Psychology Videos

Psychology is the science of mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand behavior and mental processes by researching and establishing both general principles and specific cases. For many practitioners, one goal of applied psychology is to benefit society. In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist, and can be classified as a social scientist, behavioral scientist, or cognitive scientist. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, while also exploring the physiological and neurobiological processes that underlie certain functions and behaviors. Psychologists explore such concepts as perception, cognition, attention, emotion, phenomenology, motivation, brain functioning, personality, behavior, and interpersonal relationships. Some, especially depth psychologists, also consider the unconscious mind. Psychologists employ empirical methods to infer causal and correlational relationships between psychosocial variables. In addition, or in opposition, to employing empirical and deductive methods, some—especially clinical and counseling psychologists—at times rely upon symbolic interpretation and other inductive techniques. Psychology incorporates research from the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities, such as philosophy. Read the rest of this entry »

Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that studies personality and individual differences. Its areas of focus include:
Constructing a coherent picture of a person and his or her major psychological processes
Investigating individual differences, that is, how people can differ from one another
Investigating human nature, that is, how all people’s behavior is similar

“Personality” can be defined as a dynamic and organized set of characteristics possessed by a person that uniquely influences his or her cognitions, motivations, and behaviors in various situations. The word “personality” originates from the Latin persona, which means mask. Significantly, in the theatre of the ancient Latin-speaking world, the mask was not used as a plot device to disguise the identity of a character, but rather was a convention employed to represent or typify that character.

The pioneering American psychologist Gordon Allport (1937) described two major ways to study personality: the nomothetic and the idiographic. Nomothetic psychology seeks general laws that can be applied to many different people, such as the principle of self-actualization, or the trait of extraversion. Idiographic psychology is an attempt to understand the unique aspects of a particular individual.

The study of personality has a broad and varied history in psychology, with an abundance of theoretical traditions. The major theories include dispositional (trait) perspective, psychodynamic, humanistic, biological, behaviorist and social learning perspective. There is no consensus on the definition of “personality” in psychology. Most researchers and psychologists do not explicitly identify themselves with a certain perspective and often take an eclectic approach. Some research is empirically driven such as the “Big 5″ personality model whereas other research emphasizes theory development such as psychodynamics. There is also a substantial emphasis on the applied field of personality testing. In psychological education and training, the study of the nature of personality and its psychological development is usually Read the rest of this entry »

Cognitive psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes. It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.
Cognitive psychology is radically different from previous psychological approaches in two key ways.
It accepts the use of the scientific method, and generally rejects introspection as a valid method of investigation, unlike symbol-driven approaches such as Freudian psychology.
It explicitly acknowledges the existence of internal mental states (such as belief, desire, idea, knowledge and motivation). In its early years, critics held that the empiricism of cognitive psychology combined with its acceptance of internal mental states was contradictory. However, the sibling field of cognitive neuroscience has provided evidence of physiological brain states which directly correlate with mental states. In that sense, cognitive neuroscience has vindicated the central assumption of cognitive psychology. Read the rest of this entry »

Games are increasingly used to support teaching and learning e.g., using text adventures to assist in teaching English as a second language [ESL]. Conclusions as to the effectiveness of games for educational purposes differ; one particular review of relevant research indicated that mathematics was a subject where the use of games was usually superior to traditional classroom instruction [Effects].

However this, and several other reviews, were carried out when games were relatively primitive; fewer studies have been undertaken over the last five years, during which games have significantly increased in complexity, and often demand much greater interaction from the user. One recent study [BECTA] involved using components of six games in school settings. For example, a football manager simulation game was used thus: Read the rest of this entry »