Importance Of Psychology

1230 Words5 Pages
Education is the universal practice engaged in by societies at all stages of development. Despite it being obtained in different forms, generally, it helps us to improve our different ways of living. Therefore, the essay will particularly be based on Psychology. It will explain what psychology is, how it helps us to understand ourselves and others in society and in the adult teaching-learning process. Not only that, the essay will also explain some of the weaknesses of psychology as a science. According to Crider et al (1983), Psychology is defined as, ‘the scientific study of behaviour and mental processes ’. This definition involves of three main concepts which include; scientific, behaviour and mental processes. For us to fully understand the meaning of psychology, we need to have a clear understanding of these three concepts involved. When we talk of psychology being scientific, it is important that we understand what science is. Therefore, ‘science is a body of systematized knowledge obtained by observation and verified by experimentation’ (Mwamwenda, 1989:2). This means that psychology uses so many scientific methods of collecting information through a set of systematic procedures. These procedures include observation, classification, verification and generalisation. By these procedures we are saying that, the information collected is observed first using the five senses; it is then grouped and averaged; after that, it is investigated repeatedly to ensure that there is no longer doubt of the uniformity of the results and lastly, the data collected is formulated into ‘theories or a systematized body of knowledge, which is used for both descriptive and predictive purposes’ (Mwamwenda, 1989:2). Behaviour, as used in psychology, is defined as any human activity that can be observed, recorded and measured. This includes the behaviour of human and animals that are
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