Contemporary Modern Perspectives in Psychology
Psychology has made great progress since its humble beginnings at the end of the 19th century. Some schools, such as behaviorism and psychoanalysis, have undergone many changes but remain popular and have a large following.
Contemporary or current psychology is a combination of the best ideas drawn from the contributions of all its founders. Some new ideas or perspectives have also been added.
Psychology perspectives refer to how psychology approaches or analyzes different topics within its field. Modern psychology analyzes the various problems related to human behavior from five perspectives. These five great perspectives discussed by the Teacher Training Program are:
1. Biological perspectives.
2. Behavioral Perspectives.
3. The Cognitive Perspectives.
4. Psychoanalytic Perspectives.
5. Subjectivist Perspectives.
biological perspectives
Psychologists have long been interested in studying the relationship between our biological (bodily) systems and behavior. They have had a special interest in knowing the role of the brain with respect to human behavior. The brain, which contains more than 10 billion nerve cells with infinite connections between them, is perhaps the most complex structure in the universe.
The biological approach deals with understanding the role our brain plays in various psychological processes, such as emotion, reasoning, learning, motivation, etc. It seeks to describe the neurological processes that underlie behavior and mental processes. For example, the biological perspective would try to understand and look at depression in terms of what chemicals are produced in the brain and whether these are abnormal changes in neurotransmitter levels. It would also study facial recognition with respect to the role played by a particular region of the brain, such as the left or right hemisphere.
Thus, the biological approach tries to know which are the specific areas of the brain that influence or affect our behavior and how the nervous system, the hormones secreted by the different glands and other changes in our body affect the way we think, feel and behave. .
The behavioral perspective
The behavioral approach focuses on explaining almost all behavior in terms of stimuli and responses and as a result of conditioning and reinforcement. For example, a psychologist with a behavioral perspective would try to explain obesity as a result of people’s tendency to overeat (a specific response), in the presence of a specific stimulus (such as watching television).
According to the behavioral approach, human behaviors that are rewarded or reinforced are likely to be repeated again in the future. An example from Pre-Primary Teacher Training, when a child hits another child (aggressive behavior) and is able to get the other child’s toy (behavior is rewarded), then the child is more likely to act aggressively in the future.
The cognitive perspective
The cognitive approach focuses on mental processes such as perceiving, remembering, reasoning, deciding, and problem solving.
The cognitive approach recognizes that to fully understand human behavior it is very important to study the role played by mental processes. If we completely ignore mental processes as the behaviorists did, we would be taking a very narrow approach and getting an incomplete picture of the dynamics of human behavior.
Cognitive psychologists believe that it is possible to study mental processes objectively. According to them, the human mind is similar to a computer and acts on information just as the computer does.
The psychoanalytic perspective
The psychoanalytic approach is based on the ideas of Sigmund Freud. This perspective emphasizes that unconscious processes influence our behavior. These unconscious processes include beliefs, fears, and desires that a person is not aware of but that nonetheless influence their behavior.
According to the psychoanalytic approach, we are born with certain aggressive and sexual impulses that our parents and society forbid us to express. As a result, they simply pass from consciousness to unconsciousness. However, these impulses do not disappear but are expressed through socially accepted behaviors or in the form of mental illness and emotional problems. For example, a person may express his aggressive instincts by participating in violent sports such as boxing and wrestling.
The subjective perspective
The subjectivist perspective emphasizes the importance of perception. According to this approach, human behavior does not depend on the objective world but is a function of the perceived world.
The objective world is what truly exists in the real world. The perceived world is what the individual experiences and the meaning they give to those experiences. How a person perceives the world or a situation depends on their culture, personal history, and present motives.
According to the subjectivist approach, perceptions are very important in understanding behavior because an individual’s behavior at any given time is based in part on perceptions of the situation. Our responses to various stimuli in the environment are based on our perceptions. We define reality based on our perceptions. For example, studies have found that people tend to overestimate the physical size of higher value coins than that of lower value coins.
An interesting psychological phenomenon highlighted by this approach is native realism: people’s tendency to see their subjective world construction as a true and accurate picture of the objective world.
According to Training in Early Childhood Education, the influence of the subjectivist approach has been strong in social and personality psychology. For example, how people interpret other people’s behavior depends on their perception.
The different perspectives discussed above represent the different modern approaches to the study of psychology. They are not mutually exclusive, but simply focus attention on different aspects of the same topic. In other words, the different approaches are simply different ways of studying the same phenomenon. Many psychologists take an electrical approach. They take the best of each approach and use it to study complex psychological problems.
Of the five perspectives discussed, with the exception of the biological perspective, all other approaches (behavioral, cognitive, psychoanalytic, and subjectivist) are purely psychological in nature. The biological approach, however, takes help from other fields such as physiology and other branches of biology.
The biological approach has often been described as reductionism. In reductionism, psychological notions (ideas) are reduced to biological ones. That is, different psychological issues are explained with biological reasons.
However, it should be noted that it is not possible to follow the reductionist path for all psychological questions. Psychological explanations are also very important. Psychological concepts, findings, and principles serve as a starting point for biological scientists to conduct their research. For example, psychological findings on memory will guide biological research in search of the different areas of the brain involved in it. Furthermore, any explanation of various psychological phenomena without taking into account our past and current environment would be incomplete.
