Psychology Reflective Essay

Psychology is called the “science of behavior” which means the study of human nature and activities. It is significant as it is involved with the research of actions and psychological procedures and simultaneously, it is also used in many different places of individual lifestyle. The most common approaches in psychology are behavioral, psychoanalytic, cognitive, social/cultural, and physiological. Everything we do is very much related to psychology. It’s relevant in my life because it allows me to comprehend myself better. It also allows me to comprehend other individuals. If you comprehend mindset, you can modify your own actions and help other individuals to modify theirs. You can also estimate how other individuals are going to respond to factors. The people that study the behaviors are called psychologists. Psychology’s four main goals are to describe what occurred, explain why it occurred, predict what event is likely to occur next, and to change to prevent unwanted outcomes. Psychologists study the process of thinking, learning, cognition, emotions, motivations, and personalities. According to the psychology knowledge that I’ve been acquiring during my psychology course I notified that as person psychology has helped me to prepare myself for any kind of situation in life: it can help you understand the different behaviors of people and the things around you, which is beneficial to you when you need to make a judgment or take a hard decision ; it can help in your development as a person with individual interaction in places such as school or job settings; It also can help to shape your personality and it can even enhance your individual life: if you know what can cause psychological or psychological problems then you know how to avoid it.

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In the first place, learning is a change in behavior or in potential behavior that occurs as a result of experience. There are three major types of learning respectively: the classical conditioning which is learning through association, the operant conditioning it’s learning through consequences and the observational learning which is learning through observation. First of all I got the classical conditioning explain by Pavlov’s and Watson’s experiments, from my personal opinion I must confess that I’ve been learned a lot about of associations with several situations that happened during my daily routine, for example I often have problems to control my desire to go to the bathroom when I listen the water noise next to me in any place because I think my brain usually make the association of water noise with the sensation of relief and my body’s automatic response is make a pee. Then I have the operant conditioning by B.F. Skinner says that the behavior is result of consequences. It’s divided into two aspects namely the reinforcement that increases the likelihood of response being repeated. It can be positive when there’s a strengthening response because something is added and negative when there’s a strengthening response because something is moved/avoid. On the other hand we got punishment that decreases the likelihood that the behavior will be repeated, also it can be positive when the behavior decreases by adding an aversive stimulus and negative when the behavior decreases by removing something desirable. On my childhood I remember that I used to be reinforced and punished in several different situations by my parents and sometimes by some teachers that I had. However, the most remarkable situations about reinforced and punishment were with my parents especially with my father because he is an extremely conservative person about the customs and behaviors, so we were almost every time in conflict with ideas, I used to be a person who didn’t like to listen their advices and I took my decisions by myself acting like irresponsible person in some cases. As a consequence of my personality I received more punishment than reinforcement but I believed that it helped me to understand better some situations in life and now I become more flexible and understandable person when I got to take any decision or even accept any life condition. The last one is the observational learning by Albert Bandura, it concerns to learning new behavior by watching others. About this type of learning I think it’s the most common in my life because I’ve learned a lot things in my life by watching the people around me such as using computer, riding on bicycle, and playing guitar. I used to like see my father playing guitar, so I decided to try learn how to play it by myself and It was a great idea because I just watched him and then I went to practice on my bedroom when I realized after one month I was playing it. Even though I went through these tree learning process I don’t have any doubt to say that the operant was the one that had more impact on me because of my mentality now.
Second, the development describes the growth of humans throughout the lifespan, from conception to death. The scientific study of human development seeks to understand and explain how and why people change throughout life. This includes all aspects of human growth, including physical, emotional, intellectual, social, perceptual, and personality development. There’re four theories in development, the first theory is the theory of cognitive development by Piaget it talks about the nature and development of human intelligence. He divided this theory in four stages: the first stage is the sensorimotor during this stage, babies and youngsters acquire knowledge through neurological encounters and adjusting things. I don’t remember about nothing I did on this stage, my mother always tells me that I cried too much, though. The second stage is the preoperational stage at this stage, children understand through imagine play but still battle with reasoning and taking the perspective of other people. On this stage I got some memories not very clear but one of them is pretty funny I remember that I was struggling with my parents because I didn’t want to share the toys with my brother even if I wasn’t playing with them. The third stage is the concrete operational stage children at this point of growth start to think more rationally, but their considering can also be very firm, they usually battle with subjective and theoretical ideas. This stage is very interesting because during it I started to be very curious about the things around me and I used to make a lot questions for my parents related to every single object or person that I saw in front of me. The last stage is the formal operational includes an increase in thinking, the ability to use deductive thinking, and a knowing of subjective concepts. It’s the easier one to remember because it happened recently, it was marked by my freedom of expression when I needed to take decisions and express my thoughts, and basically I’ve become more independent. The second theory is the Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development where he described the development of ego identity that occurs throughout the lifespan. For that he stated eight psychosocial stages marked by basic conflict between two or more elements. On Erikson’s stages I’m on stage 6 (Intimacy vs Isolation) this stage is all about relationships, so I personally liked this stage for this aspect and the other aspect is because it means that at least I’m already young adult. In fact, the relationship aspect on this stage is crucial for me because I consider myself as a shy person, since I moved to the U.S. this characteristic of my personality has become even more challenging for me because it’s a different culture and people, however I decided to work on it and so far I’ve enjoyed this challenger where I try to building new relationships with people from others culture. The third theory is the Ainsworth’s attachment theory it’s focused on the relationships and bonds between individuals, particularly long-term relationships such as those between a mother or father and kid and between loving associates. She identified three main attachment styles, secure, insecure avoidant and insecure ambivalent. Honestly, I’m not pretty sure about my attachment but I think that I’m the secure attachment because of my relationship with others people I usually liked to have a physical contact with the people who are close to me especially now that I’m far from family. This theory also talk about of the three parenting main styles, authoritarian parenting style, authoritative parenting style, and permissive parenting style. My parents fit better with authoritative parenting style even not totally but at least 90 % because they established rules and guidelines for me that were expected to follow. However, they used to be very democratic with especially my father we had a lot of conversations to avoid unnecessary situations before they happen. These conversations had a huge impact for me to be who I am today because I can feel that I more happy, capable and mature person. Finally, we got Kohlberg’s theory of moral development which is based upon research and interviews with groups of young children. My moral development was shaped in accordance with my parent’s education, it allowed me to create a common sense inside of me that has been advantageous on my relationships now as a young adult. I can say that inside the moral development area I see myself on Level 3 post conventional morality on stage 6 because now I realized that morality is based on principles that transcend mutual benefit and I follow these internalized principles of justice that I believe even if they conflict with law and rules.
