Discussion: The Four Major Perspectives of Psychology

Psychology
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Abstract
There are numerous perspectives (approaches) in Psychological studies, both in the old and contemporary psychology. A perspective is an approach comprising specific beliefs or assumptions relating to human behavior: how they function, which of their aspects are study worthy, and what research methodologies befit the study. Many different theories might occur within an approach, but of similarity is their shared assumptions commonality. Therefore, this essay explores the four major perspectives of psychology: learning, cognitive, biological, and sociocultural perspectives.
Psychology Assign. 04
Perspectives of Psychology
The biological perspective underlines that a biological cause necessitates all behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. Being one of the major Psychological perspectives, biological perspective theorists studying behavioral genomics have found out how genes impact behavior. With the achievement of human genome mapping, we will soon comprehend how the DNA we inherit affects our behaviors since various biological factors like the brain, chromosomes, and hormones have been proven to influence human behavior significantly, e.g., gender. There is much emphasis on the relation of most behaviors to inheritance and their evolutionary (adaptive) functions in this perspective. For instance, a father's testosterone levels drop by more than 30% in the immediate weeks after a child's birth. The cycle affirms an adaptive function since testosterone-deficient men are less likely to inseminate new mates and are less aggressive, crucial for the baby's development. While trying to understand the perspective in neurological terms, biological psychologists tie schizophrenia to dopamine levels (neurotransmitters). The research has catapulted Psychiatry's advancement and contributed to relieving mental illness symptoms by using drugs. The examples here include the study of genetics, brain, hormones, nervous and, immune systems.
The cognitive perspective involves studying cognition, which refers to the knowledge acquirement process or the mental act. It is majorly concerned with mental functions like attention, memory, perception, etc. It associates peoples` information processing to how computers work, "input-process-output." For instance, computers and human brains receive information (input), process, store, and deliver the information (output). It dictated cognitive psychologists to expound that memory encompasses three steps, receiving and processing (encoding), retaining (storage), and recalling or remembering the information (retrieval). It is an exclusively scientific approach that naturally adopts lab experiments in human behavior study. The perspective comprises examples like eyewitness testimony and cognitive therapy.
The sociocultural perspective is a diverse psychological approach encompassing massive societal and cultural forces affecting individuals' behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. The forces include child-rearing, discrimination, attitudes, prejudice and discrimination, norms and gender roles, racial and ethnic identity, religious practices and beliefs, kinship and family makeup, regional differences, power dynamics, taboos, and rituals. The sociocultural perspective is so diverse that numerous psychology subfields such as cultural, cultural-historical, and social psychologies attempt to explain the perspective's factors. Hence, cultural psychology finds out how behavioral and psychological tendencies are embedded and rooted within a culture. It delves into the belief that culture and mind are mutually constitutive and are intertwined, i.e., people shape their culture and vice versa.
Similarly, social psychology studies how the actual, implied, or imagined presence of other people influences one's feelings, behaviors, and thoughts. It is concerned with how such thoughts, intentions, feelings, goals, and beliefs are conceptualized, affecting our interactions with other people. However, the cultural-historical mainly delves into historical, social problems like racial prejudice, gender issues, aggression, obedience to authority, bystander intervention, and cognitive dissonance
The learning perspective roots back in the US in the 1910s, pegging on the psychological belief that if we can learn most behaviors, we can change them. It is an apparent contradiction to what biologists believed. It, therefore, emphasizes the observable behavior scientific study; that is, what occurs in mind is not vital, only the behavior exhibited. The perspective has contributed to the behavioral scientific research (contemporary psychology) by backing hypothesis experimental testing, thus highly favoring experiments before case studies and observational studies. And it constitutes basic assumptions like all species learn the same way, reductionism, behavior can be altered through unlearning and new learnin...