CSHS 0011 : PSYCHOLOGY

UNIT 1 : Introduction to Psychology

[i] CONCEPT AND DEFINITION OF PSYCHOLOGY

Psychology deals with many problems of everyday life and thus with many things that you have
already experienced. You are therefore in a position to derive some personal benefits from the study
of psychology. In a formal college course, however it is not possible for the instructors to relate
everything that is taught to your experience. Hence to get the most from the course , you will have to
make many of these applications yourself. “ How does this apply to my experience?” and “ How can I
use what I am learning?” If you take these questions seriously, you will profit much more from the
course than you simply learn by rote what is assigned.

Every technical subject uses it’s own special terms and psychology is not exception . You should be
specially cautious not to neglect a definition just because the term is already familiar to you. Do not
for example, pass over words like attitude, personality, intelligence and motive because these are the
words that you use in everyday speech. Make sure you know the psychological definitions of all
terms. In psychology these are common terms often have special meanings that differ from the
definitions commonly used.

Psychology is “ The science of human, animal and plants’ behavior ; it includes the application of this
science to human problems. “ Introduction to psychology will touch on a wide array of factors
involved in what we human being do: It will present a number of major principles underlying human
actions. Such principles can give us a rational basis for understanding what we and others do. This will
give a sense of limitations on what we know and an appreciation of the great distance yet to go in
accounting for why people do ? what do they do ? But by means of patient research, careful
observations, imaginative hypothesizing and constructive self criticism psychology is gradually nearing
the hoped - for goal of understanding human behavior.

Psychology has it’s applied side i.e. it is often used to solve “ real life “ problems. The application of
knowledge to practical problems is an art; it is a skill or a knack for doing things , which is acquired by
study, practice and special experience ………
Psychologist talking to a worried client …..Educational psychologist advising a school board on a new
curriculum……Clinical psychologist supervising group therapy in a state mental hospital……Social
psychologist trying to lessen tension between management and workers in a large industry……are all
practicing the art of psychology . The ability to apply psychological principle is a hard-won skill. You
can not expect to become an expert from reading text books. Special experience is needed. But after
reading books you should be able to apply psychological principles to at least some of the things that
happen in your daily life.

Psychology is far from being the only branch of knowledge which studies human and animal behavior
Anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, geography and history also study various
aspects of behavior. Anthropology compares behaviors across cultures….Sociology studies behavior of
people in groups……Economics is concerned with behavior involved in exchange of goods and
services…..Similarly there are other fields i.e. biological science, zoology, pharmacology, physiology
neurology etc.

In the areas where the many disciplines which study behavior overlap with psychology, the
boundaries are blurred. For instance a psychologist might study the personality pattern of political
leaders, but so might a political scientist or a historian. The person who studies the effect of
marijuana, or any drug, on behavior might be a psychologist or a pharmacologist.

VARIOUS FIELDS AND WORK AREAS OF PSYCHOLOGISTS

Clinical Psychology…..Counselling Psychology…..School and Educational Psychology……
Experimental and Physiological Psychology…..Industrial and Organizational Psychology..
Social Psychology….Developmental Psychology….Community Psychology……………………..
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
Clinical psychology is concerned with understanding and improving human functioning along with
other fields of psychology and the behavioral sciences, it shares the task of increasing knowledge
about the principles of psychological functioning in “ people in general “ but it’s unique concern is
with the human problems of “persons in particular”

As one of the so- called mental health profession, clinical psychology shares responsibility for
increasing the well being of psychologically troubled people. Many other psychologists are as much
concerned with personality development and malformation, the assessment of personality
psychological functioning such as cognition, aggression, anxiety, conscience or fantasy.

Clinical psychologist normally holds M.A. or Ph.D. Psychiatrist holds M.D. degree. Psychologist are
usually better trained in doing research thus clinical psychologists are somewhat more likely than
psychiatrists to be involved in systematically studying better ways of diagnosing, treating and
preventing behavioral disorders. Sometimes they use psychotherapy also. Psychoanalysis is also a
major part of clinical psychology . Psychiatrist can prescribe medicine to cure the patient being
qualified and allowed to do so where as other trained psychiatrists can share the information and
support the psychiatrist.

