UNIT 1

 PSYHOCOLOGY AT A GLANCE

            Psychology studies the activities of individual. The science of human behaviors is actually a group of sciences. On one side we find psychology investigating the organs and cells that do the work of the organism, and the other side we see the social sciences studying nations and groups of mankind. There  is room for a middle science that shall focus its attention on the individual. That middle science is psychology. Psychology studies the individual’s activities through-out his span of life, from the beginning before birth, up through the end of life. During this life history, the man remains the same individual, although his behavior shows continuity along whit many changes.

Psychology compares children and adults, the normal and the abnormal and the human and the animal. It is interested in the differences between one individual and another, and still more interested, if possible, in the general laws of activity including event of very different individuals-laws, for example, of growth, learning, thinking and emotion. Psychology can be defined as the science of the individual’s activities.

            The word “activity” is used here in a board sense. It includes not only motor activities like walking and speaking but also cognitive (knowledge-getting) activities like seeing, hearing, remembering, thinking, and other emotional activities like laughing and crying, or feeling happy or sad. These last may seem passive, because they are activities, for they depend on the life of the organism. Any manifestation of life can be called an activity. No matter how passive an individual may seem to himself in watching a game or listening to music, he is really carrying on an activity. The only way to be completely in active is to be dead.

Exercise 1

 Answer these following questions

1. What is psychology ?

2. Name some individual activities?

3. Give example(s) of motor, cognitive, and emotional activities?

4. Is listening to music a kind activity? Why? Why not?

5. What is meant by : the science of human behavior is actually a group of sciences?

6. When do we call an individual completely inactive?

7. The word “activity” is used in a very broad of sense. What does it mean?

8. What kind of activity is happening when you write a letter to your girl or boy friend?

9. Why do we study human behavior?

10. What causes the differences between individuals?

The answers :

1.      Psychology is a science of human behaviour.

2.      Science individual activities are motor, cognitive, and emotional activity.

3.      Example (s) : * motor = walking, speaking, running

    * cognitive = seeing, hearing, listening, thingking, remembering

    * emotional : laughing, crying, angry, happy

4.   Yes. Because, listening to music is one of cognitive activities.

      5.   The meaning is the science of human behaviours investigating the organs and cells of the organism, social life, nations, statistic, etc.

      6.   We call an individual completely inactive when they dead.

      7.   It means that activity not only motor activities, but also cognitive and emotional activities.

      8.   Happening is one of emotional activity

      9.   Because it is interested in the diffences between one individual and another.

    10.   His behaviour shows continuity along whit many changes, including event of very different individual – laws.

Exercise 2

1.      He loves his mother very much. When his mother was sick, He showed his attention.

2.      When he was child, he never played toys. He really had an unhappy childhood.

3.      Their behaviour towards me shows that they do not like me. It can be proved from how they look at me. When we meet, they always look away for me.

4.      When a boy or girl gets biological changes and psychological changes (puberty), he or she enters in the adolescence era.

5.      When a baby lears how to take a walk and how to talk, he develops his motor activity.

6.      It is common for a mother to make her baby smile by doing a funny thing. Often, she does not get smilling and crying, even laughing, is good for a baby because at such time he develops his emotional activity.

7.      There was a mysterious murder. The police get difficulties to handle this case and look for the murderer. Finally they ask some detectives to investigates this case.

8.      In Javanese culture when a baby is just delivered by a mother, the other people always try to wake the baby up by making aloud noise. The baby of course, is surprised. But it is good for him because he develops his cognitive activity.