Define psychology and what are the goals of psychology?

Psychology can be defined as the “Scientific study of behavior and mental and cognitive processes”.

Psychology as a science has four goals:

            a.         Describing and measuring behaviour

            b.         predicting behavior

            c.         controlling and modifying behavior, and ultimately

            d.         explaining behavior

Measurement and description

            Before we can explain, modify or predict behavior, we must first be able to describe and measure it. All psychological concepts like anxiety, learning, attitudes, depression, personality, intelligence and more must be measured. A major goal, therefore, is to develop tests or techniques for measuring.

            Each measuring device must possess two characteristics: First, it must have “reliability”, which means that a person’s score should not change with repeated testing. A scale that registers a different weight each time the same person gets on it is not useful. Likewise, a test of intelligence that gave you different score each time you took it would be worthless.

            Second quality a psychological test should have is “validity”., which means that it must measure what it is supposed to measure. If you measure somebody’s intelligence by using a tape to measure the circumference of his head, you might get the same score each time (indicating reliability), but the measuring technique has little to do with intelligence.

Prediction

            The second goal of psychology is to be able to predict behaviour. Success in this effort heavily relies on measurement. Psychologists commonly use past measurements of behavour as a primary basis for predicting what a person will do in the future. We can predict a student’s performance in school more accurately if we know the individual’s level of intelligence. From the factory worker’s score on mechanical aptitude test, we should be able to predict his success on an assembly line.

Control and modification

Behaviour change is often the primary aim of a practicing psychologist. The psychotherapist tries to change a patient’s  behaviour, the industrial psychologist tries to modify the behaviour of the employees and the marriage counsellor attempts to modify the behaviour of husband and wife.

Explanation

This process involves formulation of theories. Theories organize known facts and help us to make reasonable guesses when we do not know the correct answer. Psychologist tries seeks to understand the most complex part of the world, human behaviour. Some people have argued that explanation is really what psychology is.