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Psychology is the study of behavior and mental processes; it's a combination of two Greek words: psyche/soul and logos a soul was close to our modern view of a spirit or mind while logos are the source of all our "ologies", such as biology and anthropology'. (Cacioppo and Freberg, 2016:5).
In layman's words psychology is the study of the mind and how it works and the uniqueness within every human beings mind.
According to (Cacioppo and Freberg 2016:12) "STRUCTURALISM as that the mind constructs an overall perception out of building blocks made up of separate sensations such as taste and visions and emotional response".
in its simple terms it means that for psychologists or therapists to understand the mind they take it and break it down into simpler fractions and analyze it that way to them it makes sense when they study it that way, a person may have eaten/sucked something very bitter in future they will exercise caution when it comes to that fruit or food because they have learned from their past experience.
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“ Thank you so much for accepting my assignment the night before it was due. I look forward to working with you moving forward ”
(Cacioppo and Freberg 2016:12)
The chief proponent of FUNCTIONALISM is William James he viewed behavior as purposeful because it led to survival. "Instead of restricting themselves to exploring the structure of mind, functionalists are more interested in why behavior and mental process worked in a particular way" (Cacioppo and Freberg, 2016). The functionalist believe that when it comes to behavior a human being will behave in either one of the two ways
Behavior which enhances the chances of living will be repeated.
Behaviors that are either irrelevant or damaging to survival will be abandoned'. (Cacioppo and Freberg 2016:13).
According to (Cacioppo and Freberg 2016:22)"Freud came up with the Psychodynamic Theory with this theory he had ideas about the unconscious mind the role of experience in abnormal behavior and new approaches to therapy laid a foundation for later study in personality and therapy".
"Freud is the chief master when it comes to behaviorism he laid the ground works for psychodynamic theory and the study in personality and therapy'. Cacioppo and Freberg (2016:22)
He found the study of personality in psychology developed techniques of psychoanalysis for treating psychological disorders; he popularized the use of psychological principles for explaining everyday behavior. With this theory Freud had an idea to try and explain all of these unexplained emotions that people had in later life stages with which he tried to explain that all those mental highlights are things we experienced as children or they were hidden in the sub-conscious now they have suddenly come up.
Pavlov and Watson came up with a theory of their own called behaviorism the study of behavior well according to Cacioppo and Freberg (2016:16) in a more defined way they said that it's an approach to psychology that features the study and careful measurements of observable behaviors. Pavlov even took it a step further by now studying the effects of learning in animals his most known experiment involved dogs being fed food but before a metronome was rung and then the dogs started salivating and he came up with a term called classical conditioning. In every day examples we would see classical conditioning in that every time we have to receive results we get so anxious other people even faint while waiting for them.
'Psychology is all about people and few occupations do not require an understanding of people and their behavior. An example would be that an architect cannot design a functional space without considering how people respond to crowding: the study of psychology then provides you better insight into and understanding of many occupations and fields of study'. (Cacioppo & Freberg, 2016). A scientific map was made by scientists from all over the world and they compared psychology with the other sciences like physics, biology and the results were that it features in every major branch of science and so it should not be taken lightly.
"Dubbed the father of modern psychology he is the man who is responsible for psychoanalysis. Freud's theory was influenced by the sexually repressed Victorian age in which he lived; Freud proposed that the unconscious mind controls much of our conscious behavior in his theory of psychoanalysis" (Cacioppo & Freberg, 2016).Freud is the father of modern psychology he came up with the idea that unconscious mind controls the conscious (Cacioppo & Freberg His psychodynamic theory was relevant on the 20th century even though much of it is no longer used an example would be that Freud used to call the people who came to him for help patient while nowadays they are clients, he started out as a normal physician and then he branched into psychology where he came up with theories that supported his theories the theory on personality, he said that the human psyche is divided into three namely: Id, Ego and the Superego. In later years his work was more or less that of Abraham Maslow because they were in the same schools of thought of humanistic psychology.
