Psychology Concepts, Theories And Processes

Problem Solving

Discuss About The Psychology Concepts Theories And Processes.

Psychology is the wide study which ranges from hypothetical and theoretical analysis of the data including work in statistics and the understanding of the quantitative and qualitative data. This essay focuses on the psychological concepts, theories and the processes of psychology (Lee, Gino, & Staats, 2014).  

Problem Solving: This is a mental process which refers to problem solving by learning and analyzing the issue. This is about finding out the best solution to the problem. There is no such thing as the best way. There are unique problems and every single has a different solution. Psychology does not say that the problem is to be solved with the brain. It just wants the process to be done in a proper manner (Toharudin, 2107). Hence, it is overall mental process.  

Decision Making: This process is about deciding something important especially in a group or in any organization. This includes the action which is to be chosen from the alternatives a person has so that he can arrive on a certain solution which is the best. Decision making has always been a part of managerial process in organizations. Decisions are to be made in favor of the organization always. It is actually a part of cognitive psychology (Barry & Halfmann, 2016).

Example: Being the manager of the Café, he was the in charge of operations that goes in the café. It is a small business café and he is the only one to take care of every single decision. Recently, there are some issues which are faced by him. The customers were getting lesser day after day. Hence, less revenue was generated. To understand the problem he induced feedback system. This was a new idea or might be a solution to know as to what is wrong. This decision was in the favor of the café and it helped too. The feedbacks were filled with the issue that the customers do not like the quality of food. By analyzing the problem and solving it by taking a new decision helped the café to grow.

Cognitive and Social Psychology: This theory is a learning theory. It refers to the idea of learning that occurs in the human social environment. People become knowledgeable by observing others. They learn about rules, strategies, beliefs, attitudes of the individuals and also about the value and aptness of the behaviors with the observation of models and the behaviors of the models (Aldous, 2007). This is direct answer to behaviorism. This was proposed by Bandura and he proposed that learning about observing can be done by 4 aspects: attention, retention, motivation and reproduction. When people observe but selectively and still able to take out information from the ongoing activities is known as the process of Attention. Retention process consists of restructuring and the transformation of the information which will be seen in form of conceptions. Reproduction is performing the behavior which is real and that was observed too. Motivation pushes the learner to pay attention, practice and retention (Unsworth, Brewer, & Spillers, 2011).

Decision Making

Example: It is important to observe people as it helps in knowing what another person is all about and what he is thinking. In a small café, the manager has to do all the tasks as well as manager the team. It is important to know about the team members as they are the key factors with which the café works well. Retention was the issue in such kind of café where the manager as well as the HR was concerned about such issue. With the help of Social cognitive theory, they could observe people and started knowing as to what exactly their subordinates are up to and they were also able to help the team as they knew the problems from each one of them.   

Conformity: It is the act which refers to the behavior of individuals so that they can match up to the responses of others. Hundreds of years prior, Deutsch and Gerard proposed that there are two types of conformity. One is informational and other is normal. Informational conformity refers to the desire of forming the accurate interpretation of the reality and the behavior. Second is based on the approvals of the society which an individual seeks (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). This theory is usually taken as the disapproved feature of the human belief information. This can also be taken as the bad influence over reliability (James, 2008). Conformity is said to be act of the group of people or the individuals in which they try to seek the same behavior as others and they try doing this by changing their behavior and attitudes. This can occur in small groups or in the community. Individual or in front of people, it can occur anywhere.

Example: In a huge team of 20 people, the manager of the company was at power as he had 20 people to manage. Whenever any decisions were made, they were made by the manager. The team had to conform just to fit in the team. New members were agreeing to every decision as they were new, hence, they had less information available. The older people confirmed as they knew, they needed their manager in work as well as for promotions and future growth etc. This issue was somehow resolved to a little extent when a few people were given rewards for their work. The manager was at helping the team but his decisions should not necessarily be liked by everyone. Hence, at last the team understood the value of conformity.

Cognitive and Social Psychology

Memory: This is one of the interesting topics that anyone can study. This is always related to the aspects of daily life. Each person relies on it. Without the memory, there can be no existence of life. Survival of a human being depends upon the capability to remember things like which we are, past experiences, ability to judge danger and safety etc. The importance of memory cannot be underestimated (Middlebrooks, Murayama, & Castel, 2017).

