What is Psychology?

Psychology can be define as “the science of behavior and mental / cognitive processes”. Behavior is generally defined as anything we do, especially if it can be observed as talking, eating, running, dancing, etc. psychologists study the behavior of people and animal in variety of settings. On the other hand, they also study mental / cognitive processes, which include thinking, dreaming, remembering and problem solving, etc. these cognitive activities are usually not directly observable, and are often studied through reports provided by human research subjects. Psychologists often study biological and physiological processes that accompany both behavior and mental processes. For example, brain wave during dreaming and heart rate during emotion are studied by psychologists. In general terms, we can say that psychologists study what organisms (not just people of course) feel and how they think.

The roots of psychology can be traced back to some half million years when primitive people assumed that behavior was caused by the presence of good and evil souls. People have always been interested in the behavior of others throughout history so that roots of psychology may be found in philosophy, religion and science.

In short, we claim scientific status for psychology because it meets two criteria. It has an organized body of knowledge and uses of scientific methods. For better understanding of subject matter of psychology.