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Psychology is the study of mind, thought, and behaviour. It is largely concerned with humans, although the behaviour and thought of animals is also studied; either as a subject in its own right (see animal cognition), or more controversially, as a way of gaining an insight into human psychology by means of comparison (see comparative psychology).
Psychology is conducted both scientifically and non-scientifically. Mainstream psychology is based largely on positivism, using quantitative studies and the scientific method to test and disprove hypotheses, often in an experimental context. Psychology tends to be eclectic, drawing on scientific knowledge from other fields to help explain and understand behaviour. However, not all psychological research methods are scientific, and some may involve qualitative or interpretive techniques more allied to the humanities. Some psychologists, particularly adherents to humanistic psychology, may go as far as completely rejecting a scientific approach. However, mainstream psychology has a bias towards the scientific method, which is reflected in the dominance of cognitivism as the guiding theoretical frameworkIn mathematics, a theory is a set of statements closed under logical implication. In mathematical logic, "theory" is the term for a set of well-formed formulae consisting of certain axioms and all theorems provable from said axioms. Godel's incompleteness used by most psychologists to understand thought and behaviour.
Psychology does not necessarily refer to the brainFor other articles about other subjects named brain see brain (disambiguation). In the anatomy of animals, the brain or encephalon is the supervisory center of the nervous system. Although the brain is usually cited as the supervisory center of vertebrate or nervous systemThe nervous system of an animal coordinates the activity of the muscles, monitors the organs, constructs and processes input from the senses, and initiates actions. see Central Nervous System). In animals with brains, the nervous system also generates and and can be framed purely in terms of phenomenologicalPhenomenology is a current in philosophy that takes intuitive experience of phenomena (what presents itself to us in conscious experience) as its starting point and tries to extract the essential features of experiences and the essence of what we experien or information processingIn general, information processing is the changing ( processing) of information in any manner detectible by an observer. As such, it is a process which describes everything which happens (changes) in the universe, from the falling of a rock (a change in p theories of mind. Increasingly though, an understanding of brain function is being included in psychological theory and practice, particularly in areas such as artificial intelligenceThis article is about modelling human thought with computers,. For other uses of the term AI see Ai''. Artificial intelligence also known as machine intelligence is defined as intelligence exhibited by anything manufactured (i. artificial) by humans or ot, neuropsychologyNeuropsychology is a branch of psychology that aims to understand how the structure and function of the brain relates to specific psychological processes. It is strongly scientific in its approach and shares an information processing view of the mind with, and cognitive neuroscienceCognitive neuroscience is a branch of neuroscience involving the study of the neural mechanisms of cognition or put simply: "how the brain thinks". Cognitive neuroscience overlaps with cognitive psychology, but whereas psychologists seek to understand the.
Psychology differs from sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science, in part, by studying the behaviour of individuals (alone or in groups) rather than the behaviour of the groups or aggregates themselves. Although psychological questions were asked in antiquity (c.f., Aristotle's De Memoria et Reminiscentia or "On Memory and Recollection"), psychology emerged as a separate discipline only recently. The first person to call himself a "psychologist", Wilhelm Wundt, opened the first psychological laboratory in 1879.
