PSYCHOLOGY: ASSIGNMENT 2 Psychology is the scientific study of behaviour and mental processes it gives credit to our mental process, what we think, feel and how we behave (Schacter, Gilbert & Wegner, 2009) Psychology can be seen as an integrative science- it has everything to do with initiating different ways of asking fascinating questions and trying to answer them through all kinds of data-gathering means. Psychology is one of the broadest varied sciences in terms of the questions it suggests, the methods it applies and the different schools of thought and discipline it has. (Schacter, Gilbert & Wegner, 2009) Studies on the mind and how it operates have been conducted since the early Greek times, but studying psychology in a scientific way dates to a little over a hundred years back (Lilienfeld, Lynn, Namy & Woolf, 2015). Since Wilhelm Wundt (1879) established the first psychology lab in the 1879s, psychologists have studied different characteristics of human behaviour such as individuality, brain functions, and socio-economic stimuli. This essay will look at the role social media has in defining what …show more content…
While some factors are challenging to measure, the field is fixed in testing hypotheses. The modern study of psychology seeks to describe, explain, predict and change human behaviour. Successful prediction of human behaviour serves to validate theoretical models of psychology, which eventually leads to effective treatments for unhealthy abnormal behaviour. The study of this discipline is crucial in explaining basic human behaviour, and thinking skills, (2014) which is why the study of psychology and its methodology cannot be common sense. The distinction between it and common sense is the scientific method. Although it tests common sense ideas about people to try and find out what is