Learning Goals and Objectives: What is Psychology?

Learning Objectives: What is Psychology?

Enduring Understandings 

• Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. 
• Intuition and introspection are helpful to understanding psychology, but often fail us.
• The evolution of Psychology as a discipline is one which moves from intuition and introspection towards a more scientific approach.
• Different schools of Psychology investigate different aspects of the effects of environment and biology on behavior; there is no one "right" approach. 

Essential Questions

• How do our intuitions about the mind differ from reality? Where is intuition useful? Where is it not?
• How can different branches of Psychology work together to give us a more complete picture of the mind and behavior?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the different schools of psychology?
• How does psychological research relate to aspects of applied psychology?

Core Skills

• Given a problem or research question, suggest what different schools of psychology might have to offer.
• Given an approach to a research question, suggest what schools of psychology the approach might be informed by.

Foundational Knowledge

1. Explain why using our intuition about everyday behavior is insufficient for a complete understanding of the causes of behavior.
2. Describe the difference between values and facts and explain how the scientific method is used to differentiate between the two.
3. Explain how psychology changed from a philosophical to a scientific discipline.
4. List some of the most important questions that concern psychologists.
5. Outline the basic schools of psychology and how each school has contributed to psychology.