Portal:Psychology
The Psychology Portal
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Psychology is the scientific study of the mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both conscious and unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feelings, and motives. Psychology is an academic discipline of broad scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. Biological psychologists seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups.
A professional practitioner or researcher involved in the discipline is called a psychologist. Some psychologists can also be classified as behavioral or cognitive scientists. Some psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior. Others explore the physiological and neurobiological processes that underlie cognitive functions and behaviors.
As part of an interdisciplinary field, psychologists are involved in research on perception, cognition, attention, emotion, intelligence, subjective experiences, motivation, brain functioning, and personality. Psychologists' interests extend to interpersonal relationships, psychological resilience, family resilience, and other areas within social psychology. They also consider the unconscious mind. Research psychologists employ empirical methods to infer causal and correlational relationships between psychosocial variables. Some, but not all, clinical and counseling psychologists rely on symbolic interpretation. (Full article...)
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Confirmation bias (also confirmatory bias, myside bias, or congeniality bias) is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs, values, or decisions. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, emotionally charged issues and deeply entrenched beliefs. Confirmation bias often comes from automatic mental habits. Studies repeatedly find that people tend to test ideas in a one sided way, mainly searching for evidence that supports what they already assume. Research on selective exposure also suggests that people differ in how strongly they defend their attitudes, with some individuals being more resistant to information that goes against their views.
Biased search for information, biased interpretation of this information and biased memory recall have been invoked to explain four specific effects:
- attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme despite the different parties being exposed to the same evidence)
- belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false)
- the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series)
- illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations). (Full article...)
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- "Cogito, ergo sum: I think, therefore I am." — René Descartes
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Selected biography -
Gustav Theodor Fechner (/ˈfɛxnər/; German: [ˈfɛçnɐ]; 19 April 1801 – 18 November 1887) was a German physicist, philosopher, and experimental psychologist. A pioneer in experimental psychology and founder of psychophysics (techniques for measuring the mind), he inspired many 20th-century scientists and philosophers. He is also credited with demonstrating the non-linear relationship between psychological sensation and the physical intensity of a stimulus via the formula: , which became known as the Weber–Fechner law. (Full article...)
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