History UsefulNotes / Psychology

* '''Cultural Psychology''' examines the effects of culture -- upbringing, laws, customs, taboos -- on the mind. It embraces the BlankSlate idea, feeling that mind and culture are largely inseparable. If you want ideas on where [[DrivesLikeCrazy Crazy Asian Drivers]], WidgetSeries, or [[ScaryBlackMan Scary Black Men]] come from, for instance, this is the place to look. This field is unfashionable, since it can so easily drift into corroboration of AcceptableTargets. But it isn't going away any time soon either; culture obviously influences thought patterns -- and, more importantly, the lens of culture is built into everything we do, so cultural psychologists will of necessity be involved in any attempts to develop truly universal models of behavior.

* '''Cultural Psychology''' examines the effects of culture -- upbringing, laws, customs, taboos -- on the mind. It embraces the BlankSlate idea, feeling that mind and culture are largely inseparable. If you want ideas on where [[DrivesLikeCrazy Crazy Asian Drivers]], WidgetSeries, or [[ScaryBlackMan Scary Black Men]] come from, for instance, this is the place to look. This field is unfashionable, since it can so easily drift into corroboration of AcceptableEthnicTargets. But it isn't going away any time soon either; culture obviously influences thought patterns -- and, more importantly, the lens of culture is built into everything we do, so cultural psychologists will of necessity be involved in any attempts to develop truly universal models of behavior.

* '''Evolutionary Psychology''' takes the assumption that behaviors, like organs, are the product of natural selection, and still exist because they provide some benefit to the organism that bears them. This field attempts to justify ideas like the BuxomBeautyStandard, looks for TruthInTelevision in DoubleStandard[=s=], wonders why SacredHospitality developed, tries to find where StageMom[=s=] came from, even ponders why we are conscious at all. It's simultaneously the oldest branch of psychology (having roots in UsefulNotes/CharlesDarwin, 20 years before Wundt) and one of the youngest (its modern era having started in 1972 at earliest.) Its results vary from incredibly profound discoveries about the human psyche to absurd generalizations with only the slightest relationship to reality. Practically at war with more modern iterations of Cultural Psychology, [[note]]The two sub-fields are essentially extensions of the "Nature vs. Nurture" debate, and academics in either sub-field have a tendency to talk past each other[[/note]] making it ample fuel for a FlameWar, and that's all we'll say here.

* '''Evolutionary Psychology''' takes the assumption that behaviors, like organs, are the product of natural selection, and still exist because they provide some benefit to the organism that bears them. This field attempts to justify ideas like BuxomIsBetter, looks for TruthInTelevision in DoubleStandard[=s=], wonders why SacredHospitality developed, tries to find where StageMom[=s=] came from, even ponders why we are conscious at all. It's simultaneously the oldest branch of psychology (having roots in UsefulNotes/CharlesDarwin, 20 years before Wundt) and one of the youngest (its modern era having started in 1972 at earliest.) Its results vary from incredibly profound discoveries about the human psyche to absurd generalizations with only the slightest relationship to reality. Practically at war with more modern iterations of Cultural Psychology, [[note]]The two sub-fields are essentially extensions of the "Nature vs. Nurture" debate, and academics in either sub-field have a tendency to talk past each other[[/note]] making it ample fuel for a FlameWar, and that's all we'll say here.

* '''Developmental Psychology''', is the study of "systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span." (We keep quoting Wiki/TheOtherWiki because they keep putting things well.) Another good name for it might be "The Psychology of Aging." Once called "Child Psychology," the field has expanded to cover all age ranges; indeed there's specialties in Elderly Psychology now (which could prove really useful to those of us who intend to have jobs during the Baby Boom Retirement Wave.) The general focus of developmental psychology is on acquisition and/or evolution of skills, moral & conceptual understanding, and self-concept.

There's two basic branches of psychology: "Basic" and "Applied." The former is more about making discoveries and figuring out fundamental things about human braining; the latter is about using them in other areas. Examples of these "other areas" on Wiki/TheOtherWiki include education, medicine and health care, product design and law; but psychology is "the study of human behavior" and those are all places where humans behave, you could make the argument that those fields are all just either extensions of psychology or hybrids of it with other disciplines. That's kind of the problem with psychology: Aside from the hard sciences, there's very little it doesn't have its fingers in.\\

* ConfirmationBias: People are more likely to remember things that support what they already believe, and to interpret ambiguous data to support their own conclusions. If your favorite MMO got an Editor's Choice award from [=GameSpot=], you'll remember that. The fact that it got EightPointEight reviews from every other publication out there may mysteriously slip your mind.

* OutOfCharacterMoment: These are informed by the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error fundamental attribution error]], which is basically "BadMoodAsAnExcuse" As A DoubleStandard. Basically, people have trouble assuming that anyone except themselves can ''have'' an OutOfCharacterMoment. In total fairness, if my only interaction with a person is largely impersonal -- "Get out of my way," bye -- how would I know saud person is ''having'' a bad day? Having said that, it's still unfair for me to not give them the benefit of the doubt. See also the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_bias actor-observer bias]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trait_ascription_bias trait-ascription bias]].