COUNSELLING PSYCHOLOGY
Counselling psychologist generally work with people who have milder emotional and personal
problems. They are often consulted by the people with specific questions such as a choice of career or
educational programs. In their practice they make use of tests to measure aptitudes, interests and
personality characteristics. Sometimes they try to help people who are having problems with family
living, these are the marriage and family counselors.

SCHOOL AND EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Much of the school psychologists’ job consists of diagnosing learning difficulties and try to remedy
them, using tests and information gained from consultations with the students and his or her parents.
They try to pinpoint the problem and suggest action to correct it i.e. a poor reader / weak be assigned
to a remedial reading class. Vocational or other form of counseling is given by school counselors.
Educational psychologists are specially concerned with increasing the efficiency of learning in school
by applying their psychological knowledge about learning and motivation to the curriculum.

EXPERIMENTAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY

They try to understand the fundamental cause of behavior. They do the basic research, studying such
fundamental processes as learning and memory, thinking, sensation and perception, motivation and
emotion. Experimental psychologist studies how behavior is modified and how people retain these
modifications.

INDUSTRIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

The first application of psychology to the problem of industries and organizations was to use the
intelligence and aptitude tests in selecting employees. Private and public organizations also apply
psychology to the problems of management and employee training , to supervision of personnel, to
improve communication within the organization, to counseling employees and to alleviate industrial
strife. The applied psychologists who do this work are sometimes called personnel psychologists.

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
The primary focus of social psychology is on understanding how individuals are affected by other
people. Similarly it involves concerted efforts to understand the determinants of interpersonal
influences and of attitude change. Some study examples are : How stereotype affect interaction or
how the decisions of a committee member are influenced by what others on the committee do or say.
Social psychologists have developed and perfected techniques for measuring attitudes and opinions.
Survey of political opinions, consumer attitudes and attitudes concerning controversial social
questions give needed information to politicians, business executives, and community leaders when
they must make important decisions.
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Developmental psychologists try to understand complex behaviors by studying their beginnings and
the orderly ways in which they change with time. Since changes in behavior occur rapidly in the early
years of life, child psychology, the study of children's behavior comprises a large part of
developmental psychology. But developmental changes also occur in adolescence, adulthoodand old
age.
Oral Stage ( 0-1) Yr………....Infancy ( 0-1.5)Yr
Anal Stage( 1-3 )Yr…………..Early Childhood (1.5-3)Yr
Phallic Stage( 3-5)Yr ……....Play Age ( 3-5)Yr
Latency Stage( 5-12)Yr ……School Age (6-12)Yr
Adolescence (12-18)Yr …..Young Adulthood (18-35)Yr…..Middle Adulthood (35-55)Yr…..Late
Adulthood (55-65)Yr…..

COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY
Community psychologists apply psychological principles, ideas and point of view to help solve social
problems and to help individual adapt to their work and living groups. Some of the social problems
are: hostility among groups in the community, bad relations between the police and community
members or distress due to lack of employment opportunities.

ROOTS OF PSYCHOLOGY

The roots of psychology can be traced to the great philosopher of ancient Greece. The most famous of
them, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, posed fundamental questions about mental life; What is
consciousness ? Are people inherently rational or irrational? Is there really such a thing as free
choice ?
These questions and many similar ones, are as important today as they were thousands of years ago.
They deal with the nature of the mind and mental processes, which are the key elements of the
cognitive perspective in psychology.

Other psychological questions deal with the nature of the body and human behavior and they have an
equally long history. Hippocrates, often called the ‘ father of medicine’ lived around the same times as
Socrates. He was deeply interested in physiology, the study of the living organism and its parts. He
made many observations about how the brain controls various organs of the body. These
observations set the stage for what became the biological perspective in psychology.

Nature- Nurture debate:

One of the earlier debates about human psychology is still raging today. This nature-nurture debate
centers on the question of whether the human capabilities are inborn or acquired through
experience.
The nature view holds that human being enters the world with an inborn store of knowledge and
understanding of reality.
Early philosophers believed that this knowledge and understanding could be accessed through careful
reasoning and introspection. In the seventeenth century, Descartes supported the nature view by
arguing that some ideas ( such as God, the self, geometric axioms, perfection and infinity ) are innate.
He considered body as a machine that can be studied much as other machines are studied.

