Psychology Common Sense

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Psychology is more than just common sense. According to Landau & Bavaria (as cited in Coon, & Mitterer, 2012, p. 15), it may seem like psychological studies ‘discover’ what we already know from a daily experience. However, common sense beliefs are often false and the line that draws these two terms, “psychology” and “common sense”, apart is the scientific research behind it. Psychology analyses the perceptions about human beings. The reason why many people view psychology as common sense is because, in the beginning of psychology, psychologists had very few resources to rely on other than their own guesses, or what they termed as common sense. Hence, when the results end up matching the predictions of the psychologists, this so-called ‘common…show more content…
Whereas, psychology is defined as the systematic research of behaviour and mental states. The word “behaviour” in this context refers to actions that can be seen directly, such as sleeping, talking and writing. Whereas on the other hand, “mental states” refers to more personal experiences that cannot be observed straight away, such as a person’s feelings (General Psychology, n.d.). The field of Psychology surfaced 130 years ago, as a by-product of Philosophy. The “Father of Psychology”, Wilhelm Wundt, set up a laboratory in Germany back in 1879, to study conscious experience. One of Wundt’s students, Edward Titchener labelled his ideas “structuralism”, the study of the analysis of the mind. The study of psychology was then widened to include “functionalism”, which is the study of “how behaviour and mental abilities help people to adapt to their environments” (Coon and Mitterer, 2012, p. 27). “Structuralism” and “Functionalism” were soon challenged by “Behaviourism”, which is the study of observable behaviours (Coon and Mitterer, 2012, p. 27). “Spare the rod, spoil the child” is the common sense statement to be discussed. In relation to my opinion, I do not stand by this statement, however, I do not disregard the perspectives of others. “Spare the rod, spoil the child” surrounds the idea of using physical punishment as a form of discipline with the intention to correct the behaviour of a child. Punishment…show more content…
144), physical punishments tend to increase and boost aggression, anti-social behaviours and mental health issues, which carry on into adulthood. When physically punished, a child may feel frustrated and angry. It is extremely dangerous as they may take out their aggression on other people and feel good about it thereafter. After umpteen research reviews made by Gershoff (as cited in Coon, & Mitterer, 2012, p. 144), it was deduced that parents should downplay the use of physical punishment or stay away from it completely. From the sociocultural perspective, “spare the rod, spoil the child” is still mostly used in the Asian culture. Research has shown that Asian parents display the style of authoritarian parenting, where parents demand obedience to authority (Kawamura, Frost, and Marmatz, 2002). Many Asian parents who adopt this method of parenting, grew up with the same cultural upbringing. They then decide to use it on their children because they felt that they themselves turned out well under this particular upbringing. This, in turn, could also result in their children using the same method in
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