DIFFERENT AREAS OF PSYCHOLOGY

Cognitive psychology

• 'Cognition' refers to our mental processes e.g attention, perception. Therefore cognitive psychology looks at how we process information to undestand the thoughts that underpin our emtion and behaviour. This approach focuses on the brain as an information processor.
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Developmental psyhology

• developmental psychology studies the emotional, social, biological and cognitive changes that occur throughout the life span. As developmet is a life long process, developmental psychologists start their study with conception, then move to infancy, then adolescence, adulthood and finally old age. Topics involved could include early cognitive development such as the attachment formed between an infant and its carer.
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Physiological psychology

• Physiological psychology looks at the biological basis of behaviour. Body structures and functions are looked at to see how they relate to behaviour. For example, the bodys response to stress is a behaviour that has a biological basis. This type of psychology looks at how nerves function, how hormones affect behaviour and how different parts of the brain are specialised to different behaviours. 'Biological' refers to body structures and 'physiological' refers to body processes.
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Individual differences

• Individual differnces looks at the wide variation in individuals. it looks at the ways which individuals differ in their psychological characteristics which will affect their intelligence, agressiveness, willingness to conform and all other types of behaviour. An important individual difference is the degree to which a person is mentally healthy and this could lead to the study of abnormal psychology. within this, mental disorders are studied such as eaiting disorders and schizophrrenia.

Social psychology

• Social psychology looks at situations involving 2 or more members of the same species. It investigates social interactions, interpersonal relationships, group behaviour, leadership and social influence. One studying social psychology may look at how others influence us e.g conformity.