* Finally, '''Social Psychology''' deals with how people's thoughts, feelings and behaviors are influenced by the presence (perceived, actual or otherwise) of other people. It straddles the line between psychology and sociology and is also an ''extremely'' wide field, covering things like the ConfirmationBias, MoralDissonance, what goes on BeneathTheMask, {{Tsundere}} divisions, Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments, ''every'' SocialEngineering trope, and more.

* FailedASpotCheck: Selective attention and inattentional blindness. We don't think about it much, but every single moment of every day we are bombarded with ''huge'' swaths of information: blue skies, trees waving in the wind, the smell of grass, the sound of people's voices, the feeling of walking or sitting at our chairs or even wearing clothes. At some point, we must either learn to ignore this stuff or be [[SenseFreak overwhelmed by it]]. So we filter out any information that isn't pertinent to whatever we're doing right now. ...And run the risk of not noticing that the guy we're giving directions to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWSxSQsspiQ isn't the guy we started giving directions to]]. (Why should we?--his identity and clothing are irrelevant to the fact that he doesn't know how to get to the bus stop. Still, it's funny to watch.)

* More on the difference between psychiatrists and psychologists: In general, a psychologist gets a bachelor's in psychology then goes to grad school and gets a doctorate in psychology (you can find lesser paying work with just a bachelor's or master's, but to be called a psychologist you need a doctorate). A psychiatrist gets some random undergrad degree, then goes to med school and becomes a doctor, then does a several-year-long psychiatric residence. Although there is a lot of overlap in what they do, in general a psychologist is much more likely to do therapy and talk to you about your problems, while a pyschiatrist is more likely to give you pills or deal with severe mental disorders. Some states in the US (not sure about the rest of the world) have given psychologists limited ability to prescribe medications. Usually this has to be approved by a physician anyways, and even in states where psychologists cannot prescribe anything they can often make recommendations to doctors that can.

* Here's the really fun part: ''all drugs have their effect in synapses.'' Every single bloody one of them. Some of them bind to receptors in the synapse (most recreational drugs); some, like the "Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors" used to treat depression (Paxil, Prozac, Celexa) stop the original axon from collecting its spent neurotransmitters; and a few actually bind to the receptor but have an ''opposite'' effect. See why you need a medical degree to prescribe this stuff?

If Psychology is limited to the understanding of the human mind, then a good part of its origins can be traced to philosophy. Philosophy's original questions, as far back as Creator/{{Plato}} and Creator/{{Aristotle}}, dealt with arguments about what people do, why they do it, and if their behaviour is conditioned by society, by some other force (divine) or so on. However, philosophy differs from psychology in that it is concerned with the human mind in so far as it is capable of reasoning, and it is geared towards creating and perfecting ideas for rational ends. Philosophers may write about dreams or use dreams as examples but they always held that their dreams have rational functions or draw rational material from their dreams, whereas for a psychologist, the human mind is the human mind, dreams are dreams and the ability of people to rationalize their dreams is a symptom of their psychological process but has nothing to do with the content and function of the dream itself.

Modern psychology like all the social sciences, really traced its roots to the nineteenth century. Interests in the human mind and the "unconscious" had both academic and popular interests. At the start of the century there was the fad of Mesmerism and "animal magnetism", and towards the middle part of the century there was growing understanding that fundamental aspects of consciousness -- sensation, motor control, personality, memory, etc. -- could be detected as physical phenomena in the brain. The first "true" psychologist was UsefulNotes/WilhelmWundt, who opened a laboratory for the purpose in Leipzig in 1879.

Well, obviously, that was an unpopular and {{dystopia}}n philosophy, even if there is some truth to it, and the response to it is called the "Cognitive Revolution." It originated around beginning of TheSixties and has completely replaced Functionalism as the guiding principle of psychological research, especially in America, and much reduced Behaviorism's traction as well. One of the main tenets of the Cognitive Revolution is that there ''is'' such thing as a mind, damn it, but is more about (to quote UsefulNotes/JeromeBruner) "an all-out effort to establish meaning as the central concept in psychology [...] Its aim was to discover and to describe formally the meanings that human beings created out of their encounters with the world, and then to propose hypotheses about what meaning-making processes were implicated." The seminal article in cognitive psychology was UsefulNotes/GeorgeMiller's "[[http://tinyurl.com/3b5rat The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information]]," which basically identified how much Random Access Memory the human brain has. The exact amount is currently under dispute -- it's not seven, but then Miller never claimed it was seven ''facts'', it was seven "chunks," a "chunk" being the largest meaningful unit of data a person can process. (What a chunk consists of varies by training and content. For instance, you reading this article are probably fairly literate in English and can store an entire sentence in a chunk... But if you were a foreigner just starting an English-Second-Language course, your chunk capacity might be overwhelmed by an eight-letter word like "tangible" -- especially since it's not a compound word like "doorknob.") Even then, the exact nature and storage capacity of a "chunk" is still being debated. But the point was that Miller discovered something specific about a non-corporeal cognitive process -- and a fairly unintuitive thing too. It was a big step forward, and Miller's paper is one of ''the'' most-referred-to papers in the field of psychology.