The nature view holds that the knowledge is acquired through experience and interaction with the
world. Although some of the early Greek philosophers held this opinion, it is most strongly associated
with the seventeenth century English philosopher John Locke. According to Locke at the birth the
human mind is a tabula rasa, a blank slate, on which experience ‘ writes ’ knowledge and
understanding as the individual matures. This perspective gave birth to Associational Psychology.

PSYCHOLOGY AS A SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINE

Psychology as a separate area of study split away from philosophy a little over 100 years ago. The
success of the experimental method in the physical sciences encouraged some philosophers to think
that mind and behavior could be studied with scientific methods.

German philosopher - psychologist Wilhelm Wundt ( 1832-1920) established the first psychological
laboratory in 1879. He believed that mind and behavior, like planets or chemical could be the subject
of analysis. Wundt’s own research was concerned primarily with the senses, specially vision , but he
and his co-workers also studied attention, emotion and memory. Wundt relied on introspection, it
refers to observing and recording the nature of one’s own perceptions, thoughts and feelings. i.e. how
heavy they perceive an object or how bright a flash of light seems to be. The reliance on
introspection, particularly for very rapid mental events, proved unworkable. Even after training,
different people produced very different introspections about simple sensory experiences, concluding
that it was not the central part of cognitive perspective. In the first decade of twentieth century
psychologists came to hold quite different views about the nature of mind, and the best way to study
it. Should psychology be the study of mind, behavior or both. Different school of thoughts emerged
during this period and are known as school of psychology.

STRUCTURALISM
This early school of psychology grew up around the idea of Wilhelm Wundt’s students. Edward B.
Titchener named this idea as structuralism. The goal of the structuralists was to find the units or
elements, which makeup the mind. They thought that as in chemistry , a first step in the study of
mind should be a description of the basic , or elementary, units of sensation, image and emotion
which compose it. For instance, the structuralists did experiments to find the elementary sensations -
such as red, cold, sweet and fragrant, for example - which provide , they said the basis for more
complex mental experiences. The main method to discover these elementary units of mind was
introspection . Subjects were trained to report what they experienced when they were presented
various stimuli , coloured light, a tone, or an odor to describe as minutely as possible.

Some psychologists opposed the purely analytic nature of structuralism . William James felt that
analyzing the elements of consciousness was less important than understanding it’s fluid, personal
nature. His approach was named “ Functionalism “ Studying how the mind works to enable an
organism to adapt to and function in it’s environment. Thus other psychologists turned away from
describing the structure of the mind to study how the mind functioned.

FUNCTIONALISM
Nineteenth century psychologists’ interest in adaptation stemed from the publication of charles
Darwin’s theory of evolution. Some argued that consciousness had evolved only because it served
some purpose in guiding the individual activity. To find out how an organization adapts to it’s
environment, functionalists said that psychologists must observe actual behavior. However, both
structuralists and functionalists still regarded psychology as the science of conscious experience.

Functionalists, such as John Dewey ( 1873-1954 ) , James R. Angell ( 1869-1949 ), and Harvey Carr
( 1873-1954 ) at the university of Chicago proposed that psychology should study “ What mind and
behavior do “. Specifically they were interested in the fact that mind and behavior are adaptive- they
enable an individual to adjust to a changing environment. Instead of limiting themselves to the
description and analysis of mind, the functionalists did experiments on the way in which learning,
memory, problem solving and motivation help people and animal adapt to their environment. In brief,
as the school name implies, these early psychologists studied the functions of mind and behavior.

GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY
Was founded in Germany about 1912 by Max Wertheimer ( 1880-1943 ) and his colleagues Kurt
Koffka ( 1886-1941 ) and Wolfgang Kohler ( 1887-1967 ). They felt that structuralists were wrong in
thinking of the mind as being made up of elements. They maintained that the mind is not made up of
a combination of simple elements.

The German word Gestalt means “ form of configuration “ and the Gestalt psychologists maintained
that the mind should be thought of as resulting from the whole pattern of the sensory activity and the
relationship and organization within this pattern. For instance, we recognize a tune when it is
transposed to another key; the elements have changed but the pattern of relationship has stayed the
same. When you look at the dots mental experience is not just dots or elements but of a square or
triangle sitting on a line. It is the organization and relationship of dots that determine the mental
experience you have. This mental experience patterning and organization of elements is not simply
due to compounding of elements. In other words the mind is best understood in terms of the way
elements are organized.

