Four Goals

Houston Edwards
PSY 102
8/30/13
Professor Jones

Four Goals of Psychology

When thinking of psychology the first thought that comes to mind is the stepping-stones. Those stones are the four goals. The four goals are defined as, “the scientific study to behavior and mental process (Feldman, 4).” These goals are used to break down what is being studied and also to predict events and behavior, either good or bad. Those goals or methods are as follows: describe, explain, predict, and control. Describe, this is about describing a psychological wonders that is noticed. An example would be, John Smith notices that young children are always J walking across the street. All it is is looking at something that needs to be answered. The next goal is explain, this is about explaining something that happens, as in when or why it will occur. An example would be, When driving home from work there are young children J walking across 7th street near the park. Predict, This goal is about predicting when the phenomena will occur. For example John believes that after school is near the same time his work gets off and the park is a place where all the children go after school. The last and final goal is Control, this is simply being able to control the phenomena and behavior. For example John calls the school and tells them to enforce the law for children’s safety, maybe blocking off the park for the day. After work John see’s no children J walking and has successful used psychology to stop a problem he was having.

As a psychologist at the University of Brown I am put here on campus to identify a behavior. I am going to use the four goals or pillars if you will to help conduct my research.
Describe: Students of Brown University of all ages skateboard in the parking lot at the west gate closest to the street.
Explain: These college students are not following the rules when it clearly is posted everywhere inside the parking lot at the west gate that there is no skateboarding allowed.
Predict: I predict that these student will continue to skateboard in and around the parking lot until the rules are enforced or one of the students gets injured badly.
Control: I will have security on each level of the parking lot to enforce the law of no skateboarding also there will be a flyer handed out on each person car that says if you are caught on a skateboard inside the parking lot you will be ticketed by the University and have to pay a fine.
These four goals made my job as a psychologist so much simpler and precise. They are the only way to go about looking at something that you don’t understand. Now at Brown we have no more skateboarding in the parking lots thanks to psychology and its amazing affects on society.

This four-step process in my opinion might hurt humanity but sometimes it is needed. The only reason it would hurt humanity is because sometimes things are done spontaneously with no thought or cause at all, or even it had to be done. What if the only way to get home fast enough to say goodbye to your mother before she left you was to skateboard in that parking lot. I have not done enough studies with this four-step process to have a worthy opinion but in the mean time I will use this process for things I do not understand or simply want to know. Psychology is awesome!

References:
Feldman, R.s. (2010) Psychology and your life. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN-13
9789780077354732

(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.fidnet.com/~weid/psych1notes.htm

References: Feldman, R.s. (2010) Psychology and your life. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN-13 9789780077354732 (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.fidnet.com/~weid/psych1notes.htm