IT IS A CHAPTER IN PSYCHOLOGY BOOK OF AUTHOR r. SREEVANI

1. INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY
BY PIYUSH PARASHAR
BSC( HONS.) NURSING STUDENT

2. INTRODUCTION
Psychology is an offspring of subject philosophy.
Psychology is a’ Greek word, psychi and logos. Psychi
mean soul and logos means the study of soul.
The influence of physiology made some scientists
like Wilhelm Wundt of Germany define psychology
as the study of ‘consciousness.

3. MEANING OF BEHAVIOR
▪ ‘Any manifestation of life is activity’ and behavior is collective name
for these activities.
▪ The term behavior includes the following:
oMotor or conative activities ( walking, swimming, dancing, etc)
oCognitive activities ( thinking, reasoning, imagining).
oAffective activities ( feeling happy, sad, angry etc.)
Behavior includes not only the conscious behavior and the activities
of human mind but also the subconscious and unconscious.
It covers not only the overt behavior but also the covert behavior
involving all the inner experiences and mental processes.

4. EVOLUTION OF MEANING OF PSYCHOLOGY
Study of
soul
Study of
mind
Study of
‘behavior’
Study of conscious
experience

5. SCHOOLS OF PSYCHOLOGY
▪ Wilhelm Wundt was the first to measure human behavior
accurately and is known as the ‘Father of psychology’
▪ STRUCTURALISM:
• This early school of psychology grew up around the ideas of
Wilhelm Wundt in Germany and was established by one of
Wundt’s students, Edward B Titchener( 1867-1927)
• The goal of structuralism was to find the units or elements
which make up the mind.
• The main method used to discover these elementary units
of mind was introspection.

6. GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY
▪ This school of psychology was founded in Germany around
1912 by Max Wertheimer(1880-1943) and his colleagues.
▪ These psychologists felt that structuralists were wrong in
thinking of the mind as being made up of elements.
▪ They argued that mind could be thought of as resulting
from the whole pattern of sensory activity and the
relationships and organizations within this pattern.

7. BEHAVIORISM
This school of psychology originated with John
B Watson ( 1879-1958).
▪He insisted that psychology should be
restricted to the study of the activities of
people and animals- their behavior.

8. DEFINITION OF PSYCHOLOGY
▪ Psychology is the science of human and animal behavior, it includes the
application of behavioral science to human problems.
▪ Psychology is the science of human behavior.
▪ Psychology is a science which aims to give us better understanding and
control of the behavior of the organism as a whole.
▪ Psychology is a science and the properly trained psychologist is a scientist or
at least a practitioner who uses scientific methods or information resulting
from scientific investigation.
▪ Psychology is the investigation of human and animal behavior and of mental
and physiological processes associated with the behavior.

9. NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology uses scientific methods
Psychology is factual
The laws of psychology are universal
The laws of psychology are verifiable
Psychology discovers the cause- effect relationship
in human behavior
Psychology predicts human behavior

10. SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY
▪ The scope of a subject can usually be discussed under the following two heading:
1) The limits of its operations and applications.
2) The branches, topics and subject matter with which it deals.
The field of operation and application is too vast.
• It studies, describes and explains the behavior of living organisms.
• It describes all types of life activities and experiences- whether conative, cognitive or affective, implicit or
explicit, conscious, unconscious and subconscious of a living organism.
• It studies not only human behavior , but also human experience, language and other forms of
communications.
• It employs to all the living creatures created by the almighty irrespective of their species, caste, color,
age, sex, mental or physical state.
• It also studies the behavior of the animals, insects, birds and plant life.

11. BRANCHES OF PSYCHOLOGY
PURE PSYCHOLOGY
▪ General Psychology
▪ Abnormal Psychology
▪ Social psychology
▪ Physiological psychology
▪ Paraphysochology
▪ Geopsychology
▪ Developmental psychology
▪ Experimental psuchology
APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
▪ Educational psychology
▪ Clinical Psychology
▪ Industrial Psychology
▪ Legal Psychology
▪ Military Psychology
▪ Political Psychology

12. APPLICATION OF PSYCHOLOGY
▪ In the field of Education: Theories of learning, motivation and personality etc. have been
responsible for shaping and designing the educational system according to the needs and
requirements of the students.
▪ In the field of medicine: A doctor, nurse or any person who attends the patient needs to
know the science of behavior to achieve good results.
▪ In the field of Business and Industry: It has highlighted the importance of knowledge of
consumer’s psychology and harmonious interpersonal relationship in the field of commerce
and industry.
 In the field of Criminology: It has helped in detection of crimes and in dealing with
criminals.
 In the field of Politics: It has proved useful to politicians and leaders to learn the qualities of
leadership for leading the masses.

13. ▪ In the Field of Guidance and Counselling: It has provided valuable help in relation to
guidance and counseling in educational, personal as well as vocational areas.
▪ In the Field Of Military Science: Psychology help in the selection, training,
promotion and classification of defence personnel.
▪ In the Field Of Human Relationship and Self- Development: It has helped human
beings to learn the art of understanding their own behavior, seeking adjustment
with their self and others and enhancing as well as actualizing their potentialities to
the utmost possible.

14. RELEVANCE TO NURSING
o To understand her own self
o To understand Patients
o To Recognize Abnormal behavior
o To understand Other People
o To provide Quality Care to Patients.
o Help patients adjust to the situation.
o Help the Student Nurse to appreciate
the Necessity for Changing the
Environment or Surroundings.
o Help for effective studying
o Readjustment
▪ Psychology has become necessary in every profession including Nursing today. This is
because of increasing emphasis laid out on the interplay of body, mind and spirit in the
health status of every individual. The learning of psychology helps a nurse in the following
ways:

15. METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGY
▪ Psychology is termed as the scientific study of human behavior.
▪ Special tools and procedures helps us in gathering and organizing its subject matter
or the essential facts about behavior. These procedures are termed as methods,
which are used to study human behavior.