There's two basic branches of psychology: "Basic" and "Applied." The former is more about making discoveries and figuring out fundamental things about human braining; the latter is about using them in other areas. Examples of these "other areas" on Wiki/TheOtherWiki include education, medicine and health care, product design and law; but psychology is "the study of human behavior" and those are all places where humans behave, you could make the argument that those fields are all just either extensions of psychology or hybrids of it with other disciplines. That's kind of the problem with psychology: Aside from the hard sciences, there's very little it doesn't have its fingers in.

This is an overview of Basic psychology, but you'll probably see how the Applied stuff branches off as we go through.

Let's say you're required to take [[UsefulNotes/MyersBriggs a personality test]] two days in a row. You showed up yesterday and got a certain result from the test. You came back today... But you were ''pissed off''. You were woken up at asscrack o'clock by screaming from the apartment upstairs, the line at the coffee shop was five miles long, you were cut off in traffic and scalded yourself, there were no parking spaces... It's been a crappy day. So you take the personality test... And you get ''the exact opposite result'' you got yesterday.

What's going on here? Did your personality [[ReverseThePolarity Reverse its Polarity]] overnight? ...Or is the test just bad at measuring personalities?

Technically, this is a field of basic psychology, but we decided to section it out because it helps answer a question almost everyone has if they've put any thought into it: "How do you scientifically measure ''mental'' events? You can't claim to know what a person is thinking or feeling, but that's what psychology studies. How the heck do you do this?"

Well, first off, we have MRI machines now. But the real and ultimate answer is, we don't. We quantify it using ''behaviors''. If the experiment involves someone getting angry, we don't ask them, [[ThatMakesMeFeelAngry Do You Feel Angry]]; we identify a number of behaviors which could ''express'' anger (punching confederate in the face; yelling; pulling a weapon) and see how many test participants engage in those behaviors. We'll have two groups of participants: a "control group" who go through things normally, and then an "experimental group" where a new stimulus is introduced; sometimes there'll be more than one experimental group if we've identified more than one potential stimulus (and can test it without things getting too complicated). If we can make significantly more members of the experimental group(s) engage in bodily harm after exposure to the new stimulus, we'll think we've got something.

Let's use the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment Milgram experiment]] as an example of how these things are quantified. If you're participating in the Milgram experiment, it's June 1961 and you arrive at the lab at Yale University. There are two other people there, one of whom is administrating the experiment and the other of whom is a fellow participant. The Administrator asks you to draw slips of paper which will determine which of you is the "learner" and which is the "teacher"; you pull the "Teacher" slip. Well, the Learner goes into another room, connected to you by an intercom, and you sit down at a control panel, where the Administrator explains that it's your job to get the Learner to remember a list of word-pairs. You'd teach him, and then give him a four-choice multiple-answer test. If he got it wrong, the control panel comes into play: you're [[DisproportionateRetribution required to administer electric shocks to the Learner]] as punishment for getting it wrong, with each button representing a higher voltage. As you continue, the Learner starts screaming in pain, pounding on the wall, and claiming that he has a heart condition, and it becomes clear that if you go further the electric shocks might do something terrible to him...

Well, here's the good news: the "Learner" is not a fellow participant at all. He's what we call a "confederate" -- a scientist who is ''pretending'' to be a participant because that's what's necessary for the test to proceed. (Both slips of paper said "Teacher"; he just lied about his.) You, the actual participant, have been led to believe that the experiment has something to do with the effects of punishment on memory... but psychological experiments are always conducted blind, so that the participant doesn't have the chance to evaluate what hypothesis (he thinks) you're trying to test and so tailor his behavior to support (or bust) it. The test is ''actually'' about how far people will go when JustFollowingOrders. There are no actual electric shocks, but you ''think'' there are, and if you complain, the Administrator says things like "It is absolutely essential that you continue" and "[[ButThouMust You have no choice; you]] ''[[ButthouMust must]]'' [[ButThouMust continue,]]" and sees what you'll do.

