Three main approaches used by psychologists to understand mental Processes are:
(i) Biological Approach: This approach focuses on biological structures and phenomena such as brain, genes, hormones, endocrine system and neurotransmitters in order to understand the dynamics of behaviour. Its main focus is on the role of different parts of brain in regulating feelings, memories, emotions and other aspects of behaviour. Similarly the impact of over-secretion or under-secretion of different kinds of hormones in governing behaviour is studied. Behaviour genetics as one of the subdisciplines studies the genetic determinants of behaviour. Moreover, this approach looks for physiological basis of human behaviour.
(ii) Psychoanalytic Approach: The father of psychoanalytic approach Sigmund Freud focused on unconscious libidinal energy in describing the present state of the individual. He studied mind in terms of hierarchical arrangements of experiences in the form of different layers of consciousness (e.g. conscious, preconscious, and unconscious). Freud explored the nature and quality of unconscious through analysis f dreams, slips of the tongue, neuroses, psychoses, work of art, and rituals. He assumed that majority of human behaviours are triggered by unconscious motivation. Thus to understand the present human behaviour the analysis of unconscious mental contents is considered most important.
(iii) Humanistic Approach: Contrary to Freud, the father of humanistic approach Carl Rogers put greater emphasis on conscious experiences of the present situation, role of interpersonal experiences across the course of life, and people’s capacity to grow toward psychological maturity. This approach basically assumes that a person is an active and self-actualizing agent and has a choice in deciding his behaviour. As a part of the self-actualizing process a person seeks to maintain a congruence between self and experience. However, because of past experiences with conditional positive
regard, he may deny or distort the experiences that threaten one’s self-system. Such a self-system can be changed in the therapeutic setting through genuineness, unconditional positive regard, and empathic understating of the client’s problem by
the therapist.
(iv) Behaviourist Approach: The unit of analysis for this approach is explicit, objective
and overt behaviour and its relationship with environmental stimulation. The father of behaviourism J. B. Watson emphasised on objective analysis of behaviour. He
advocated that behaviour is largely governed by the association between stimulus and response and the behaviour can be shaped in a desired direction by manipulating this association.
(v) Cognitive Approach:The cognitive approach emerged as an alternative to the mechanistic paradigm of behaviourism. This approach mainly focuses on the study of information processing capacity of the individual in terms of perception,
remembering, thinking, language, reasoning, problem solving and decision making which are called higher mental processes. It proposes that we look out for information in the world and our behaviour depends upon the way we process this information.
This approach largely relies on computational models and assumes that behaviour and mental processes can best be understood by treating them in terms of information
Processing. personality types vary from person to person, producing different actions and behaviour.
