Chapter 1 of 10All chapters
Chapter 1 of 10
What psychology is
A science with hard subject matter.
Scope
It covers perception, memory, learning, development, personality, social behaviour and mental health. It overlaps with neuroscience, sociology and economics without being any of them.
- Psychiatry is a medical specialism; psychology is broader and mostly not medical.
- Much of the field studies behaviour without reference to the brain at all.
Method
Experiments, observation, surveys and case studies, each with different weaknesses. Human subjects introduce expectations, ethics constraints and enormous variation.