General Psychology
The general psychology is a branch of psychology . The term “general” goes back to its universalistic approach: It deals with the psychological functions that are common to all people, in contrast to other sub-areas of psychology (such as personality psychology ). Cognitive psychology is an important sub-area .
Areas and Methods
In particular, the following areas are covered:
- Perception or perception psychology
- Awareness and attention
- Motivation or motivational psychology
- Emotion or emotion psychology
- Volition
- Learning or learning psychology and conditioning
- Categorization and knowledge acquisition
- Memory and knowledge representation
- Language production and language understanding or language psychology
- Thinking or thinking psychology
- Problem solving and logical reasoning
General psychology deals with the following questions, among others: Which fundamental and generally valid statements can be made with regard to human behavior and experience? What regularities and relationships can be found in people's experience and behavior ?
In German-speaking psychology, a distinction was made between "General Psychology I" (perception, memory, thinking) and "General Psychology II" (learning, motivation, emotion). Sometimes the assignment was reversed, and from a factual point of view this demarcation is by no means unproblematic (for example because of the close connection between learning and memory or between learning and thinking). However, it goes back to earlier examination regulations that were widespread in Germany, and some of these terms are still used to designate professorships and lectures.
Research in general psychology is based on empirical observations, which are preferably carried out in controlled experiments , which is why it is also known in the English-speaking world as experimental psychology .
literature
- Jochen Müsseler (Ed.): General Psychology . 2., rework. Ed., Spektrum Akademischer Verlag , Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 978-3-8274-1780-0 .
- Stefan Pollman: General Psychology . Reinhardt & UTB , Munich [u. a.] 2008, ISBN 978-3-497-01971-7 , ISBN 978-3-8252-8391-9 .
- Hans Spada (Ed.): Textbook General Psychology . 3rd, completely revised and exp. Ed., Huber , Bern 2006, ISBN 3-456-84084-5 .
- Miriam Spering, Thomas Schmidt: General Psychology compact . Beltz Psychologie Verlags Union , Weinheim 2009, ISBN 978-3-621-27752-5 .