The experiment dictates that past a certain point (in the original case, 375 volts), the confederate will stop yelling, stop banging on the wall... [[NothingIsScarier stop making any responses at all]]. The participant is told to construe these silences as failed responses and continue administering the shocks, ignoring that something is quite obviously wrong with the Learner. This is why the Milgram experiments are probably too unethical to reproduce today: the participant is made to believe, or to fear, that s/he has just killed a fellow human being for the sake of an experiment. It was staged just after Israel's trial of ex-Lieutenant-Colonel Adolf Eichmann of the ''RSHA'' ('''''R'''eichs'''S'''icherheits'''H'''aupt'''A'''mt'', lit. "Reich Main Security Office"). Eichmann had copied the "JustFollowingOrders" excuse used by defendants in the IMT and other postwar military court trials, possibly believing that its validity ([[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust rather than Anglo-American desire to free Nazis to oppose Communism]]) had helped the vast majority of its users avoid conviction or punishment. Eichmann was quite obviously a highly intelligent and creatively fanatical racist (something [[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/28/adolf-eichmann-final-message-architects-holocaust-evil often missed by those who merely skim the case]]), rather than a genuine case of JustFollowingOrders, but Milgram wanted to find out just how far people truly would go if ordered by people like Eichmann. This is why the control panel has the series of buttons: to set a quantity, in voltage, on the perils of blind obedience.

Before conducting the experiment, Milgram polled 14 psych majors on how many participants they expected to be willing to go all the way down the series of buttons, to a maximum of 450 volts. These psych majors predicted that at most one person in one hundred would do so. In reality, 26 participants out of 40 -- ''sixty-five percent'' -- pushed all the buttons on the control panel, even ''after'' the "Learner" "died" of his "heart condition." All of them expressed disquiet with the idea, but all of them bowed in the face of what they believed to be legitimate authority, personified by the Administrator. [[NightmareFuel The participants were normal people like you and me]].

Most modern societies still play the "TherapyIsForTheWeak" trope totally straight -- Japan has more sex therapists than regular ones. In most of these it's "CommonKnowledge" (HA) that if you seek out psychotherapy, something "must be" deeply wrong with you. AsYouKnow, this is an incredibly counterproductive misconception. Psychology is "the study of human behavior," and like most humans you are behaving most of the time - so what harm could result from examining your own behaviors and trying to improve it? ...besides the fact that most of us are probably in denial about some of our behaviors and motivations. A clear majority of us ''believe'' that we are self-aware, but actually self-aware people are very much in the minority [[AndThatsTerrible since actually examining our flaws makes us feel bad]]. The desire to avoid admitting our flaws is pretty deeply ingrained since that keeps us feeling good about ourselves, and it feeds into the stigma against therapy. In America, this is especially prominent thanks to the malign influence of "ego psychology" since about TheFifties. Classic Freudian psychoanalysis was famously pessimistic and critical, seeing neurosis and repression as understandable and even, in some cases, heroic responses to what Freud saw as the inevitably disappointing nature of human society. The goal for Freud was better understanding of one's own self so that the person could be more aware when choosing to do something or the other. It did not by itself involve, necessarily, being successful, being a member of respectable society and indeed avoided prescribing ''goals'' as such. Now, "Ego psychology" said that the goal was to be a functioning person in a society, and by doing so, it essentially validated the given society and its values (i.e. USA in TheFifties) as worthy striving towards and assimilating into. This made psychotherapy quite popular, and even mainstream in that time, but this changed in TheSixties and TheSeventies, where social currents from below was mirrored by changes in the academic psychological establishment (most notably its declassification of homosexuality as an illness) and this un-tethering from the values of mainstream America was reflected, not coincidentally, in a radical rollback on mental health institutes across America, chiefly under the presidency of UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan.

Since then, mental health and representations of mental health, have faced all kinds of stigma, both mocking and serious. In any case: let's get this out of the way. If you are going to or have been recommended to go to therapy, ''there is nothing wrong with you''. You would simply like some advice on how to be happier with your life. (And who the hell doesn't want that?) However, you might change your opinions and feelings about some of the things you take for granted. And there are always consequences for any change made by a person.

A large part of talking therapy is just that -- talking. "Armchair" psychology may be a DeadHorseTrope in the media, but sometimes we need someone to tell ''us'' the truth. This is why Functionalism was deposed to begin with: human beings are not always good at self-analysis. Think of it like standing inside a building and then trying to see the outside surfaces of said building. It's impossible; there's walls in the way; you can't do it unless you're standing outside the building. The same thing is true of being human: we can't stand outside ourselves enough to see ourselves clearly. It's just a rule of nature. We cannot be objective about ourselves; we need someone to be objective ''for'' us. And that's where the psychologist comes in.

And, let's face it: it can also be really reassuring to blurt out a hard truth ("I hate my life!") and have someone say, "If I were you, I would too." It can be really reassuring to say, "IJustWantToBeNormal!" and have someone say, "''You are''." Dispelling the AngstDissonance of a person in pain is the first step to therapy. This is yet another irony: if you are in therapy, everyone assumes [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer you are abnormal]], but the whole point is to point out that it's completely reasonable to be unhappy with the problems you have, and to want help in solving them. ''That'' belief is really the fundamental disconnect which causes so many Americans to eschew therapy: ''needing'' help is contrary to the "SelfMadeMan" trope of which America is so enamored. (Americans are not always smart.)

** Here's the really fun part: ''all drugs have their effect in synapses.'' Every single bloody one of them. Some of them bind to receptors in the synapse (most recreational drugs); some, like the "Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors" used to treat depression (Paxil, Prozac, Celexa) stop the original axon from collecting its spent neurotransmitters; and a few actually bind to the receptor but have an ''opposite'' effect. See why you need a medical degree to prescribe this stuff?
** As a corollary, this means that no drug can make your body do something it wasn't intended to do in the first place. That's how "endorphines" got their name: a surgery patient was being given morphine to knock her out, and realized, in her last moments of consciousness: "Wait, my body already ''has'' receptor sites for morphine! There must be 'endogenous morphine' already somewhere in my sys[[InstantSedation grlpblll agaaagabababa zzzzzzz]]." Fortunately, she remembered enough of this after waking up to get the research done. It also does mean that, yes, MindScrew drugs like PCP or whatever have a place and a function in your neurochemistry, though what that place is, we can't be buggered to look up at the moment.

* KnowNothingKnowItAll: These are both the result of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect Dunning-Kruger effect]], which states that it's possible to be so flamingly incompetent that you're IgnorantOfYourOwnIgnorance. Conversely, people with actual skill often underestimate themselves, assuming that ''everyone'' can detect the FatalFlaw or AchillesHeel in their competence. See also the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect Overconfidence effect]], in which one believes one is always right.

* OutOfCharacterMoment: These are informed by the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error fundamental attribution error]], which basically says that people have trouble assuming that anyone except themselves can ''have'' an OutOfCharacterMoment. If I'm driving to work and I cut someone off, I'm excused because I am in a hurry. If, however, he cuts ''me'' off, it's because he's a Jerk; every action he ever takes is a direct reflection of his personality. This is, of course, a good example of how cognitive biases can develop in the first place: maybe he ''does'' have an excuse, but how the heck am I supposed to ''know'' that? Having said that, it's still unfair for me to not give him the benefit of the doubt. See also the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_bias actor-observer bias]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trait_ascription_bias trait-ascription bias]].

This is less a big deal in the world of the physical sciences, where they have (for instance) a world-standard kilogram in a vault somewhere in Europe that you can compare your classroom plastic weight to. Psychology doesn't have that luxury; there isn't a world-standard personality tucked into a vault somewhere to test our tools against. Psychologists design tests to measure a certain thing about personality, behavior, cognition, etc, but that doesn't mean the test ''succeeds''. And even if it does, most psychology results are expressed statistically, and [[LiesDamnedLiesAndStatistics a statistic will say anything if you torture it long enough]]. Finally, because anything sounds scientific if it's got charts and figures behind it, people can make up the most egregious nonsense around and pass it off as trustworthy; the UsefulNotes/MyersBriggs in particular was formulated entirely by people in their spare time, according to what made sense to them, and did not undergo ''any'' testing against real personalities before being released into the wild. Nonsense like this is part of why people are HardOnSoftScience, and to be clear, we are saying that [[TropesAreNotBad they are right to be so]]. Don't believe everything people tell you.

The experiment dictates that past a certain point (in the original case, 375 volts), the confederate will stop yelling, stop banging on the wall... [[NothingIsScarier stop making any responses at all]]. The participant is told to construe these silences as failed responses and continue administering the shocks, ignoring that something is quite obviously wrong with the Learner. This is why the Milgram experiments are probably too unethical to reproduce today: the participant is made to believe, or to fear, that [[MoralEventHorizon s/he has just killed a fellow human being for the sake of an experiment]]. It was staged just after Israel's trial of ex-Lieutenant-Colonel Adolf Eichmann of the ''RSHA'' ('''''R'''eichs'''S'''icherheits'''H'''aupt'''A'''mt'', lit. "Reich Main Security Office"). Eichmann had copied the "JustFollowingOrders" excuse used by defendants in the IMT and other postwar military court trials, possibly believing that its validity ([[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust rather than Anglo-American desire to free Nazis to oppose Communism]]) had helped the vast majority of its users avoid conviction or punishment. Eichmann was quite obviously a highly intelligent and creatively fanatical racist (something [[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/28/adolf-eichmann-final-message-architects-holocaust-evil often missed by those who merely skim the case]]), rather than a genuine case of JustFollowingOrders, but Milgram wanted to find out just how far people truly would go if ordered by people like Eichmann. This is why the control panel has the series of buttons: to set a quantity, in voltage, on the perils of blind obedience.

* KnowNothingKnowItAll / HeroicSelfDeprecation: These are both the result of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect Dunning-Kruger effect]], which states that it's possible to be [[TooDumbToLive so flamingly incompetent]] that you're IgnorantOfYourOwnIgnorance. Conversely, people with actual skill often underestimate themselves, assuming that ''everyone'' can detect the FatalFlaw or AchillesHeel in their competence. See also the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect Overconfidence effect]], in which one believes one is always right.

