Passion – Psychology

Psychology is the study of human behaviour. Psychology is understanding the way humans and animals think, learn, and act. When we understand psychology, it can make our day-to-day social interactions more understandable and read them, hear the things they want to say but didn’t.  

I am interested in psychology because I used to always think that human behaviour was always random, and patterns in behaviours didn’t exist because humans aren’t school subjects, and that we all behave very differently, but when I started to look into psychology, I found out that humans all act somewhat the same. Our body language, the way we act, it all somehow makes sense.  

Psychology isn’t only useful for our own interests; it can be used in a lot of places, understanding psychology can help us understand and control the outcome of certain things, for example, teaching. When we learn, there are two main types: classical conditioning and instrumental learning. 

To put it simply, classical conditioning is a response type of learning. A lot of animals learn this way, like we teach our pets. If you rang a bell each time you gave a dog a treat, the next time you ring the bell the dog will most likely be expecting a treat and gets ready to eat. 

Instrumental learning is like classical conditioning, except for the fact that instead of training the dog to expect a treat, you can relate the bell to an action they have to do, and when you ring the bell and they do the action, they get a treat. When they’re used to this, the next time you ring a bell, they will do the action related to ringing the bell.  

Knowing this might be helpful, not only because you now half-know how to train your dog, but when teachers teach, they’re using a very similar thing. When they ask you a question and you give the correct answer, they usually give you a word of praise. Praise to humans is like a mental treat, and next time the teacher asks a question, you would want to answer because you know there’s likely to be praise after; this also encourages students to pay attention in class and study, because then they’ll be more likely to know the answer to the question the teacher asks. 

Reference used:
EBSCO – Psychology