Asch ( 1964 ) extended the Gestalt notion that people see who;e rather than isolated parts from the
simple case of object perception to the more complex case of person perception ( Taylor1998 ). Plus
they saw the process of imposing meaning and structure on incoming stimuli as automatic and
outside conscious awareness, a Gestalt view that continues to influence contemporary research on
social cognition this day.

BEHAVIORISM
John B. Watson ( 1879-1958 ) rejected mind as the subject of psychology and insisted that psychology
be restricted to the study of behavior- the observable activities of people and animal. In addition to
focus on behavior, behaviorism had three important characteristics. One was on conditioned
response. For example giving children sweet to stop them from whinnying, reinforces ( rewards )the
habit of whinnying. This phenomenon is termed as Stimulus-Response ( S-R ) psychology as the
elements, or building blocks, of behavior. Behaviorism somewhat like structuralism was rejected
because it maintained that complex processes are compounds of more elements. It’s elements were
conditioned responses rather than sensations, images, or emotions. Watson argued complex human
and animal behavior is made up almost entirely of conditioned response. A second closely related
characteristic of behavior was it’s emphasis on learned rather than unlearned, behavior. It denied the
existence of inborn or innate, behavioral tendencies. A third characteristic was it’s focus on animal
behavior. Watson held that there are no essential differences between human and animal behavior
and that we can learn much about our own behavior from the study of what animals do.

PSYCHOANALYSIS
Strictly speaking, psychoanalysis is not a school of psychology, but it had a great impact on the
thinking and theorizing of many psychologists. Psychoanalysis was founded in Vienna, Austria, by the
psychiatrist Sigmund Freud ( 1856-1938 ). In the course of his practice with neurotic patients, Freud
developed a theory of behavior and mind which said that much of what we do and think results from
urges, or drives, which seek expression in behavior and thought. These urges and thoughts/drives are
hidden from the awareness of individual ; they are in other words, unconscious. It is the expression of
unconscious drives which shows up in behavior and thoughts. The term unconscious motivation thus
describes the key idea of psychologists.

At the center of Freud’s theory is the concept of unconscious - the thoughts, attitude, impulses,
wishes, motivation and emotions of which we are unaware. Freud believed that childhood’s
unacceptable ( forbidden or punished ) wishes are driven out of conscious awareness and become
part of the unconscious , where they continue to influence our thoughts, feelings and actions.
Unconscious thoughts are expressed in dreams, slips of tongue, and physical mannerisms. During
therapy with patients, Freud used the method of free association, in which the patient was instructed
to say whatever comes to mind as a way of bringing unconscious wishes in to awareness. The analysis
of dreams served the same purpose . His theory the motivation behind unconscious wishes always
involved sex and aggression which was not widely accepted entirely, but contemporary psychologists
tend to agree that people’s ideas, goals and motives can at time operate outside conscious
awareness.

[ii] KEY PERSPECTIVES IN PSYCHOLOGY

Contemporary Psychological Perspective

What is a psychological perspective ? Basically it is an approach, a way of looking at topic within
psychology. Any topic of psychology can be approached from different perspectives. Indeed, this is
true of any action a person takes. Suppose that, following an insult, you punch someone in the face.
From a biological perspective we can describe this act as involving certain brain areas and as the firing
of nerves that activates the muscles that move your arm. From a behavioral perspective, we can
describe the act without reference to any thing within your body; rather, the insult is a stimulus to
which you respond by punching, a learned response that has been rewarded in the past. A cognitive
perspective on this action would focus on the mental processes involved in producing the behavior,
and we might explain you punch in terms of your goals and plans: your goal is to defend your honour,
and aggressive behavior is part of your plan for achieving that goal. From a psychological perspective,
your action could be described as an expression of an unconscious aggressive instinct. And finally
from subjectivist’ perspective , your aggressive act can be understood as a reaction to interpreting the
person’s utterance as a personal insult. These five perspectives represent the major approaches to
the contemporary study of psychology. These approaches need not be exclusive.

* Biological Perspective
* Behavioral Perspective
* Cognitive Perspective
* Psychoanalytical Perspective
* Subjectivist Perspective

Modern Perspectives

The discoveries made by the structural, Gestalt, and functional schools of psychology have become
part of the general store of psychological knowledge ; but the schools, as such have vanished.
Behaviorism and psychoanalysis, on the other hand, are still, in modified forms, among the current
psychological perspectives.

