What is Psychology?

Behaviour means the responses or reactions we make, or the activities we engage in. It can be overt or covert.

- Overt behaviour is behaviour that can be seen or sensed by others. Examples: blinking when something is hurled at you, running away from a tiger, going to a movie with a friend.
- Covert behaviour is internal behaviour that cannot be directly seen by others. Examples: feeling your heart pounding during an examination, feeling your hand muscles twitching while playing chess, thinking about a difficult situation.

Scientific psychology differs from popular notions in several ways:

- It studies behaviour, experience and mental processes systematically and verifiably.
- It uses the scientific method and tries to be objective.
- It avoids explanations based only on common sense or hindsight.
- It looks for patterns of behaviour that can be predicted before they occur.
- It is based on data, not on astrologers, tantriks or palm readers.

Popular notions are usually based on common sense and ready-made explanations. They often explain behaviour after it happens and may be wrong. For example, common sense may give opposite explanations like “Out of sight, out of mind” and “Distance makes the heart grow fonder,” depending on the result. Scientific psychology tests such ideas with evidence.

Psychology developed from philosophy and became a modern discipline in the 19th century.

- In 1879, Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany. This is taken as the formal beginning of modern psychology.
- Wundt studied conscious experience and used introspection. This led to structuralism, which focused on the structure or elements of the mind.
- William James later developed functionalism, which studied what the mind does and how behaviour helps people adapt to the environment.
- In Germany, Gestalt psychology arose as a reaction to structuralism. It stressed that perception is a whole, not just a sum of parts.
- Around 1910, John Watson founded behaviourism, which rejected mind and consciousness as unobservable and focused only on observable behaviour.
- Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis, emphasising unconscious desires and conflicts.
- Later, humanistic psychology by Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow highlighted free will and human growth.
- From the combination of structuralism and Gestalt ideas, the cognitive perspective developed, focusing on thinking, memory, perception, problem solving and information processing.

In India, modern psychology began with laboratory work at Calcutta University in 1915 and the first Department of Psychology in 1916. Later, psychology grew into many branches and became more relevant to Indian social and cultural needs.

Psychologists can collaborate fruitfully with other disciplines in many problem areas. Two examples are:

1. Health and illness
- Psychology works with medicine.
- Psychologists help in hospitals, in counselling patients, and in changing unhealthy habits.
- They help patients follow treatment properly and cope with diseases like cancer and AIDS.

2. Education and learning problems
- Psychology works with education.
- Educational psychologists study how people learn and help develop teaching methods and materials.
- They also help children with learning difficulties and design programmes for intellectual, social and emotional development.

Other areas where collaboration is useful include economics (consumer behaviour), law (witness memory and guilt), mass communication (media influence), and computer science (artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction).