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Do you ever look at someone and wonder what's going on inside their head? Maybe it's the athlete gearing up for the game-winning shot, or a politician about to give a speech. Or maybe it's that driver who cut you off in traffic, or a guy zoned out in front of the ice cream freezer at the grocery store. In any case, if you've ever wondered what's happening in someone's mind, congrats! You've asked one of the major questions in psychology. And sadly, the answer is not just different versions of yourself sitting around a control pad. Our minds are full of complex processes, strange contradictions, and bewildering beauty. And the more we study them, the more we can understand ourselves and the people around us, which is some powerful stuff. With psychology, we can learn to communicate better, care for ourselves more thoughtfully, and on a bigger scale, make the world a kinder, more just place.
Hi, I'm Deja Fitzgerald, and this is Study Hall.
In Intro to Psychology, the word psychology comes from the story of Psyche, the ancient Greek goddess of the soul. The word combines "psyche," meaning spirit or soul, with "logia," meaning study. So, in its original form, psychology is the study of the spirit. Not ghost spirits, but you know, the human spirit. Over time, we've refined this idea of studying what makes us human. These days, psychology is considered the scientific study of the human mind and behavior: what we think, what we do, and how these two things are connected. And maybe unsurprisingly, this field isn't new. Humans have been asking questions about the mind as long as history stretches back. For instance, an Egyptian scroll written over 3,500 years ago has a section on mental disorders that includes descriptions of depression and dementia.
When it comes to studying the mind and behavior today, researchers in universities, hospitals, and other organizations use questionnaires, observations, and conversations, along with things like MRI machines and heavy-duty statistical analyses. So whether you're into anatomy or algorithms, asking questions or assessing behaviors, there's a flavor of psychology for everyone. In fact, we often dabble in psychology without even realizing it, because it's useful and fascinating to ask questions about the mind. Because let's be honest, we're people, and people love thinking about themselves. We do it all the time with questions like, "What makes me me?" or "Why does some people just always want to disagree with everyone?" And if you've ever thought about relationships, or habits, or intelligence, or personality, or love, or loathing, or growth, or well, you get the picture. If you've ever questioned anything about the human mind or behavior, you are a budding psychologist, even if you don't have an MRI machine chilling in your basement, ready for brain scans. And if you do, well, I've got questions for you.
Aside from being downright fascinating, studying psychology can also make you a more critical thinker and can help all of us understand the complex systems we spend our lives in and the broader experiences and belief systems of the world around us. For instance, the age-old debate of nature versus nurture is at the core of psychology. In other words, how much of what makes us, well, us, is the result of our nature and biology versus the environments we grew up in? Questions like these prompt us to explore the world around us and the worlds within our minds, like all the machinations of my mind, which are an enigma.
Finally, on a practical note, a psychology degree is really useful in a lot of fields: education, counseling, social work, human resources, healthcare, business, marketing. If it involves people, it involves psychology. And even if you're not interested in pursuing psychology in your work or academic life, understanding the field can have massive personal benefits to it. It can potentially help you understand or manage your emotions, build better habits, form lasting relationships, or become more creative, or choose the perfect ice cream flavor for whatever mood you're in.
Just like the people that investigate, psychology is diverse. It's more of a "choose your own adventure" kind of feel than a single rigid path. And that's because there are all kinds of ways to try and understand the human mind, from statistics to cultural exploration. For instance, if you wanted to know why some people are so obsessed with skydiving, you could look at their personal traits, their decision-making skills, or even their brain chemistry.
To keep all these methods straight, scientists have organized psychology into five main domains, also called pillars. These categories have been around since the mid-1900s, and many experts spend their entire career studying a specialized topic in just one of them, because even within one of these subfields, there's a whole lot to explore. Take biological psychology, for instance. Researchers in this domain examine the biology behind our thoughts and behaviors. In this, scientists are interested in questions like, "What regions of the brain control our actions?" and "What do our brain cells do while we sleep?" Why do I keep dreaming about someone taking my sweet roll or shooting arrows at my knees? Maybe I just need to stop playing Skyrim before bed, you know?
For the past 10 years, meanwhile, in cognitive psych, researchers are asking other questions. They investigate mechanisms in our minds like, "What's memory?" "How do we process language?" and "Why do I keep stress-buying new video games when I should be sleeping?" Cognitive psychologists study mental processes involved in our thoughts and actions. Now, if neither of these sound like your jam, you might be interested in developmental psychology, which takes a very different path. See, the thing about your brain is that it's plastic, but not like a grocery bag or an action figure. To psychologists, our brains being plastic means they're capable of change. They're moldable, like plastic is. And developmental psychologists investigate this plasticity, especially how our brains change as we grow from babies to adults. If you've ever wondered how our brains change because of events like a romantic breakup, you might already be interested in this field.
