture, and they also create them.

4Understanding Mind and Behaviour

Psychology was once called the science of the mind, but for many decades the mind was a taboo in psychology because it could not be defined in concrete behavioural terms or given a location. The mind came back, thanks to neuroscientists like Sperry and physicists like Penrose. Some scientists think a unified theory of the mind is possible, though still far away.

Documented cases show that brain damage need not destroy the “mind”:

4.1 Mind and body are linked

• Scientists once believed there was no relationship between mind and body, that the two ran parallel.
• Newer work in affective neuroscience proves the two are connected. Positive visualisation and positive emotions can bring real changes in bodily processes.
• Ornish showed this in studies with his patients: a person with blocked arteries visualised blood flowing through them; with practice, the blockage became significantly less.
• Mental imagery (images a person creates in the mind) has been used to cure phobias, which are irrational fears of objects and situations.

5Popular Notions about the Discipline of Psychology

Almost everyone acts like a psychologist in daily life: we explain why someone behaved a certain way and build our own “theory” of people (for example, “people are basically lazy, so push them, even use a stick”). Such common-sense theories may or may not be true when tested scientifically.

5.1 Dweck’s study (1975): science against common sense

Other common-sense beliefs proved false by research:

6Evolution of Psychology

Modern psychology, shaped largely by Western developments, has a short history. It grew out of ancient philosophy. Its formal beginning is dated to 1879, when Wilhelm Wundt set up the first experimental psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany.

6.1 Structuralism (Wundt)

• Wundt studied conscious experience and wanted to analyse the building blocks (constituents) of the mind.
• Psychologists of his time studied the structure of the mind through introspection, so they were called structuralists.
• Weakness: introspection was seen as less scientific because outside observers could not verify the reports. This dissatisfaction led to new perspectives.

6.2 Functionalism (William James)

• The American psychologist William James set up a laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, soon after the Leipzig one.
• He said psychology should study what the mind does and how behaviour helps people deal with their environment, not the structure of the mind. Functionalists asked how behaviour helps people satisfy their needs.
• For James, consciousness as an ongoing stream of mental processes interacting with the environment was the core of psychology.
• Educational thinker John Dewey used functionalism to argue that humans seek to function effectively by adapting to their environment.

6.3 Gestalt psychology

• Appeared in Germany in the early 20th century as a reaction to Wundt’s structuralism.
• Focus: the organisation of perceptual experience. Our perceptual experience is more than the sum of its parts: experience is holistic, a Gestalt.
• Examples: light from a series of flashing bulbs is seen as moving light; a movie is a series of still pictures, yet we see motion. You will meet Gestalt again with perception later in this book.

6.4 Behaviourism (Watson, Skinner)

• Another reaction to structuralism. Around 1910, John Watson said that mind and consciousness should not be what psychology studies at all.
• He was greatly influenced by Ivan Pavlov’s work on classical conditioning.
• For Watson the mind is not observable and introspection is subjective, so scientific psychology must deal only with what is observable and verifiable: psychology is the study of behaviour or responses (to stimuli) that can be measured objectively.
• Skinner, the most prominent behaviourist, applied behaviourism to many situations and made it popular. Behaviourists dominated psychology for several decades.

6.5 Psychoanalysis (Freud)

• Sigmund Freud saw human behaviour as a dynamic expression of unconscious desires and conflicts.
• He founded psychoanalysis as a system to understand and cure psychological disorders.
• It viewed humans as driven by an unconscious desire to gratify pleasure-seeking (often sexual) desires.

6.6 Humanistic perspective (Rogers, Maslow)

• Took a more positive view of human nature than psychoanalysis.
• Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow stressed free will and the natural striving of people to grow and unfold their inner potential.
• They argued that behaviourism, by treating behaviour as fixed by the environment, undermines human freedom and dignity and takes a mechanistic view of people.

6.7 Cognitive perspective

• Aspects of the Gestalt approach and structuralism were combined to form the cognitive perspective, which focuses on how we know about the world.
• Some cognitive psychologists see the mind as an information processing system like a computer: it receives, processes, transforms, stores and retrieves information.
• Modern cognitive psychology sees humans as actively constructing their minds by exploring the physical and social world: this is constructivism.

Each approach has its own focus, with strengths and weaknesses. Together they show how complex psychological processes are.

