BRANCHES OF PSYCHOLOGY Cognitive Psychology This is the

BRANCHES OF PSYCHOLOGY • Cognitive Psychology : This is the branch of psychology that is concerned with intelligent actions: thinking, perceiving, planning, imagining, creating, dreaming, speaking, listening, and problem solving. • Social Psychology: Here, behaviours of individuals in a group are studied. It may be behaviour of a particular group of students, teachers, workers, etc. • Developmental Psychology : Here, the developmental changes of human beings from conception to death are studied. The various aspects and stages of human development are studied by the developmental psychologists. • Abnormal Psychology: This branch deals with the studies of mental disorders as well as maladjustments of the organisms. • Counselling Psychology: This is similar to clinical psychology except that it handles clients who experience normal behavioural problems. Counselling psychologists in schools handle students who have personal, social, emotional, academic and vocational problems. Note that while psychologists treat students with normal behaviour problems, they refer those with complex problems to clinical psychologists.

• Health Psychology : Specialists in this field focus on the ways in which pressures, conflicts, hardship and other factors contribute to poor health. Health psychologists seek to prevent health problems such as heart disease by teaching people to relax, exercise, control diets, and stop high-risk behaviours, such as smoking. • Clinical Psychology: In this branch of psychology, human behaviour problems are treated through application of psychological principles and techniques. Behaviour problems like maladjustment, emotional disturbance, mental disorder, etc are treated by clinical psychologists who work in the hospitals or mental health clinics. • Animal Psychology: This branch of psychology deals with the nature of animal behaviour and their reactions. • Personality Psychology : The field of personality focuses on the more or less consistent ways of behaving that characterize our personality. • Differential Psychology: It is a branch of psychology which studies differences among individuals and groups. • Physiological Psychology: This type of psychology is concerned with identifying how the body functions (i. e physiology) and how this affects human and animal behaviours. • Educational Psychology : In this branch of psychology, psychological principles, techniques, theories and knowledge are used to solve problems connected with education. • Sociocultural Psychology: Psychologists in this area focus on ethnic and cultural factors, genders, sexual orientation and related issues.

• Sensation and Perception: This speciality is concerned with how the sense organs operate and how we interpret incoming sensory information in the process of perception. • Learning and Memory: This area of psychology is concerned with the ways we learn and remember new information, new skills, new habits, and ways of relating to other people are studied. • Motivation and Emotion: In this speciality, psychologists study the needs and states that activate and guide behaviour, such as hunger, thirst, sex, the need for achievement and the need to have relationships with others.