PSYCHOLGY

Psychology

Psychology

Chapter 1: The Science of Psychology

Psychology is a science which concerns itself with the study of behavior, both human and animal, and therefore interrelates with other disciplines such as philosophy, biology and sociology. In the minds of most though, psychology is connected with the treatment of mental disorders (clinical psychology) or assisting the resolution of relationship problems (counselling psychology). Few realized that as the study of human and animal interaction involves how these organisms perceive the world around them and how they react to these perceptions, this interaction may be observed in all areas of human activity. The areas of investigation for psychologist are therefore vast and varied as illustrated by the many specialized fields of psychology open for study, such as: Organizational Psychology, Environmental Psychology, Educational Psychology, Forensic Psychology and Sports Psychology.

Although psychology is a comparatively young science it is not static, it is growing all the time and influencing other disciplines, particularly those discipline which tended to place less importance on human interaction elements, such as: Engineering, Management and the Law.

However the cornerstone of psychological practice still revolves around the examination and treatment of mental and emotional problems whatever the trigger or area of concern. Be it stress related to the working environment, trauma or shock following a catastrophic life event or the development of a particular form of mental illness such as schizophrenia. Here from research, whether independently or within a multidisciplinary team, the psychologist attempts to offer answers and formulate treatment methods.

Chapter 8 Motivation and Emotion

Arousal refers to the activation of the body. In better words it refers to the level of activation or energy that a person needs to mobilize for performing any behavior. There are two types of arousal, physiological and psychological arousal. Physiological arousal refers to those bodily changes that correspond to our feeling of being activated. Increased heart rate and blood pressure, muscular tension and sweating are all examples of this. The autonomic nervous system is what controls this.

This is also broken up into 2 groups, Sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for arousing the body. The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for calming down the body. The psychological aspect of arousal refers to an individual's subjective feeling of activation or arousal. This is to broken up into 2 groups. The energetic arousal dimension is characterized into low and high ends. Low consists of tiredness and sleepiness. High on the other hand is referring to vigor and liveliness. The second dimension is called tense arousal. Tense arousal is broken into low and high, low being calmness and stillness and high being tension and anxiety.

There are 4 sources of arousal. The first being stimuli or intensity of a stimulus. The characteristics of a stimulus can be classified as novelty and complexity. The second being incentives, which can either be a positive approach or a negative avoid approach. The third is tasks. Tasks depend on two factors, importance of arousal levels, and different levels of arousal ...