Psychology

Psychology (ancient Greek: psyche = "soul" or "mind", logos/-ology = "study of") is an academic and applied field involving the study of mind and behavior. "Psychology" also refers to the application of such knowledge to various spheres of human activity, including problems of individuals' daily lives and the treatment of mental illness.

Psychology differs from sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science in part because it involves studying the mental processes and behavior of individuals (alone or in groups) rather than the behavior of the groups or aggregates themselves. Psychology differs from biology and neuroscience in that it is primarily concerned with the interaction of mental processes and behavior, and of the overall processes of a system, and not simply the biological or neural processes themslves.

Although psychological questions were asked in antiquity (see Aristotle's De Memoria et Reminiscentia or "On Memory and Recollection"), psychology emerged as a separate discipline only recently. The first person to call himself a "psychologist", Wilhelm Wundt, opened the first psychological laboratory in 1879.

The aim of this study was to evaluate self-efficacy levels and pain tolerance differences between men and women.  A control group of 5 men and 5 women were asked to submerge their arm in 30 degree Fahrenheit ice-water and hold it in as long as tolerable.  Their times were averaged and used for the experimental groups to base their pain performance expectations on.  The experimental groups were given the control group’s average times and asked to decide whether they felt they would keep their arm submerged below average, average, or above average in comparison to the control group.  They each then submerged their arm in the ice water as long as tolerable.  When looking at mean ice-water submergence times and expectancy choices, no significant differences were found between the 19 males and 19 females of the experimental groups.  Even though no significant differences between the sexes were discovered as our hypotheses predicted, the study still has important implications.  It looks at the weighty societal issue of what physical and psychological differences truly exist amid the sexes and the results may give insight that females are not as weak as society thinks.

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