Two Perspectives Of Human Behaviour Essay

The purpose of this assignment is to look at two perspectives in which human behaviour is studied, examined and explained and to provide a contrast between the chosen perspectives.

Introduction

Psychology is a science. The purpose of psychology is to answer questions about how we think, how we feel, and how we behave and also why we think, feel and behave the way we do.

In trying to understand how and why we think feel and behave the way we do we must be careful not to look for one isolated cause. A theorist, Erik Erikson (1963) believed that psychologists must use a “triple bookkeeping” method to understand an individual at any given time. One must track biological events together with the psychological experience and also the historical and cultural context all at one time.

There are many different schools of thought or perspectives within psychology. A perspective also known as a school of thought is a broad way of understanding psychological phenomena including theoretical propositions, shared metaphors and accepted methods of observation.?????

Behaviour is the things we do and as behaviour can be observed it can therefore be measured. However, mental processes such as thoughts and feelings cannot be observed and therefore cannot be measured. Thoughts and feelings are experienced

Nature examines what is inherited / genetic. Nurture refers to environmental influences. Together nature and nurture establish the constraints within which we as humans think. For example if one achieves academic success superior to that of peers is this due to this particular person being genetically predisposed to being successful or is it as a result of growing and developing within an enriched environment i.e. were they born to be intelligent and successful or did the environment within which they grew up in encourage and enrich the individual to becoming one who achieves great academic