Abstract
Psychology, as a broad subject consists of a variety of aspects that range from behavioral to psychodynamic. It is from the content presented by each aspect that qualifies the subject as interesting. This short paper restricts itself to behavioral aspect psychology, as it proves the most interesting to the writer.
People consider behavior psychology as an essential branch of psychology, which cuts across all other aspects of psychology such as humanistic, biological, cognitive and evolutionary psychology. The writer also recognizes behavior psychology as a major constituent of major psychology subsets such as clinical psychology, personality psychology, social psychology, developmental psychology and cognitive psychology.
Psychology entangles a broad subject that focuses on human mental process and behavior. By creating awareness of what an individual comprises of in terms of thoughts and behavior, psychology “sheds light on our psyche and reveals issues related to harmony or conflicts arising between the ego, id and superego” (Robert, 1993, p. 52).
The major subfields of psychology include personality psychology, clinical psychology, social psychology, cognitive psychology and developmental psychology. On the other hand, considering the major perspectives of psychology such as humanistic, biological, cognitive, evolutionary and behavioral aspects, behavior psychology interest me the most.
Human behavior is somewhat one of the fascinating wonders that people have to live with. At one point, people are friendly, happy and celebrating. Surprisingly, the mood may change with violence taking toll amid a prior environment characterized by laughter.
Nations live in a given period of history proactively participating in international trade unions and hence promoting bilateral and or multilateral trade understanding. What then causes the all over sudden change, which invites perpetration of acts of atrocity and violence between formally friendly nations?
How people apply behavior psychology to unravel the mystery behind the question too proves interesting. Interestingly, such a study does not just attempt to explain such issues just from theoretical perspectives. Again, behavioral psychology will not treat such scenarios as just common sense (Cherry, 2010, Para.6).
Rather, unlike any other aspect of psychology, this particular aspect deploys scientific methodologies to investigate the various questions in attempt to arrive at comprehensive conclusions. This seems interesting indeed! Psychologists employ varying number of techniques in an attempt to provide a comprehensive study of human mind. Such techniques include questionnaires, naturalistic observations case studies and experiments.
Through the help of results obtained from studies conducted with the help of such techniques, human behavior proves the most likely cause of action that nations or individuals can take when faced by a particular stalemate that needs predicting. Consequently, people can significantly reduce the chances of emergence of violence simply by understanding clearly how human beings behave and/or respond to different situations.
Interesting enough, the responses of people towards advertisements, for instance in the web or even televisions relies much on human behavior. Ardent understanding of human behavior thus qualifies as one of the prerequisite endeavors that the designers of persuasive marketing messages demand to arm themselves with if at all they need to make it big.
It proves interesting that all people experience a certain force that pushes them into doing things: buying a certain product or service out of impulse and touring some strange places. Such forces narrow down to the psychology of behavior as confirmed by Martin (2011) when he reveals how various thing prompt people into making sensitive options in life (Para. 5).
From a different dimension, health psychology especially on field concerned with correction of mental disorders largely depends on the knowledge of human behavior. Take for instance depression. More often than not, people attribute the circumstances leading to this condition to abnormal responses to some certain situations encountered in life.
Abnormal and normal human behavior is evidently thus vital for the diagnosis and therapeutic interventions. People need to know how a patient will receive a given therapy, a case that narrows down to the knowledge human behavior.
The manner in which people relate with one another too depends entirely on human behavior. What really makes behavior psychology interesting is that most of all observable differences in the manner in which people interact and/or relate remain attributed to the nature of human behavior.
Robert (1993) sheds light, that psychological goals “…describe human thought and behavior, explain why these behaviors occur, predicting how, why and when they will occur again in the future. This then modifies and improves behaviors to better the lives of the individuals and the society as a whole” (p.87). Evidently, goals and objectives of psychology as whole remain tied on human behavior psychology.
References
Cherry, K. (2010). Behavioral Psychology. Understanding Behavioral Psychology in 10 Easy Steps. Web.
Robert, S. (1993). Essentials of Understanding Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Martin, D. (2011). Psychology of Behavior. Web.