Introduction to Psychology: Nature, Scope and Schools of Thought
What the exam tests here
Psychology is the scientific study of behaviour and mental processes - behaviour being observable action, mental processes being internal events such as thinking, memory and emotion. It counts as a science because it relies on systematic observation, testable hypotheses and replicable methods, not on intuition or common sense.
Scope and core distinctions
- Psychology overlaps with physiology, philosophy and sociology but has its own methods and questions.
- Its branches include developmental, social, clinical, educational, organisational, cognitive and biological psychology.
- A smile is behaviour; the happiness inferred behind it is a mental process.
- Claims must be falsifiable - open to being shown wrong by evidence.
Schools of thought
- Structuralism (Wundt, Titchener): the mind analysed into elements through trained introspection.
- Functionalism (James): mental processes explained by their adaptive value.
- Gestalt (Wertheimer, Köhler, Koffka): experience is organised into wholes, not built from parts.
- Behaviourism (Watson, Skinner): only observable behaviour is studied scientifically.
- Psychoanalysis (Freud): unconscious conflict and early experience shape behaviour.
- Humanistic (Maslow, Rogers): people are growth-oriented and strive for self-actualisation.
- Cognitive: the mind treated as an information-processing system.
Worked example
A pupil claims that people who daydream often are more creative. To test this psychologically you must define both terms operationally - creativity as a score on a standard test, daydreaming as a counted frequency - state a hypothesis, select a sample, and use a correlational design because neither variable is manipulated. Even a strong correlation would not license a causal claim.
Traps that cost marks
Calling psychology mere common sense, equating it with psychiatry (a medical speciality), and treating introspection as the field's current main method.