Pavlov was a behaviorist, the man who in the science world is known for his experiment with dogs and later coming up with the classical conditioning definition: 'when forms of associations between pairs of stimuli that occur sequentially in time are paired together example if a child sees a bee for the first time and then gets stung the child forms a connection between seeing bees and the pain of being stung'. (Cacioppo and Freberg, 2016) There's also another type of learning called Operant conditioning a type of learning in which associations are formed between behaviors and their outcomes (Cacioppo and Freberg, 2016: 279). Basically there are two types of "[c]onditioning, called classical and operant conditioning'(Cacioppo & Freberg, 2016:279). In essence the man is known for his experiment with the dogs where he rang a metronome and the dogs started salivating.
Cacioppo and Freberg (2016: 16) 'said that he was a contemporary of Pavlov he began experimenting with learning in rats and independently came to many of the same conclusions as Pavlov". Watson was a behaviorist more concerned about the behaviors of humans, there's a statement that he made he said "Give me a dozen healthy infants well-formed and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select a doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and yes even into beggar man and thief ,regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and race of his ancestors'. (Cacioppo & Freberg, 2016: 16). . In his career the man and his work had a lot of influence In the advertising industry he discovered that blindfolded smokers couldn't tell the difference between the different brands of cigarettes after that he came to a conclusion that for any brand to be successful it must be paired it must be paired with an appealing image.
The way a human or an animal is born the things that you can't just wake up and think about changing they are innate at times genetically impossible to be changed that is what is meant by nature inborn things that we as human can't change. There were a lot of philosophers who had ideas about how nature or the mind at large works Descartes argued that ideas and emotions were innate or inborn Aristotle believed that all knowledge is gained through sensory experience". (Cacioppo & Freberg 2016: 8). All that you are born with and is innate it cannot be changed.
'Nurture is the results of experience with the environment to be closely intertwined as opposed to somehow competing with each other for control over structure and behavior'. (Cacioppo & Freberg 2016: 73)
In essence this was said by a Mr. Galton a cousin of Charles Darwin what he meant with that statement and definition was that nurture is how we interact with the environment and how it shapes us as humans and animals an example would be that people grow up in different communities so in saying that you might find that the things that they hold dearly are different that would be how they respond to their nurture instincts.
In a study compiled by Miller et al (2000).'In the study comparing adopted and non-adopted children they found that "demographic and background variable breakdowns show that the effect sizes for difference between adopted and non-adopted adolescents were larger for males, younger or older adolescents ,Hispanics or Asians and adolescents living in group homes or with parents of low education. Distributional analysis revealed approximately a 1:1 ratio of adopted to non-adopted adolescents in the middle ranges of the outcome variables but a ratio of 3:1 or greater near the tails of the distributions. These data clearly show that more adopted adolescents have problems of various kinds than their non-adopted peers; effect sizes were small to moderate based to moderate based on mean differences but comparisons of distributions suggest much larger proportions of adopted than non-adopted adolescents at the extremes of salient outcome variables'. Miller et al,( 2000:1458).
This study has clearly shown that there are differences between children who are adopted and those who are not more so there it's not because they are different it's because of the factors that are surrounding the like the socio-economic factors like being adopted by parents who don't have decent education and more especially it was male children who seemed to be have experienced problems in all the spheres that were explored when differences were being looked at.
The national council for adoption (NCFA) in 1989 presented arguments against the myth the "adopted child syndrome" stating that adopted children are overrepresented in psychotherapy and residential treatment because adoptive parents are used to dealing with agencies and seeking help it was reported by Warren (1998) that adopted were adopted children were more likely than other children to be referred for mental health treatment even controlling for the extent of their problems.
The study objectives of Miller, Fan, Christensen, Grotevant, and van Dulman (2000) were:
The council wanted to bust the myth around sayings that children who are adopted are problematic don't listen to anyone they tried and their and their study showed that it depends on various factors like how educated the parents are how little was the child when they were adopted and the conditions like the community they will grow in the nurture factor will play an important role. The study found that this mostly happens with male children who grow up to be problematic but in overall they all showed that all children do become rebellious and problematic as they grow up.
There is a difference when raising kids of different parentage, kids who are adopted and those who are not.