6.8 Box 1.1: Some interesting landmarks in the evolution of modern psychology

7Development of Psychology in India

Indian philosophy is rich in ideas about consciousness, self, mind-body relations, cognition, perception, illusion, attention and reasoning. Sadly, these roots did not shape modern psychology in India, which remains dominated by western psychology. Some attempts, in India and abroad, try to test Indian philosophical claims through scientific studies.

• Dr. N.N. Sengupta, trained in the USA in Wundt’s experimental tradition, greatly influenced modern experimental psychology at Calcutta.
• Psychology departments at the Universities of Mysore and Patna were other early centres of teaching and research.
• Two UGC centres of excellence in psychology: Utkal University, Bhubaneswar and the University of Allahabad. About 70 universities offer psychology courses.

7.1 Durganand Sinha’s four phases

In his book Psychology in a Third World Country: The Indian Experience (1986), Durganand Sinha traced modern psychology as a social science in India in four phases:

Today Indian psychology is more contextual, and new research links it with neuro-biological and health sciences. Indian psychologists work with children with special problems, in hospitals as clinical psychologists, in HRD and advertising departments of companies, in sports directorates, in the development sector and in the IT industry.

8Branches of Psychology

8.1 Clinical psychologist, counsellor and psychiatrist

Other emerging branches: aviation, space, military, forensic, rural, engineering, managerial and community psychology, psychology of women and political psychology. (Activity 1.3 asks you to rank 11 areas from most to least interesting, and re-rank them at the end of the course.)

9Psychology and Other Disciplines

Any discipline that deals with people finds psychology useful, and psychologists also use other disciplines. This has produced an interdisciplinary approach.

In short, psychology sits at the meeting point of many fields of knowledge about human functioning.

10Psychology in Everyday Life

Psychology not only satisfies curiosity about human nature, it also offers solutions to problems at many levels:

• Many such problems come from unhealthy thinking, negative attitudes towards people and self, and undesirable behaviour patterns, so individual-level interventions are needed besides political, economic and social reforms.
• Psychologists work in schools, hospitals, industries, prisons, business organisations, military establishments and private practice as consultants, and design intervention programmes for a better quality of life.
• For you personally: some people think too highly of themselves and reject any feedback that contradicts it (defensive behaviour); others keep running themselves down. Neither lets us grow. We need a positive and balanced view of ourselves.
• Use psychology to build good study habits, improve learning and memory, solve personal problems with good decision-making strategies and reduce examination stress.

11Key Terms

12NCERT Review Questions: Short Answers

1. What is behaviour? Overt and covert examples. Behaviour is any response, reaction or activity, triggered by an internal or external stimulus. Overt: blinking, running from a tiger, deciding on a movie. Covert: a chess player feeling his hand muscles twitch as he tries a move in his mind; the heart pounding in an exam.
2. Scientific psychology vs popular notions. Popular notions rest on common sense and hindsight (explaining after the event, e.g. two opposite sayings about a distant friend). Scientific psychology tests propositions on data, seeks patterns that can be predicted, and often goes against common sense (Dweck’s 1975 study).
3. Evolution of psychology. From philosophy to Wundt’s lab (1879, structuralism, introspection); then functionalism (James, Dewey), Gestalt, behaviourism (Watson, Skinner), psychoanalysis (Freud), humanistic (Rogers, Maslow) and cognitive (Piaget, Vygotsky).
4. Collaboration with other disciplines. Health: with medicine, helping cancer or ICU patients and getting people to follow a doctor’s regimen. Crime: with law, judging witness memory and jury decisions. Also economics (consumer behaviour), computer science (AI).
5. (a) Psychologist vs psychiatrist: the psychiatrist is a medical doctor, so only she or he may give medicines or electroshock; the clinical psychologist, trained through a psychology degree, may not. (b) Counsellor vs clinical psychologist: similar work, but counsellors often deal with less serious, everyday problems such as students’ personal and career issues.
6. Everyday use. Study habits, memory, decision-making, coping with exam stress, a balanced self-view, family communication, community problems.
7. Environmental psychology and green behaviour. Knowing how people relate to waste, energy and community resources helps design campaigns and surroundings that encourage waste disposal, energy saving and careful use of resources.
8. Crime. Forensic psychology (an emerging branch) with law and criminology: witness memory and reporting, jury decisions, signs of guilt and falsehood, responsibility, and just punishment.