* OutOfCharacterMoment / ProtagonistCenteredMorality: These are informed by the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error fundamental attribution error]], which basically says that people have trouble assuming that anyone except themselves can ''have'' an OutOfCharacterMoment. If I'm driving to work and I cut someone off, I'm excused because I am in a hurry. If, however, he cuts ''me'' off, it's because he's a JerkAss; every action he ever takes is a direct reflection of his personality. This is, of course, a good example of how cognitive biases can develop in the first place: maybe he ''does'' have an excuse, but how the heck am I supposed to ''know'' that? Having said that, it's still unfair for me to not give him the benefit of the doubt. See also the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_bias actor-observer bias]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trait_ascription_bias trait-ascription bias]].

* '''Evolutionary Psychology''' takes the assumption that behaviors, like organs, are the product of natural selection, and still exist because they provide some benefit to the organism that bears them. This field attempts to justify ideas like BuxomIsBetter, looks for TruthInTelevision in DoubleStandard[=s=], wonders why SacredHospitality developed, tries to find where StageMom[=s=] came from, even ponders why we are conscious at all. It's simultaneously the oldest branch of psychology (having roots in UsefulNotes/CharlesDarwin, 20 years before Wundt) and one of the youngest (its modern era having started in 1972 at earliest.) Practically at war with more modern iterations of Cultural Psychology, [[note]]The two sub-fields are essentially extensions of the "Nature vs. Nurture" debate, and academics in either sub-field have a tendency to talk past each other[[/note]] making it ample fuel for a FlameWar, and that's all we'll say here.

* A study showed that children who have nightlights are more likely to need vision-correcting lenses as adults. What's going on here? ([[spoiler:The obvious conclusion is that nightlights cause vision damage... But that's pretty obviously not true; our eyes are exposed to much higher amounts of light during the day and do not suffer permanent damage. The other conclusion is that... Adult-glasses-wearing causes nightlights? How is ''that'' possible? -- How could my wearing glasses at 28 cause a StableTimeLoop when I'm 6? The answer is that adults wearing glasses ''does'' cause nightlights... But the adult ''is not you''. It's your parents. They couldn't see well when you were a child [the nightlight was for them, not you], and bad vision is hereditary [which is why you need glasses today.] A does not cause B, and B does not cause A; ''C causes both''. Fun Fact: In statistics, this is known as "''common response'' caused by a ''lurking variable''."]])

This is less a big deal in the world of the physical sciences, where they have (for instance) a world standard kilogram in a vault somewhere in Europe that you can compare your classroom plastic weight to. Psychology doesn't have that luxury; there isn't a world-standard personality tucked into a vault somewhere to test our tools against. Psychologists design tests to measure a certain thing about personality, behavior, cognition, etc, but that doesn't mean the test ''succeeds''. And even if it does, most psychology results are expressed statistically, and [[LiesDamnedLiesAndStatistics a statistic will say anything if you torture it long enough]]. Finally, because anything sounds scientific if it's got charts and figures behind it, people can make up the most egregious nonsense around and pass it off as trustworthy; the UsefulNotes/MyersBriggs in particular was formulated entirely by people in their spare time, according to what made sense to them, and did not undergo ''any'' testing against real personalities before being released into the wild. Nonsense like this is part of why people are HardOnSoftScience, and to be clear, we are saying that [[TropesAreNotBad they are right to be so]]. Don't believe everything people tell you.

'''Psychology''' is defined as "The study of human behavior," and more specifically "the science of behavior and mental processes." Basically, psychology seeks to understand both how and why humans do what they do. Since that is a very broad topic, expect a long article.

Psychology largely branched off from philosophy, which is where most vague ruminations get their start; as far back as Creator/{{Plato}} and Creator/{{Aristotle}}, people were making suppositions on human behavior. Major boosts to physiology during the 1800's made people start to believe (not incorrectly) that fundamental aspects of consciousness -- sensation, motor control, personality, memory, etc. -- could be detected as physical phenomena in the brain. The first "true" psychologist was UsefulNotes/WilhelmWundt, who opened a laboratory for the purpose in Leipzig in 1879.

* Finally, a fellow we've all heard of -- UsefulNotes/SigmundFreud -- came up with an approach called '''Psychoanalysis''', which in some ways combined the two: While introspection and self-observation were a major part of the process, the client looked for actual dysfunctional behaviors they were displaying, and then asked the psychoanalyst for help in puzzling out the motivations behind those behaviors. While a fair amount of Freud's theories -- particularly his obsession with sex -- are [[DeadHorseTrope largely discredited today]], the things he got ''right'', particularly the idea of the the subconscious mind and all tropes rooted therein, are just as sacrosanct.