Together with these hardly survivors, the new perspectives which have arisen in the last 50 years or
so give psychologists a rich variety of view points to choose from in their task of describing and
understanding behavior. Examples of these newer view points include the biological, cognitive,
developmental, humanistic and social perspective.

* Biological Perspective
* Cognitive Perspective
* Developmental Perspective
* Humanistic Perspective
* Social Perspective

The perspective taken depends partly on the bias of the individual psychologist
and partly on what aspect of behavior is under study; certain perspectivs are more appropriate for
some behavior than others. Strengths and weaknesses of various perspectives and views of
psychologists can be understood with following two examples.

( 1 ) On the playground, 6- years - old Sam pushes little Samantha off her tricycle and rides away of it.

( 2 ) Mr. A. , a 55 year - old man finds that he is forgetting important appointments and has trouble
recalling newspaper stories he read the day before.

The Behavioral Perspective

The behavioral perspective focuses on observable stimuli and responses and regards nearly all
behavior as a result of conditioning and reinforcement. For example a behavioral analysis of your
social life might focus on which people you interact with ( the social stimuli ) the kind of responses
you make to them ( rewarding, punishing, or neutral ) and how the responses sustain or disrupt the
interaction .
Obesity ------ Overeating ( Response ) in presence of ( Stimuli )…………[ Watching T.V.]
Aggression…..Hitting another child ( rewarded response ) ………….Other child withdraws
( Punished response )……………Other child counterattacks
The strict behavior approach did not consider the individuals mental processes at all as it is between
stimulus and response.

Sam learned to behave this way because the behavior paid off him in the past. He learned to act
aggressively in certain situation because he was rewarded for such behavior in the past.

Mr. A the 55 year old man with memory problem, the behavioral perspective will focus on precise
description of the change in man’s behavior. Would suggest / teach behavioral skills to compensate
for the forgetfulness causing problems. However discovering the cause would probably be left to
biological psychologists.

Biological perspective
The human brain contains well over 10 billion nerve cell and an almost infinite number of
interconnections between them. The biological approach to the study of human being and other
species attempts to relate overt behavior to electrical and chemical events taking place inside the
body. Human behavior and mental processes are governed by neurobiological processes. The
biological approach to depression, for example tries to understand this disorder in terms of abnormal
changes in levels of neurotransmitters, which are chemicals produced in the brain that makes
communication between nerves cells possible. Psychologist with this perspective try to relate
behavior to functions of the body.

Mr. A. would be diagnosed as having brain problem perhaps beginning of Alzheimer’s disease and the
chemistry of the brain is at fault.

Cause of Sam being more aggressive is non conclusive as far as male-female hormonal differences are
concerned. Perhaps other perspective are needed to provide a more satisfactory account of Sam’s
aggressiveness.

The Cognitive Perspective

The complex human activities like reasoning, planning, decision making and communication were
neglected in behaviorism. Contemporary cognitive perspective is concerned with mental processes
such as perceiving, remembering, reasoning, deciding and problem solving. It is not based on
introspection. Instead it assumes that ( 1 ) Only by studying mental processes can we fully understand
what organisms do, and ( 2 ) We can study mental processes in an objective fashion by focusing on
specific behaviors ( just as behaviorists do ) but interpreting them in terms of understanding mental
processes. The cognitive perspective refers to perception of the world around us some aspects of
learning, memory, thinking and comprehension of our social environment. Another way it refers to
processing of the information that we receive through senses, and the experience we have ( Mind ).
Difference in the ways we process information may lead to difference in behavior.

Would try to explain:

Sam’s behavior in terms of his perception of Samantha as a weak girl who can be bullied. Alternatively
Sam may be modelling as other little boys getting away with such aggression- He may have planned
considering the situation so that nobody is around.

Much to say about Mr. A. - Questions would be raised as to exactly what was forgotten and what was
remembered. Whether the man could be helped by giving new ways of processing new information
coming for storage in his memory and later retrieval from his memory store.