What is "Adoption'? The Cambridge online dictionary defines it: as the act of legally taking a child to be taken care as your own. This means that it may be a child of close or distant relative or someone that you don't know at all but has a child that they can't take care of so in this instance you take the child and go register with the relevant authorities and abide by the law until all checks have been done.
Well in most cases people especially in real life cases couples would like to do that because if it happens that they cannot conceive they want exercise that right to adopt but then they have fears as to whether the kid will be accepted by their families and whether the child will have a happy upbringing in most cases the child might run away from home if they feel that are not happy and treated right.
We might also want to check the work of Abraham Maslow on what he said on adoption in general he did not say much but his work was that of a behaviorist which is to do with behavior of people and again looking at his hierarchy of needs it would say that a lot of needs are missing if needs at the bottom are not met then how is he going to fulfill the last which is self-actualization.
Tazneem's mother fears are reasonably valid because adopted children like Andrew who happens to be male do exhibit some emotional and behavioral disturbances. Miller et al. (2000) "concluded that adoptees are especially likely to display higher levels of externalizing behaviors and learning disabilities including attention deficit disorders". Sharma, McGue and Benson (1996)'compared a large group of adopted and matched non-adopted adolescents found that adoptees had lower levels of adjustment on 9 of 12 emotional, behavioral and family functioning scales but slightly higher levels of prosocial behavior'.
Tazneem will need to do a further introspection as to whether she still wants to babysit those children seeing that there is some information that has being released showing that there is a difference between adopted and non-adopted kids. Adopting kids is also not bad causing you will be saving one child from living in the streets and becoming a criminal you could have a future scientist from the claws of dangerous world we live in.
It is with this evidence provided we can see that Tazneem's mother worries were truly founded in that Andrew would need some extra care and that he would exhibit some emotions that are not normal with kids that biological to their parents.
When you take a child legally and raise them as your own it is said that you have adopted those are positive things that have to do with humanity.
A biologist by the name of Charles Darwin said this in his theory of evolution "that species evolve or change from one form to the other in an orderly manner "(Cacioppo & Freberg, 2016:87)
In simple he said that in times of need when there are changes to the environment only the strongest will survive because they will acclimatize very quickly and nothing will happen to them while the weakest will die out.
So in the case of Andrew being adopted we might take it as something positive because he might have strong genes which will enable him to take that family to heights that they don't even know just as farmers always want only the strong oxen to mate together to pass on the genes and make sure that there is room for future generations and that they are very strong.
While cultural norms might differ because people expect you to have your own children instead of taking the adoption route the problem lies when you adopt they will say that the child is not yours while not knowing that you have done a very noble thing.
Smith (2010) said that there are a lot of stigmas regarding adopting kids firstly people think that adopting kids is very easy firstly it might happen that you cannot conceive children there's an infertility problem with you so when going the adoption you will need to prove to the relevant authorities.
Another stigma regarding adoption is that people always think that it is always second best to adapt than to take adoption as a first option, you can always take adoption as a first option and you might have saved an Einstein someone who will and save some of the world's problems.
All people are encouraged to adopt children not because they cannot have them but it's humane and is a positive thing that we can encourage in all the aspects of life.
Cacioppo, J.T. and Freberg, L.A. 2016. Discovering psychology the science of mind. 2nd ed.Boston: Cengage learning
Miller, B.C., Fan, X., Christensen, M., Grotevant, H.D., and van Dulman, M. 2000. Comparisons of adopted and non-adopted adolescents in a large, nationally representative sample.wiley.71(5):1458-1473.[online].Available at:
Cambridge Dictionary Online.2019 adoption define.[online] available at : [accessed 25 June 2019]
Sharma, A.R., McGue, M.K., and Benson, P.L. (1996). The emotional and behavioral adjustment of adopted adolescents:Part 2 age at adoption. Newbury park: Sage
smith, B, 2010. Long-term outcomes in adoption. New york: Oxford University Press.
Educational Psychology Related Questions. (2019, Dec 06). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/educational-psychology-related-questions-essay
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