Sensory Memory: This is the very first stage of memory. The function of this memory is to allocate time to the brain so that it can process information. It cannot be controlled consciously.  Still this memory is capable of gathering information from the surroundings by taking help of the five senses. After the original stimulus stops working, the information which is given by those five senses to the brain, holds impressions of that sensory information. This information is held by the brain for a very short period of time. Usually the information only stays there for a second.

Short Term: This memory works in the present time and the present day. What a person is working on and what information he has is what is known as the short term memory. It stays for a short time and could be retained after thinking a lot.

Long Term: This memory is for the storage of the information for the long period of time. This memory helps the brain to store the information longer than the seconds. The information can be store for days, months and even years sometimes. Little information could be forgotten with the span of time and when new things come in brain (Lew, Pashler, & Vul, 2015).

Perception: It is a cluster of processes which a person uses in accordance of the stimuli that is given. It depends upon the person as to how he interprets those stimuli. The individual takes the stimuli from the outside environment and always ends with interpreting that stimulus. This type of process happens thousands of time in a day. Anything that a person attends or does this automatically converts in stimuli as every action has a reaction (Sweeny, Haroz, & Whitney, 2012).

Example: The issue that sometimes is face by any individual in the organizations is that they can lose track of any important information from their brain. Here perception can help as the brain had already analyzed that information and made a perception out of it. With the help of that perception, individuals can make their way out of the issue. This will work only when the perception made is factual and apt.

Conformity

Psychology has many concepts, theories and processes out of which this essay focuses on a few of them such as cognitive social theory, memory, perception, problem solving, decision making and conformity. All these psychological definitions help in solving the issues in any kind of organization as psychology is always related with the individuals. Psychology can be used in any field such as education, sports, business etc. Hence, it is one of the important things in any field. The study of psychology in any form helps in understanding the work of body and mind together. Knowledge of it can help people in avoiding the situations that are stressful and help in making righteous decision (Avais, Wassan, Chandio, & Shaikh, 2014). Time management can also be done rightly with psychology. Goals can be achieved and individuals can work effectively.

References

Aldous, C. R. (2007). Creativity, problem solving and innovative science:Insights from history, cognitive psychology andneuroscience. International Education Journal , 8 (2), 176-186.

Avais, M. A., Wassan, A. A., Chandio, R. A., & Shaikh, M. Z. (2014). Importance of Social Psychology in the Society. SSRN Electronic Journal , 3 (5), 63-67.

Barry, C., & Halfmann, K. (2016). The effect of mindset on Decision making. Journal of Integrated Social Sciences , 6 (1), 49-74.

Bernheim, D. B., & Exley, C. L. (2015). Retrieved February 19, 2018, from hbs.edu: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/16-070_1d8d5b51-93dd-4906-b811-4436813d55db.pdf

Cialdini, R. B., & Goldstein, N. J. (2004). psych.ubc. Retrieved February 12, 2018, from psych.ubc.ca: https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/Psyc591Readings/CialdiniGoldstein2004.pdf

James, K. (2008). kevinzollman. Retrieved February 12, 2018, from kevinzollman.com: https://www.kevinzollman.com/uploads/5/0/3/6/50361245/zollman_-_social_structure_and_the_effects_of_conformity.pdf

Lee, J. J., Gino, F., & Staats, B. R. (2014). Rainmakers: Why Bad Weather Means Good Productivity. Journal of Applied Psychology .

Lew, T. F., Pashler, H. E., & Vul, E. (2015). Fragile Associations Coexist With Robust Memories for Precise Details in Long-Term Memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: .

Middlebrooks, C. D., Murayama, K., & Castel, A. D. (2017). Test Expectancy and Memory for Important Information. Journal of Experimental Psycholog .

Sweeny, T. D., Haroz, S., & Whitney, D. (2012). Perceiving Group Behavior: Sensitive Ensemble Coding Mechanisms for Biological Motion of Human Crowds. Journal of Experimental Psycholog .

Toharudin, U. (2107). Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills: How these Skills are needed in Educational Psychology? International Journal of Science and Research , 6 (3), 6-391.

Unsworth, N., Brewer, G. A., & Spillers, G. J. (2011). Variation in working memory capacity and forgetting over both the short and the long term: An application ofthe Population Dilution model. Journal of Cognitive Psychology , 23 (2), 243-255.