16. INTROSPECTION METHOD
▪ This is one of the oldest methods of psychology. Introspection means ‘to look within’
▪ Also known as self observation method.
▪ It is not possible to understand the inner feelings and experiences of other persons. Here the subject is
asked to systematically observe his own behavior and report the same which is later analyzed to
understand behavior.
▪ e.g. a patient after an operation may be asked to report how he feels. The patient will try to look
within and recall what happened and how he is presently feeling.
▪ MERITS:
• Introspection is the fundamental method of psychology.
• Introspection gives us direct, immediate and exact knowledge of our own mental processes.
• It enables us to fully understand the behavior of an individual.
• This method is inexpensive, easy and does not require any apparatus or laboratory.

17. DEMERITS:
• Not applicable for children or animals or mentally retarded people, because they
cannot introspect.
• A purely private affair and cannot be verified by others.
• In many cases the patients may not have the insight to know about their conditions
or language to describe them accurately.
All the difficulties of introspection can be overcome by habit and discipline of mind.
It requires a power of abstraction and mental alertness.

18. OBSERVATIONAL METHODS
▪ Observation is the objective method of studying the behavior of individuals.
▪ It consists of the perception of an individual’s behavior under natural conditions, its analysis and
interpretation by the observer.
▪ It is essentially a way of perceiving the behavior as it is.
▪ In this method the observer observes and collects the data. e.g. in hospital the nurse makes an
observation of patient’s temperature, pulse, blood pressure, facial expressions, restlessness, etc. to
understand clinical condition of the patient.
 STEPS IN OBSERVATION METHOD
• Observation of behavior
• Noting of behavior
• Interpretation and analysis of behavior
• Generalization

19. ▪ MERITS:
• It is economical, natural, as well as flexible.
• The data which is studies through observation can be analyzed, measured, classified and interpreted.
• The results can be verified and relied.
• Suitable for observing developmental characteristics like children’s habits and interests, e.g. the effect
of absence of a mother or father or both on the child’s development can be determined properly
through observing the development of such deprived children.
 DEMERITS:
• There are chances of subjective reporting and also prejudices of observer may creep in.
• Sometimes to observe the natural behavior the observer may have to spend more time, energy and
money.
• It lacks repeatability as each natural situation may occur only once.
• Not being able to establish a proper cause and effect relationship.

20. EXPERIMENTAL METHOD
▪ Experimental method is considered as the most scientific and objective method of studying
behavior.
▪ The use of this method has raised psychology to the status of an experimental science like physics,
chemistry and physiology.
▪ In psychology, experimental study is used to study the cause- effect- relationship regarding the
nature of human behavior.
 ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF EXPERIMENTAL METHOD
• Requires two persons, the experimenter and the subject or the person whose behavior is
observed.
• Experimentation should be done on living organisms.
• All experiments are conducted under controlled conditions.

21. STEPS IN EXPERIMENTATION
• Stating the problem
• Formulation of hypothesis
• Identifying study subjects
• Allotting the subjects to treatment and control groups
• Measuring the dependent variable
• Compare the results of the two groups

22. MERITS AND DEMERITS
MERITS
▪ Scientific Method.
▪ Establishes cause and effect
relationship
▪ Maximum control of phenomena
▪ Repetition is possible
DEMERITS
▪ All problems of psychology cannot be
studied by this method as we cannot
perform experiments for all problems.
▪ Experiment method is costly and time
consuming methods.
▪ Experimental methods fails to study
behavior in naturalistic conditions.
▪ It cannot always be used especially if
the experiment might be dangerous to
the subjects.

23. CLINICAL OR CASE HISTORY METHOD
▪ This method is used by clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, psychiatric social workers
in child guidance clinics or mental hygiene clinics and allied institutions.
▪ It aims at studying the cause and basis of people’s anxieties, fears and personal
maladjustments.
▪ In this technique information is collected from the memory of the individual, his
parents, members of his family, friends and teachers and all other available records
and reports.

24. MERITS
▪ Case histories will give the clinician an
insight into the causes of the problem
and suggest possible solution.
▪ Case studies can be productive sources
of ideas for further investigation by
other methods.
DEMERITS
▪ The case history method depends
largely on memory of incidents which
may have been observed inaccurately
or over interpreted.

25. SURVEY METHOD
▪ All problems in psychology cannot be studied by the experimental and other methods.
▪ Some problems like study of opinions, attitudes, healthcare needs, etc. can be studied by means
of survey method. This is commonly employed in social psychology.
▪ The survey method involves collection or gathering of information from large number of people
by using questionnaires, inventories, checklists, rating scales and interviews.
 MERIT
A large amount of data can be collected in a short period of time.
DEMERIT
The behavior is not observed directly.

26. GENETIC OR DEVELOPMENT METHOD
▪ Psychologists study not only the behavior of an individual at a particular time, but also his
development from birth to death, the influence of hereditary and environment in the development of
person and conditions favourable and unfavourable for normal and abnormal behavior of an adult,
the study will start from the childhood and adolescence.
▪ This can be done in two ways:
o Cross- sectional study in which the children of different age groups will be studied simultaneously.
o Longitudinal study in which the same child will be studied in different stages of life.
MERITS: This is a more useful method to understand the behavior from point of view of hereditary
and environmental influences.
DEMERIT: This method requires more time and energy.

27. REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. Define psychology and explain in detail the methods in psychology.
2. What are different methods used in the study of psychology?
3. What is the general importance of psychology?
4. Discuss the scope of psychology.
5. Explain experimental method in psychology.
6. Explain the relevance of psychology to nursing.