5 Major Psychology Theoretical Perspecives
The five major theoretical perspectives in psychology are biological, learning, cognitive, psychodynamic, and sociocultural perspectives. Each one of these perspectives searches for answers about behavior through different techniques and through looking for answers to different kinds of questions. Due to the different approaches, each perspective form their own assumptions and explanations. Some perspectives are widely accepted while others struggle for acceptance. "The premise behind the biological perspective in psychology is that all actions, feelings, and thoughts are associated with bodily events." Biological psychologists examine how all of the electrical impulses, hormones, and chemicals flowing through the body can effect behavior and how changes to these bodily functions can change behavior. They are concerned with how the aspects of biology effect peoples' emotions, learning abilities, and their perception of events. One of the major theories of biological psychology is that "We cannot know ourselves if we do not know our bodies." Through application of this theory, biological psychologists strive to understand the relationship between the mind and body and they influence sickness or he
Unlike the other perspectives, the sociocultural perspective concentrates on an individual's or individuals' culture or society rather than the individual. To understand why people tend to show certain behavior traits, psychologists look at what effects the person's community might have on their thought process. Some of the questions pondered are if a person behaves a certain way to be accepted or commits an act because it is accepted amongst their society. When Sigmund Freud released his book The Interpretation of Dreams, it was met with very little success; but it eventually provided the foundation for psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis contends that urges and thoughts live in the unconscious and manifest themselves in events during normal everyday life. The goal of psychoanalysis is to dig into the unconscious to find the source of the disturbances. The objective of cognitive psychology is to understand how perceptions and interpretations relate to behavior. Why is that one person will turn to violence when insulted while another person will make excuses for that person rather than acting violently. Through the use of computers, research data can be further analyzed to discover the thought process used in behavior and in some instances, programs can even be written to help understand how humans will react in certain situations. Behaviorists believed that actions were responses to stimuli that were learned. The basic concept was that positive responses would be triggered by good stimuli while negative responses would could from bad stimuli. Actions that would produce positiv
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