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Psychology's Formal Beginings

The Nature of Psychology
Psychology is the scientific study and practical application of observable behavior and mental processes of organisms. Psychology differs from other social sciences such as: Sociology, History, or Economics, because psychology specifically deals with the study of an individual. The other social sciences will study groups, or history. Psychology is less a science of reported findings, it attempts asks and answers questions using observable behavior and what can be determined as mental processes of the subject. The symbol for psychology is the Greek letter "psi" (Ø). The subject matter of psychology is, affect, behavior, and cognition. The affect for psychology is the actual mental processes that make up: moods, feeling, and emotional state. An example for affect would be feeling sad about something happening. Behavior includes the actually actions and responses of organisms. Behavior can include the way we act in any given situation, for example when we get up in the morning. The order in the way we prepare ourselves for going out into public can be categorized as our behavior. Cognition is the actual mental events and the processes that result from them. Memories of an event are a great example of an organism's cognition. The components and corresponding faces of psychology include the body of knowledge which is considered the teaching face, set of investigative methods or research face, and array of techniques the therapy face. The goals of psychology are: to explain behaviors, to describe behaviors, to predict behavior, and to modify inappropriate behaviors. Explaining behaviors would be a question similar to "Why does this happen?", and example of how describing behavior could be accomplished would be asking "What causes this behavior, where does it come from?". Predictions can be elaborated on by asking "When will the behavior occur?". An example of a behavioral modification question is "What can be changed in the environment to...