Scope /Branches/
Subject Matter of
Psychology
Dr.Ameer Hassan
Scope of Psychology
Physiological Psychology
• Human being are biological organism
• Physiological function influence our
behaviour
Developmental Psychology
• Study about how people grow and change
throughout their life from prenatal stage to
old age
Personality Psychology
• Personality psychology focusing on
individual traits that differentiate the
behaviour of one peroson from that of
another person
Health Psychology
• This explore the relations between the
psychological factors and disease.
• Health maintenance and promotion of
behaviour related to good health such as
exercise, health habits
• Discouraging unhealthy bahaviours like
smoking, drug abuse and alcoholism.
Clinical Psychology
1. It deals with the assessment and
intervention of abnormal bahaviour.
2. Psychological disorders arise form a
peroson's unresolved conflicts and
unconscious motives
3. Clinical Psychologist are employed in
hospitals, clinics and private practice
Counselling Psychology
• This focuses primarily on educational,
social and career adjustment problms.
Educational Psychology
• Educational psychologists are concerned
with all the concepts of education.
• This includes the study of motivation,
intelligence, perosonality, use of rewards
and punishments, size of the class,
expectations, the personality traits,
effectiveness of the teacher, student and
teacher relationship etc..
• study about exceptional children
Social Psychology
• This studies the effect of society on the
thoughts, feelings ad actions of people.
• Our behaviour is not only the result of just
our personality and predisposition.
• Social and environmental factors affect the
way we think,say and do.
• Social psychologists work largely in
colleges and universities and also other
organizations
Industrial and Organisational
Psychology
• Management and employee training
• Improve communication with the
organisation
• Counselling employees
• Reduce industrial disputes
• Working attitude
• Workers feel healthy
Experimental Psychology
• It is the branch that studies the processes
of sensing, perceiving, learning, thinking,
etc..by using scientific methods.
• Experimental psychologists often do
research in lab by freequently using
animals as their experimental subjects.
Environmental Psychology
• It focuses on the relationship between
people and their physical and social
surroundings
• Density of population
• Noise pollution
• Influence of overcrowding upon lifestyle
Psychology of Women
• This concentrates on psychological factors
of womens behaviour and development
• It focus on broad range of issues such as
discrimination against women
• The possibility of structural differences in
the brain of men and women
• Effect of hormones on behaviour
Sports and Exercise Psychology
• Role of motivation in sports
• Importance of training
• Muscle development
• Coordination of eye and hand
Cognitive Psychology
• It studies thinking, memory, language
development, perception, imagination and
othe mental processes in order to deep
into the higher human mental functions
like insight, creativity and problem solving
Forensic Psychology
• Forensic psychology is the use of
psychological practices and principles and
applying them to the legal system, mainly
in court.
Animal Psychology
• Comparative psychology or animal
psychology is a multidisciplinary field
designed to study the behaviours and
cognitive processes of non humnan
animals
• The relationship between human and
animals
Behavioural Psychology
• Behavioural psychology is the study of
how our behaviours relate to our mind
• Studies observable behaviour
Cross cultural Psychology
• Cross cultural psychology is the scientific
study of human behaviour and mental
processes, including both their variability
and invariance, under diverse cultural
conditions.
• Cultural variance in behaviour and
language
Positive Psychology
• Positive psychology is the scientific study
of what makes life most worth living.
• Scientific study of positive human
functioning
• Positive psychology is the new domain of
the psychology
• Positive psychology is concerned with the
good life , greatest value of life
Political Psychology
• Political psychology is an interdiciplinary
academic field dedicated to understanding
politics, politicians and political behaviour
from psychological perspective.
• Psyhological attempts to political
behaviour
Parapsychology
• Telepathey
• Psychokinesis
• ESP
Neuropsychology
• Neuropsychology is a branch of
psychology that is cocerned with how the
brain and rest of the nervous system
influence a persons cognition
Evalutionary Psychology
• The term evolutionary psychology stands
for any attmpt to adopt an evolutionary
perspective on human behaviour
You may be interested
to know that what
psychologists study?
• Psychologists address a wide range of issues related
to mental and behavioural functioning.
• The knowledge so generated provides not only basic
understanding, but also helps people to understand
personal and social problems.
• This kind of effort is known as application.
• Human beings are biological as well as socio-
cultural beings one who is growing and developing.
• Psychologists study how the biological system works
and socio- cultural basis shape human behaviour.
• Contemporary psychologists study these
processes from a life span perspective.
• The scope of modern psychology is very wide.
• Modern psychology studies general, abnormal,
child, adult, geriatric behaviour as well as
animal behaviour.
• There are certain behaviours which can not be
studied with human beings as a subject such
behaviour are studied on animal subjects.
• Behaviour is of two types :
1.Overt
2.Covert
Both types of behaviour are studied in psychology.
• Apart from external variables there are certain organismic
variables that affect human behaviour. These variables are
also studied in psychology.
• Intervening variables are also studied.
Various problems related to behaviour are subject matter of
psychology. Some of them are as follows -:
• SENSATION-
Visual senstivity
Visual Acuity
After Image
Colour Vision
Colour Mixing
Colour Contrast
Auditory senstivity
Pitch
Loudness
Masking of Tones
Over Tones
Localization of Sound
PERCEPTION AND ILLUSION-
• Figure and Ground
• Perceptual Organization
• Figural after-effect
• Perceptual Illusion
• Perceptual constancies
• Distance Perception
• Perception of Movement
• Time Perception
ATTENTION
• Span of Attention
• Division of Attention
• Distraction
• Selective Attention
• Sustained Attention
MOTOR RESPONSES AND WORK
• Simple Reaction Time
• Complex Reaction Time
• Performance
FEELINGS AND EMOTION
• There are three aspects of feelings
Cognitive
Affective
Conative
MOTIVATION
• Hunger
• Thirst
• Sexual behaviour
• Social Motives
LEARNING
• Practice
• Classical Conditioning
• Instrumental Conditioning
• Discrimination Learning
• Vicarious Learning
• Aversive Conditioning
• Verbal Learning
• Concept Learning
MEMORY AND
FORGETTING
• Retention
• Recall
• Recognition
• Sensory memory
• Short term memory
• Long term memory
• Semantic memory
• Forgetting
BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF
BEHAVIOUR
• Genes
• Chromosomes
• Nervous system
• Endocrine Glands
SOLVING THINKING AND
PROBLEM BEHAVIOUR
• Verbal Puzzles
• Construction Problems
INTELLIGENCE
• Psychologists try to explain Individual
differences on the basis of intelligence.
• The factors affecting intelligence are studied.
• The factors leading to development of
Intelligence are also studied.
PERSONALITY
• Individual differences are explained on
basis of personality.
• Different types of personalities are studied.
• The factors affecting personality are also
studied.
ABNORMALITY
• The behaviour that are more or less in degree
than normal behaviour are also studied in
psychology.
• Some people have bizarre behaviour such
kind of behaviour is studied.
• Treatment of abnormal behaviour with the
help of various therapies is also studied.