Psychoanalytical Perspective
A perspective that focuses on the role of feelings and impulses which are thought to be unconscious.
A key psychodynamic is that when these impulses are unacceptable , or when they make us anxious,
we use defence mechanism to reduce the anxiety. One of this defence mechanism is displacement.
When we are angry at someone who is too powerful frightening to be openly angry at , we displace
our anger - deflect it on to someone who is weaker.

Perhaps this is what happened with young Sam. Perhaps he was angry at his teacher, or at his parents
But he did not dare express his anger to them directly. In attacking Samantha , Sam may be displacing
the anger he really feels towards more powerful people.

Another key idea of the psychoanalytic perspective is that slips or accidents, often happen for a
reason and that they may reveal hidden motives.

When a 55 year old man forgets appointments there may be an unconscious reason. Perhaps deep
down he disliked the people he was supposed to see ; or perhaps he resented the demand of his job,
and his unconscious self expresses that resentment by causing him to forget those demands. The
psychoanalytic perspective digs beneath the surface of behavior, looking for hidden processes and
hidden impulses.

The Developmental Perspective

The developmental perspective is concerned with characteristics changes that occur in people as they
mature - changes in the way they think.

Sam’s playground behavior might be seen partly as the result of his cognitive ego centrism that is , his
limited ability to think about how things look or feel to others. Like many young children, Sam may
have trouble taking the perspective of someone like Samantha and recognizing that others have
feelings and can be hurt. As he grows older, Sam should be better and better able to put himself in the
place of others, considering their feelings and behave appropriately.

As for Mr. A. the forgetful man the developmental perspective, might view his behavior as resulting
partly from the natural aging process. Although serious problems of thinking and remembering are
rare at age 55, one problem does sometimes arise as people approach old age. Although their
memory remain ( they do not go away ) they may be a bit harder “ to find in the life”.

The Humanistic Perspective

The humanistic perspective emphasizes the person’s sense of self . From this view point Sam’s
behavior might be seen as a part of his quest for personal competence, achievement and self esteem.
Ideally as he matures, Sam will find ways of enhancing his sense of self that will not harm or deprive
others.
About Mr. A. this perspective is less concerned about cause and effect. How will the memory loss
make this man feel about himself ? How will it affect his competence at work and his effectiveness as
a person ? Will his self esteem be damaged ? Such questions are of central importance.

The Social Perspective

Social psychologist try to understand normal social interaction. They would be interested in both Sam
and Samantha and the setting of their interaction. They might well adopt the cognitive frame work
described above or be interested in Sam’s attitude to determine whether his behavior is consistent
with this attitude. They would attempt to get the cause by obtaining more information. Sam appears
responsible if it is clear that Sam has pushed, no other has pushed. Conversely imagine that all the
children pushed Samantha but none of them ever pushed each other.

With respect to Mr. A. this perspective would focus how the memory deficit will affect relationship
with others. Changes in the number and quality of his relationship

The Subjective Perspective.

The subjective perspective contends that human behavior is a function of perceived world, not the
objective world like cognitive approach. This view holds that we must grasp the person’s own
definition of the situation which is expected to vary by culture, personal history, and current
motivational state. This perspective is most open to cultural and individual differences and to the
effect of motivation and emotion. In one sense the idea that people actively construct their own
subjective realities calls for introspective methods. Even so subjectivists do not rely exclusively on
subjective self reports because they also assume that people fail to see their subjective realities as
their personal constructions.
 Socio- Cultural Perspective
Socio- cultural perspective of psychology takes into account those larger forces emanating from the
societies and cultures that affect the individual’s behavior, thoughts and feelings. Socio- cultural
theory is one of the recent development in the field of psychology which attempts to analyze the role
of society in fostering individual development and growth. This theory equally stresses on the fact
that human learning is largely an outcome of a social process. This perspective covers the the study of
social attitude, gender norms and roles, family/ kinship structures, child grooming practices, racial and
ethnic factors, religious and regional differences or practices, rituals, taboos and power play.

Social psychology is the scientific assessment of people behavior, emotions, feelings and thoughts in
the presence of others which could be implied imagined or actual. This Sub-field provides answers to
the questions of how these factors influence our interaction with other people.

Cultural psychology analyzes how behavioral tendencies or the psychology of people are to a great
extent influenced by the deep rooted cultural factors. The main focus of cultural psychology is that
culture and mind are interdependent and inseparable from each other. Personality is shaped by the
culture in which they survive and also they shape the culture.

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