Unit 1 Psychology Outcome Essay

Submitted By amandajaynexo
Words: 1704
Pages: 7

Psychology – Outcome

Part A: Fields of Psychology – Social Psychologist.
Social Psychology, sometimes known as sociology, is the study of how people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours change under the influence different social environments and other people. Social Psychologists explain behaviour as a result of different social situations or mental states. For example, a social psychologist may study how people behave in a way that seems socially acceptable and how actions are expected of us from others. They might look at how influences like peer pressure affect how people conduct themselves.

Many of the social psychologists perform different experiments and studies on how people act in different social situations. These types of studies can help us understand or even predict the actions of people better.

Lots of social psychologists work in universities or schools to conduct research and tests on human actions and thoughts. They may even teach or run a laboratory in a school.
Others may work in places like hospitals, social-service offices, and private corporations, generally conducting experiments and using their knowledge to help different situations.

Social psychologists usually try to get a doctoral PhD in this field, which can take as long as 7 years, depending if the education is full or part time.
You must have a PhD in order to teach the social psychology in a university or school, but depending on the type of job a master’s degree may be accepted when working in other parts of social psychology, such as an office or corporation.

Although there are quite a few different social psychology theories, most of these concepts are quite distinct, they never tend to be too generalised. For example the Observational Learning Theory that was created by Julian Rotter clashes strongly with the Behaviourist Theory. It is saying instead of us learning with rewards and punishments, we learn our behaviours by observing others. Rotter believes that we are constantly picking things up from studying the actions of our parents, friends and the media, teaching us how to conduct ourselves in society.

Irving Janis was one really interesting and quite well-known social psychologist. Born around the early 1900s, Janis was best known for his famous theory “group think”. This focused on the idea that when people are in a group their desire for peace within the group forces them to agree rather than make conflict and surpasses their realistic ideas or beliefs. Irving Janis also received a Socio-Psychology Prize for the Advancement of Science.

There are countless different incites on Social Psychology throughout history, from many different psychologists in this area. The study has come far after only really starting after the second Word War. It differs from other types of psychology in that it focuses on the thought processes in these different social situations that make us behave the way we do, and the way we perceive the changing circumstances.

Part B: Classic Perspectives of Psychology - Humanism.

The humanistic approach focuses on behaviour and mental processes, saying that every single person can live their lives to the full potential. It says that everyone is unique, we are all born good but life give us hurdles which may put us off track.

This perspective Humanism, also known as humanistic psychology, first began in the mid-20th century through one of its most influential founders, Carl Rogers. Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, Erich Fromm and Clark Moustakas also put a lot of work into this study, beginning to explore it around the 1950s. These five respected psychologists made a significant impact in the theory and formed the foundations of Humanism. The theory was discovered as a result of psychoanalysis and behaviourism, the two big perspectives of the time. Maslow described it as the "third force" of psychology.

Humanistic psychology includes many different types of counselling and therapy. One