Essay on The Five Approaches to Psychology

Words: 3720
Pages: 15

1 Name five approaches to psychology

There are five approaches to psychology,

Cognitive Psychology
Cognition is the term used to describe a range of mental activities associated with thinking. Cognitive processes include reasoning, problem solving, paying attention and remembering.

Social Psychology
Social Psychology studies the way we interpret events that are going on around us and how we interact with one another.

Physiological Psychology
Physiological Psychology is the study of how the functions of the brain, in particular how the functions of the nervous and endocrine systems are related to the influence of behaviour and mental processes. Other aspects of physiology such as stress, looking at the way we respond to
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Social psychologists study topics such as persuasion, conformity, inter-group conflict and the formation of attitudes.

3 Is there a difference between comparative psychology and animal psychology?

There is a difference between comparative psychology and animal psychology.
Animal psychology is the study of animals in their own natural environments. Animal behaviour is very interesting and the range of behavioural patterns between different species is vast.
During the 1930’s and 1940’s, a number of scientists thought it was important to study animals and other species in their natural environments. This psychological approach is known as Ethology, it basis it’s idea on the importance of studying animals in their natural surroundings.
Behaviourists study various different species in the laboratory and ethologists argued that the behaviourist approach was limited in the fact that it revealed very little of how other species behaved in the wild. Ethologists placed a greater importance on evolution and genetics than on learning while behaviourists believed that learning skills are the same for different species.

Comparitive psychology is the study of animals and other species to learn how to identify the similarities and differences between human beings and animals and to find out more about the underlying mechanisms.
Comparative psychology has been quite a controversial area of psychology because of the use of animals in