Functionalism evolved further into '''Behaviorism''' as time went on. The first step in this direction was another name you're likely to know -- UsefulNotes/IvanPavlov -- who demonstrated the link between experience and learning. Pavlov's classic "Classical Conditioning" experiment was to ring a bell every time he fed his dog, who had been outfitted with an implant that collected some of its saliva. After a while of this, Pavlov demonstrated that, when he rang the bell, the dog would start to drool; it had been "conditioned" to associate the bell with food. Another researcher, UsefulNotes/BFSkinner, expanded this to "operant conditioning" which is basically how consequences, such as rewards and benefits, determine the frequency of behavior. He rigged up a contraption where lab rats would receive food every time they hit a lever in their cages; the rats continued to do this even after the food stopped. He was also able to train rats ''not'' to do things -- even natural, logical things -- by immediately administering punishments every time they did. In doing so, Skinner gave us the most radical definition of Behaviorism: All things we do and value are trained into us by stimulus-response conditioning, the hard way, and thus do not require consciousness. We are all easily manipulated robots.

The experiment dictates that past a certain point (in the original case, 375 volts), the confederate will stop yelling, stop banging on the wall... [[NothingIsScarier stop making any responses at all]]. The participant is told to construe these silences as failed responses and continue administering the shocks, ignoring that something is quite obviously wrong with the Learner. This is why the Milgram experiments are probably too unethical to reproduce today: the participant is made to believe, or to fear, that [[MoralEventHorizon s/he has just killed a fellow human being for the sake of an experiment]]. It was staged just after Israel's trial of ex-Lieutenant-Colonel Adolf Eichmann of the ''RSHA'' ('''''R'''eichs'''S'''icherheits'''H'''aupt'''A'''mt'', lit. "Reich Main Security Office"). Eichmann had copied the "JustFollowingOrders" excuse used by defendants in the IMT and other postwar military court trials, possibly believing that its validity ([[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust rather than Anglo-American desire to free Nazis to oppose Communism]]) had helped the vast majority of its users avoid conviction or punishment, and some observers such as the philosopher Hannah Arendt viewed it as their duty (as journalists) to relay this flimsy justification verbatim without voicing their serious doubts about its validity. Eichmann was quite obviously a highly intelligent and creatively fanatical racist (something [[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/28/adolf-eichmann-final-message-architects-holocaust-evil often missed by those who merely skim the case]]), rather than a genuine case of JustFollowingOrders, but Milgram wanted to find out just how far people truly would go if ordered by people like Eichmann. This is why the control panel has the series of buttons: to set a quantity, in voltage, on the perils of blind obedience.

Most modern societies stilly play the "TherapyIsForTheWeak" trope totally straight - Japan has more sex therapists than regular ones. In most of these it's "CommonKnowledge" (HA) that if you seek out psychotherapy, something "must be" deeply wrong with you. AsYouKnow, this is an incredibly counterproductive misconception. Psychology is "the study of human behavior," and like most humans you are behaving most of the time - so what harm could result from examining your own behaviors and trying to improve it? ...besides the fact that most of us are probably in denial about some of our behaviors and motivations. A clear majority of us ''believe'' that we are self-aware, but actually self-aware people are very much in the minority [[AndThatsTerrible since actually examining our flaws makes us feel bad]]. The desire to avoid admitting our flaws is pretty deeply ingrained since that keeps us feeling good about ourselves, and it feeds into the stigma against therapy. In US society in particular the general refusal to engage in self-reflection is pretty ironic, since they've been at the bleeding edge of psychology since about TheFifties.

In any case: let's get this out of the way. If you are going to or have been recommended to go to therapy, ''there is nothing wrong with you''. You would simply like some advice on how to be happier with your life. (And who the hell doesn't want that?)

American society plays the "TherapyIsForTheWeak" trope totally straight. It's CommonKnowledge that if you need psychotherapy, something is inherently wrong with you. The reality is the opposite. Psychology is "the study of human behavior," and like most humans you are behaving most of the time; so what harm could result from examining your own behaviors and trying to improve them? ...Besides the fact that most of us are probably in denial about some of our behaviors and motivations; self-awareness isn't always a value Americans embrace. And that probably feeds into the stigma against therapy, which is ironic because American researchers have been the bleeding edge of psychology since about TheFifties.

The experiment dictates that past a certain point (in the original case, 375 volts), the confederate will stop yelling, stop banging on the wall... [[NothingIsScarier stop making any responses at all]]. The participant is told to construe these silences as failed responses and continue administering the shocks, ignoring that something is quite obviously wrong with the Learner. This is why the Milgram experiments are probably too unethical to reproduce today: the participant is made to believe, or to fear, that [[MoralEventHorizon s/he has just killed a fellow human being for the sake of an experiment]]. It was staged just after Israel's trial of ex-Lieutenant-Colonel Adolf Eichmann of the ''RSHA'' ('''''R'''eichs'''S'''icherheits'''H'''aupt'''A'''mt'', lit. "Reich Main Security Office"). Eichmann had copied the "JustFollowingOrders" excuse used by defendants in the IMT and other postwar military court trials, possibly believing that its validity ([[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust rather than Anglo-American desire to free Nazis to oppose Communism]]) had helped the vast majority of its users avoid conviction or punishment, and some observers such as the philosopher Hannah Arendt viewed it as their duty (as journalists) to relay this flimsy justification verbatim without voicing their serious doubts about its validity. Milgram wanted to find out just how far people truly ''would'' go if ordered. This is why the control panel has the series of buttons: to set a quantity, in voltage, on the perils of blind obedience.

