Psychology for Dummies (7 page)
Read Psychology for Dummies Online
Authors: Adam Cash
Tags: #Psychology, #General, #Body; Mind & Spirit, #Spirituality
In this part . . .
I
n Part II, I discuss the basic structures of the nervous system and the important role that biology plays in psychological knowledge. After introducing you to the brain and its parts (“Nice to meet you,”), I introduce the concept of conscious awareness and its important role in psychology. Finally, I explain the faculties that permit us to stay in contact with the world around us — our senses.
In This Chapter
Biologizing psychology
Getting up the nerve
Slicing and dicing the brain
Fueling behavior
S ometimes psychology can be pretty abstract, seemingly having more in common with philosophy than biology. In this book, I introduce you to all kinds of “psychological” concepts, such as thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and personalities. But have you ever wondered where all of these things exist? If I wanted to find a thought or feeling, where would I look?
One place that seems logical to look for these psychological concepts is inside the human mind. But where can I find a mind? That’s easy — it’s inside my skull, in my brain. So if you take a flashlight and look in someone’s ear, you can see all kinds of thoughts, feelings, and other psychological stuff floating around inside, right? If you’ve ever tried this procedure, you know that it’s a pretty poor investigative technique. But what if you opened up someone’s skull and exposed her brain? Would you find all those psychological concepts then?
I think you’d be pretty disappointed. When you open up someone’s skull to see her brain, all you’re going to see is a wrinkled and convoluted mass of grayish-pinkish-whitish tissue. There’s no visible thoughts, feelings, or beliefs. Where are they then? We all know that they exist because we experience them every day.
The question of where the mind, the home of psychological concepts, exists is an age-old philosophical question. Is the mind in the brain? Is the mind somewhere other than the brain? Are the brain and the mind the same thing? Most scientists today hold the position that the mind and the brain are one in the same. Scientists taking this position, known as
monism,
believe that the key to understanding the human mind, with all of its psychological concepts, lies in understanding the body, specifically the nervous system. Carlson states, “What we call the ‘mind’ is a consequence of the functioning of the human body and its interactions with the environment.” This is a powerful idea — the key to unlocking the mysteries of such psychological concepts as thinking and feeling is in the development of a thorough understanding of biology.
The idea that all of human psychology can be reduced to biology is known as
reductionism.
I’ve had a lot of students protest this idea over the years. It seems to insult our sense of free will, self-awareness, and consciousness. How can all this complex stuff going on inside our minds be reduced to a hunk of flesh resting between our ears? If you feel this way, maybe you’re not a
monist,
a believer in monism. For the sake of this chapter, however, I’m going to be a monist. I focus on understanding human biology as the key to understanding human psychology.
We didn’t always believe that human behavior and mental processes were the consequences of biology. In the times of the ancient Greeks and Romans, human behavior was seen as the consequence of supernatural forces, namely the whims and passions of the gods. But somewhere along the line, we started suspecting that maybe our bodies had something to do with it. Where would we get such an idea, that our behavior and mental processes are the consequences of our biology?
The history of research in this area is long, and I won’t bore you with all the details. But, at the core of all of this research lies a very simple observation. Changes in our biology result in changes in our behavior and mental processes.
Let’s take alcohol consumption, for example. People obviously act differently when under the influence of alcohol. They may flirt, dance like a wild man, get emotional and sentimental, or even become angry. Alcohol has a chemical effect on the brain; it alters the biology of the drinker’s brain. It goes something like this:
Alcohol consumption → Chemical effect on brain → Thinks he’s Don Juan
What about more serious changes in our biology like brain damage? People who suffer from brain damage can exhibit drastic changes in their personality and thinking. They may go from being very organized to very messy. Or, they may have been a very laid-back, easygoing person, but now they fly into a rage at the slightest frustration.
I think most of us have an intuitive understanding that what goes on within our bodies has an effect on our behavior and mental processes.
Biological psychologists
are a group of psychologists who have extended this intuitive belief and these casual observations, using the techniques and methods of modern science to investigate the idea that changes in biology lead to changes in psychology.
Although a lot of this seems logical, you may be thinking, “I still think there’s more to me than just biology.” That’s just the dualist in you acting up. My suggestion is to try and not struggle with it too much, at least while you read this chapter. Even if I think that we’re all more than just cells and molecules, I can still benefit from the research of biological psychology.
Remember the
biosychosocial model
from Chapter 1? (If not, you may want to check it out. Trust me — it’s a good chapter.) It helps to think of human psychology as a function of these three levels of understanding, the biological level, the psychological level, and the social level. Each level is important. This chapter focuses on the biological level, and the remainder of the book focuses on the other two. In order to respect the contributions of each level to our understanding of behavior and mental processes, we have to propose a way in which they interact. That is, we have to come up with a way to conceptualize how the biology influences psychology, how the psychology influences the biology, and so on.
A useful metaphor for understanding how these different levels interact is the modern computer. Most of us know that a computer has at least two functional components: the hardware and the software. The hardware consists of the actual physical components of the computer, like the processor, the hard drive, the wires, the CD-ROM, and the various other components. The software consists of the operating system, the word-processing software, and the various other programs that we use when we actually work on a computer.
In this metaphor, the hardware of a computer represents the biological level of understanding. This is our actual physical body, specifically our nervous system. The software represents the psychological level, and the interface between the user and the software represents the social level. The hardware is useless without software, and vice versa. So, even if you’re not a monist, you can still respect the role that our physiology (hardware) plays in psychology (software).
The word “wetware” in the title of this chapter represents the actual physical substance of the brain. We don’t have “hard” ware in our brains (wires, plastic, silicon, and so on); instead, we have “wet” ware (neurons, tissue, and chemicals, for example). In order to be consistent with my metaphor, I really focus on the wetware level of psychology in this chapter.
In this chapter, I introduce you to the wetware of the human nervous system and the endocrine system. These two areas of interest in physiological psychology represent the two most important for explaining psychological experience.