Finally, when you think of psychology, the first thing that pops to your mind might be personality quizzes or mental health, and that's what these last two domains are about. First, you know how everyone is seemingly obsessed with personality quizzes? These fall under the fields of social psychology and personality psychology. And questions in these fields include things like, "How do people respond to misinformation on the internet?" "What defines a personality?" "How do we act in group situations?" "Interact with others?" and "Are there definable personality types?" I'm a Slytherin, Aquarius, F-150, by the way. Couldn't you tell?
The last pillar is for mental and physical health, and there are two important fields here. If you're interested in how your mind and behavior interact with your health, then health psychology might be for you. These researchers study everything from minor disruptions like a few seconds of stress all the way to lifelong conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. And if you want to do more than study and also want to treat people, then you want to look into clinical psychology.
So, from biological systems to lifelong health conditions, there's a lot to learn in psychology. It's also worth pointing out that while these pillars are helpful categories, they're not set in stone. Many experiments involve multiple pillars. For example...
Welcome to a classic psychological experiment: the Conformity Study by Solomon Ash. In the original study, Ash had 8 to 10 students sit in a room, all of them men. But for our purposes, let's imagine a more diverse group. On the blackboard, you've got four lines labeled A, B, C, and X. The task is easy enough: just say which line is the same length as line X. And as you might notice, the answer is super obvious: it's A. Except when everyone starts going around and sharing their answers, something weird happens. Everybody else says line C. So when it's your turn to give your answer, what do you do? If you switch your answer to go along with the group, you wouldn't be alone. Only about one of four people were able to resist the social pressure and give the correct answer every time.
But there's a catch. The other 79 people in Ash's study were experimenters pretending to be participants. We call those confederates in experimental research, and they were pointedly giving wrong answers. But this trickery was super useful. It was some of the first empirical evidence for the existence of peer pressure. The Conformity Study questions how peer pressure affects decision-making, and that puts it right at the intersection of two domains: social psychology and cognitive psychology. The experiment is so useful because it doesn't fall into one bucket or another. And if other kinds of psychologists wanted to get involved, they could put their own spin on this too. Like, if a biological psychologist wanted to join the party, they might recreate these conditions and take saliva samples from participants to measure levels of a hormone that's related to stress. Alternatively, a developmental psychologist may recreate this experiment for people of different ages to examine if this effect changes over time. Or a mental health psychologist may test individuals who experience various mental illnesses to see if peer pressure is influenced by mental health. Which, by the way, raises an important point: in psychology, the kind of people involved in a study can really impact the results of that study. That's why our updated version of the Conformity Study has a group of eight people who aren't so similar to each other.
So, in psychology, one question can be answered in various ways, depending on what field or fields a researcher is interested in. Like we said earlier, it's a "choose your own adventure" kind of field. And sometimes that even means collaborating with scientists and disciplines outside of psychology, like philosophy, anthropology, economics, and more.
Now, even though psychology is often portrayed as either the official, full-prof guide to all things human or some dilly-dally advice column, it's worth remembering that psychology is a science. And that science is a process. That means that sometimes studies that get reported as bulletproof facts should be taken with a grain of salt, or a whole salt shaker, or an entire salt mine. You get the idea. We'll get more into this in our episode about the history of psychology, but to give one example: studies in psychology have historically tested "weird" people. Well, not weird like people think I'm weird when I mention that I still eat ice cream even though I'm lactose intolerant. I accept the consequences. But WEIRD, meaning Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. That means the results from some studies only apply to certain groups or could be broadly inaccurate. And sometimes various communities have been purposely left out or included in unethical ways. But many researchers are working to change this.
In any case, even though psychology, like all sciences, isn't perfect, it can be a beneficial force for humanity. Its insights can help people with their mental health, explore how we can get better sleep, and can even inspire social change. For example, psychologists have been investigating racial prejudice, including how it arises and how it can be mitigated. So, at its best, this field is a force for good, a way to more completely understand ourselves, the people around us, and entire societies. Because at the end of the day, we're all humans. We all have biases and worldviews, wants and needs, and cultural and environmental influences in our lives. And psychology is about investigating those things.
So if you've ever wondered why you've done something, or why you've thought something, or why someone else did something, you've already started on your very own psychological inquiry. And that's amazing. If we ask these important questions, seek to understand the world and our part in it, and then act with the knowledge we have, we have the capacity to make meaningful change.
And if you're enjoying Study Hall Intro to Psychology and are interested in taking an online course and earning college credit, go to StudyHall.com or click on this button to learn more. Thanks for watching. See you next time.