Psychology Opinion Paper

There are a total of six approaches to psychology covered in chapter one, these six approaches include: neurobiological, behavioral, humanistic, psychoanalytic, cognitive and socio-cultural approaches. Of these six approaches I’ve found the neurobiological and socio-cultural approaches to be the most persuasive and believable for my personal views.

The Neurobiological approach in psychology is defined as viewing behavior as the result of nervous system functions and biology. I believe strongest in the Neurobiological approach because the obvious physical changes and processes your body creates under specific conditions are regularly seen, in times of relaxation, fear or anything in between.

In everyday life my own behavior is commonly the result of Neurobiological behavior. I believe that our internal functions have almost complete control over our actions and decisions. An example of a Neurobiological action in behavior can be seen when I was recently I was calmly resting on my bed and suddenly I saw a centipede crawling across my stomach; instinctively my body and mind reacted by get frightened; creating a racing heart beat and my nervous system went into its flight instinct which caused me to jump away from the predator and end up with a bite on the side of my waist.

That is not to say that other factors do not contribute to depression but this is just one example. This just simply proves that it is not only the outside world that affects our behaviors. I firmly believe that many of our choices in life are affected extensively by our biological composition.

The next approach in psychology that I particularly agreed with was the sociocultural approach. This approach by definition means that behavior is viewed as strongly influenced by rules and expectations of specific social groups or cultures. I believe that this issue is also very dominant in affecting the way we behave. Living in Hawaii, which happens to be a very culturally diverse state allows be to see many different lifestyles and behaviors all combined into one area. The school that I attend is extremely multi-cultural students are Tongan, Hawaiian, Japanese, Caucasian, Filipino, Spanish and so on. With such a vast array of cultures all living in one area one can easily notice the different views, standards, languages, goals, and activities that are influenced by one’s ethnic and cultural background.

Also falling under the sociocultural approach is how people act and based primarily on the social behavior of their peers or the society in which they live. It is especially common for adolescents to follow something that they ordinarily would not do simply because it is “cool” and it appears “everyone is doing it.” In my opinion, I think that most drug use and other inappropriate behavior stems from this theory that people make decisions based on their outside influences.