Afterwards is the personality refers to our enduring, distinctive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, which characterize how we adapt to our world. There’re four major psychology theories; the behavioral and social theories suggest that personality is a consequence of interaction between the individual and the environment consist of B. F. Skinner and John B. Watson; the humanist theories highlight the significance of free will and individual experience in the growth of personality include Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow; the trait theories, the according to this concept, character is created up of a variety of wide characteristics, and finally the psychodynamic theories that see personality as primarily unconscious, occurring in stages, and being linked to early experiences. The last theories were influenced by Sigmund Freud, he believed that the three components personality were the id which is the only part of personality that is existing from birth, for example as a child my id was cry too much like my mother usually tell me and I just stopped crying when someone took me for a ride. Next is the ego it’s the part of personality that is accountable for dealing with reality, in my case I must confess that I’m an egocentric person it’s good to achieve my goals in life, however, sometimes I try not to be so egocentric because it can induce some conflicts with others people and I just like to avoid them, so I prefer to be an understandable person with others. Even though I’m egocentric, I still care about the others people. The last is the superego the aspect of personality that keeps all of our internalized ethical requirements and values that we obtain from both mother and father and society–our feeling of right and wrong. I personally believe that my superego is the reflection of my ego because I had to prepare myself for the life in society mentally and physically, as a result I became more flexible and reasonable to take decisions avoiding follow my impulses. Additionally he talked about defense mechanisms which is a tactic developed by the ego to protect against anxiety. There are nine defense mechanisms but during my life I use to go through the number six defense mechanism which is the sublimation because I believe that the better way to relief your body and mind from your emotions that make you feel furious or mad is doing something constructive. In fact, there are some significant changes in my personality from my childhood until these days, I became more mature, and I started to use the critical thinking to analyze my mistakes and failures to improve my personality. Now I can tell right from wrong.
In addition, the stress and health. Overall, the stress is a natural feeling that we all already felt and it may cause some health problems. Thereupon, the stress and health don’t match each other. Similarly with others people my stress is caused by various sources either by everyday situations or even personal life. The most frequent and common sources of stress that I have are usually related to my personal life such as frustrations and charges in the relationship with my parents and my girlfriend. I strongly believe there will be a period of my life that I’ll learn to deal with them but I don’t know if they’ll change because I think that they are part of life, so we need to find solutions to cope with them. In order to cope with my stressors I personally like to do several things such as physical actives because I consider myself a healthy person, so I feel comfortable and well when I’m practicing physical exercises; another thing that I like is to hang out with my friends and sometimes with my family it’s a good way to have fun with the people you adore; I also like to play my guitar. Basically, you need to something that make you feel good not necessarily physical activists it can be some kinds of therapies to relax your mind and body. Due the circumstances of my life I’m more likely to use a problem focused strategy, so I created a daily stress journal because it helps me to identify how much stress I’m under, the potential stress triggers and ways to reduce the stress in my life. I’m an optimistic person but realistic too. I mean in all situations of my life I always like to be optimistic, however, with my feet on floor, I normally like to use the probability rule because of that I can be both optimistic and realistic.
In conclusion, this essay made me realize that psychology is nothing but common sense. Psychology can be used in everyday lifestyle. You can use psychology to get inspired toward whatever objectives you create for yourself. Success stories techniques for yourself, implementing yourself to understand new factors, and fulfilling yourself when you achieve a objective are all uses of psychology. I have discovered a lot about effects of psychology in my lifestyle. Learning psychology has been very significant to me and has given me a better comprehend of my ideas, emotions, and actions. Lastly, I can comprehend who I am and look at activities on a more beneficial part.