The experiment dictates that past a certain point (in the original case, 375 volts), the confederate will stop yelling, stop banging on the wall... [[NothingIsScarier stop making any responses at all]]. The participant is told to construe these silences as failed responses and continue administering the shocks, ignoring that something is quite obviously wrong with the Learner. This is why the Milgram experiments are probably too unethical to reproduce today: the participant is made to believe, or to fear, that [[MoralEventHorizon s/he has just killed a fellow human being for the sake of an experiment]]. It was staged just after Israel's trial of ex-Lieutenant-Colonel Adolf Eichmann of the ''RSHA'' (''{{ReichsSicherheitsHauptAmt}}'', lit. "Reich Main Security Office"). Eichmann had copied the "JustFollowingOrders" excuse used by defendants in the IMT and other postwar military court trials, possibly believing that its validity (rather than Anglo-American desire to free Nazis so they would oppose Communism) had helped the vast majority of its users avoid conviction or punishment, and some observers such as the philosopher Hannah Arendt viewed it as their duty (as journalists) to relay this flimsy justification verbatim without voicing their serious doubts about its validity. Milgram wanted to find out just how far people truly ''would'' go if ordered. This is why the control panel has the series of buttons: to set a quantity, in voltage, on the perils of blind obedience.

The experiment dictates that past a certain point (in the original case, 375 volts), the confederate will stop yelling, stop banging on the wall... [[NothingIsScarier stop making any responses at all]]. The participant is told to construe these silences as failed responses and continue administering the shocks, ignoring that something is quite obviously wrong with the Learner. This is why the Milgram experiments are probably too unethical to reproduce today: the participant is made to believe, or to fear, that [[MoralEventHorizon s/he has just killed a fellow human being for the sake of an experiment]]. It was staged just after Israel's trial of ex-Lieutenant-Colonel Adolf Eichmann of the ''RSHA'' (''ReichsSicherheitsHauptAmt'', lit. "Reich Main Security Office"). Eichmann had copied the "JustFollowingOrders" excuse used by defendants in the IMT and other postwar military court trials, possibly believing that its validity (rather than Anglo-American desire to free Nazis so they would oppose Communism) had helped the vast majority of its users avoid conviction or punishment, and some observers such as the philosopher Hannah Arendt viewed it as their duty (as journalists) to relay this flimsy justification verbatim without voicing their serious doubts about its validity. Milgram wanted to find out just how far people truly ''would'' go if ordered. This is why the control panel has the series of buttons: to set a quantity, in voltage, on the perils of blind obedience.

The experiment dictates that past a certain point (in the original case, 375 volts), the confederate will stop yelling, stop banging on the wall... [[NothingIsScarier stop making any responses at all]]. The participant is told to construe these silences as failed responses and continue administering the shocks, ignoring that something is quite obviously wrong with the Learner. This is why the Milgram experiments are probably too unethical to reproduce today: the participant is made to believe, or to fear, that [[MoralEventHorizon s/he has just killed a fellow human being for the sake of an experiment]]. It was staged just after the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who used the "JustFollowingOrders" excuse, implicitly allowing almost every German citizen alive to use it as well. Milgram wanted to find out just how far people ''would'' go if given that excuse. This is why the control panel has the series of buttons: you can now set a quantity, in voltage, on the perils of blind obedience.

There's two basic branches of psychology: "Basic" and "Applied." The former is more about making discoveries and figuring out fundamental things about human braining; the latter is about using them in other areas. Examples of these "other areas" on TheOtherWiki include education, medicine and health care, product design and law; but psychology is "the study of human behavior" and those are all places where humans behave, you could make the argument that those fields are all just either extensions of psychology or hybrids of it with other disciplines. That's kind of the problem with psychology: Aside from the hard sciences, there's very little it doesn't have its fingers in.

* '''Developmental Psychology''', is the study of "systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span." (We keep quoting TheOtherWiki because they keep putting things well.) Another good name for it might be "The Psychology of Aging." Once called "Child Psychology," the field has expanded to cover all age ranges; indeed there's specialties in Elderly Psychology now (which could prove really useful to those of us who intend to have jobs during the Baby Boom Retirement Wave.) The general focus of developmental psychology is on acquisition and/or evolution of skills, moral & conceptual understanding, and self-concept.