This blog post explores the psychological reasons humans love and adolescents rebel, examining whether psychology can scientifically explain these emotions and behaviors.
Throughout life, you’ve likely wondered why you fall in love, why teenagers rebel against teachers, or why a child smiles. Have you ever found a satisfying answer to these questions? There is a field of study that provides clear and satisfying answers to everyday curiosities or questions that spontaneously arise. This field is sometimes defined as the science of the mind, and other times as the science of behavior. What is it? It’s psychology. Psychology is the discipline that deals with why and how organisms behave the way they do. Don’t you want to know more about what psychology is?
First, let’s look at what psychology studies. The questions presented above are only a part of psychology’s research subjects. Psychology conducts research across an extremely broad range beyond these. Its scope ranges from research related to biology, anthropology, and sociology to the behavior of animals and humans, conscious experiences, and collective behavior. For example, it studies whether stimulating the brain causes pain, what ambiguous visual stimuli are perceived as, whether children are born with a fear of heights, the meaning of courtship behavior, and why more people die from being trampled than from burns in a theater fire.
Second, let’s examine what psychology’s task is. Psychology is often regarded as the discipline that studies why ‘A’ dislikes ‘B’ class. However, this is merely one applied field of psychology. Psychology is a science. Like other sciences, it seeks to uncover the general principles underlying various phenomena. Once discovered, these principles apply not only to why Student A dislikes Class B, but also to why Student A dislikes any Class P.
Third, let’s briefly examine the diverse research fields within psychology, the science of the mind that studies behavior and mental processes. First, foundational research areas include: – Perceptual psychology, which deals with human sensation and perception; – Learning psychology, which studies the acquisition of general behavior and memory; – Language psychology, which addresses how we acquire and understand language; – Physiological psychology, which investigates the relationship between an organism’s neurobiological structure and processes and its behavior; – Neuroscience, which studies the relationship between the brain and behavior; animal psychology, which compares animals and humans; social psychology, which studies the effects of interactions with others on attitudes and behavior; personality psychology, which investigates general laws of individual differences and the knowledge and techniques needed to understand specific individuals; and developmental psychology, which studies the formation of individual behavior and human physical and psychological growth from birth to old age.
Next, there are applied fields such as clinical and counseling psychology, which addresses adaptive issues; industrial psychology for management; engineering psychology for machine usability; and school and educational psychology. The scope of psychology continues to expand, encompassing forensic psychology, environmental psychology, and even computer fields dealing with artificial intelligence.
Fourth, let’s explore the various research methodologies in psychology. To apply psychological research to specific subjects, it is necessary to understand the methods used. Psychology employs several research methods: experimental methods, which establish dependent and independent variables to identify causal relationships and conduct experiments under strict variable control; observational methods, which identify and describe the behavior of specific subjects (requiring caution as they can be subject to bias); survey methods, which conduct investigations using carefully constructed questionnaires or interviews; testing methods, such as psychological tests like the MMPI; and case study methods, which examine the behavior of patients, such as those with concussions.
We have now covered psychology in general. Finally, there is a crucial point to address regarding psychology as an academic discipline. As a science, psychology employs the scientific method whenever possible. However, it can appear to lack scientific elements because there are areas where the scientific method cannot be applied. This stems from the nature of its subject matter: while scientific research requires objectively verifiable subjects, the mental processes psychology studies are invisible and can ultimately only be inferred through subjects’ observable behavior. Furthermore, because psychology research focuses on individuals’ subjective experiences, quantification and numerical measurement are often challenging. From this perspective, psychology is sometimes criticized as unscientific, distinguishing it from the natural sciences. However, you must never forget that psychologists strive to conduct research as scientifically as possible.
The human mind and behavior studied by psychology possess an inherent quality that cannot be examined solely within a single branch of psychology (e.g., perception, personality, development). Therefore, it is also crucial to understand that when psychologists construct theories or apply them to the real world, they inevitably adopt an interdisciplinary approach, considering various perspectives across different psychological fields and other academic disciplines. Because of these characteristics as a discipline, psychology’s scientific identity is sometimes assessed as being in its early stages, and some even argue it is not a discipline at all.
What is psychology? We can now offer a rough explanation of what psychology is. As mentioned earlier, psychology is still developing, and the human mind, its subject of study, can be likened to a puzzle board of unknown size. Putting this puzzle together piece by piece to complete the whole picture is precisely what psychology is.
