Psychology of behavior

1.Theory of behavior
According to Sigmund Freud, (1856-1939), human beings are just mechanical creatures, whom he views as prisoners of primitive instincts and powers, which we can barely control. He states that our purpose is to control these instincts and powers.
"The soul is like an iceberg; it contains a conscious part and an unconscious part."
His life
Living from 1856 to 1939, numerous scientific discoveries took place during his life. When Freud was still young, Darwins' The Origins of Species was published, and Fechner came up with the underlying basics of psychology.

Developments such as these had a tremendous effect on Freud's thoughts, yet the German, Helmholtz, was probably the person who had the greatest influence on Freud's way of thinking by drawing up the law of preservation of energy. This discovery is most likely the reason Freud started looking at people as a closed system of psychic energy that is floating between the conscious and the unconscious part of the human spirit.

The iceberg
Freud explained these concepts by comparing the human spirit to an iceberg. The visible part of the iceberg (spirit) is the conscious part, which consists of everything we know and remember and the thinking processes through which we function.

The unconscious part is made up of everything we have ever learned or experienced, including that which has been "forgotten". A part of these forgotten things are really gone, but the largest part of the unconscious has just been shut out, because it would be annoying to be consciously reminded of it.

The influences of Helmholtz are also visible at other points. According to Freud, the material in the unconscious contains psychic energy. This psychic energy is constantly trying to get into the conscious part, while the conscious part keeps using energy to suppress undesirable discoveries. An expression of unknown powers is, for example, slips of the tongue. These expressions show that our unconscious was not strong enough to keep these powers outside the conscious part.

Id, Ego and Superego
Now we are going back to the theory of the id, the ego and the superego. The spirit of a newborn child just has an id, the instinctive incentives and reflexes that the human beings have developed during the last centuries. The only function of the id is to respond to the incentives. The ego develops itself from the id and from the discovery that the behavior of the id can have tedious results. The superego, a result of a person's socialization, is basically just the conscience, which mediates between needs of the id and the ego. When you are getting older, you start to develop more and more values.

2.Basic drives and motives
Instincts
Philosophers in the seventeenth and eighteenth century (like Descartes and Hobbes)

shared a mechanistic view. They thought that some of our actions are the result of internal or external forces, which are not under voluntary control. Hobbes, for example, claimed that underlying reasons for behavior are the avoidance of pain and the quest for pleasure.
"Behavior is the result of instincts, which are present since birth."
The extreme of the mechanistic view is the theory of instincts. An instinct is an innate biological force, which commands the organism to behave in a particular way. The main advocate of the instinct theory was the psychologist McDougall. He hypothesized that all thinking and behavior is the result of instincts, which are fixed from birth, but which can be adjusted by learning and experience.
In his book Social Psychology McDougall enumerated several instinctive drives, like fear, curiosity, aggression and reproduction.
This list was expanded later with 8 other instincts. By changes and combinations of instincts he tried to explain the whole repertoire of human behavior.

The instinct theory was supported by many psycho-analysts. For example, Freud asserted that human behavior could be explained by two major instincts: the instinct to survive (such as a drive for sexual reproduction) and the instinct to avoid death, which causes aggression.

Quite soon, it became evident that many instincts were required to explain human behavior and, even worse, these instincts did not explain very much: so many instincts were postulated such that any type of behavior could be explained. A better phrasing would be to say that instincts provide a description of behavior, rather than an explanation.

In the 1920's instinct theory was replaced by the theory of drives. A driving force originates from a natural need, like thirst. Such a situation stimulates the organism to comply with the need. Lack of food causes chemical changes in the blood, which causes the need for food, which stimulates the organism to look for food.

3. Social influences
How do we learn social rolls?
As we grow and develop in our lives, we also develop social attitudes which strongly influence our behavior. We internalize the attitudes of the society around us by making the attitudes our own. Besides attitudes, people internalize cultural expectations about how to behave. The process through which society influences individuals to internalize attitudes and expectations is called socialization. Individuals do not automatically absorb, but gradually accept cultural attitudes and roles. The individual is often unaware of his acceptance of these socially derived roles, roles are often accepted unconsciously. This is usually accomplished through the imitation of role models.
"People are playing roles; the particular role depends on the expectations from society."
When do we act so?
When individuals "play" these roles dictated by the culture within which they live, they are sometimes conflicting with their own inner beliefs. Frequently, we may act as if we agree with our perceived social expectations, because we do not want to disappoint the people who expect us to meet a particular set of requirements. This can create an imbalance which may cause ones behavior to become illogical due to these perceived social influences.
How do we learn social rolls?
As we grow and develop in our lives, we also develop social attitudes which strongly influence our behavior. We internalize the attitudes of the society around us by making the attitudes our own. Besides attitudes, people internalize cultural expectations about how to behave. The process through which society influences individuals to internalize attitudes and expectations is called socialization. Individuals do not automatically absorb, but gradually accept cultural attitudes and roles. The individual is often unaware of his acceptance of these socially derived roles, roles are often accepted unconsciously. This is usually accomplished through the imitation of role models.
"People are playing roles; the particular role depends on the expectations from society."
When do we act so?
When individuals "play" these roles dictated by the culture within which they live, they are sometimes conflicting with their own inner beliefs. Frequently, we may act as if we agree with our perceived social expectations, because we do not want to disappoint the people who expect us to meet a particular set of requirements. This can create an imbalance which may cause ones behavior to become illogical due to these perceived social influences.

4.Emotions
What is emotion?
The word emotion includes a wide range of observable behaviors, expressed feelings, and changes in the body state. This diversity in intended meanings of the word emotion make it hard to study. For many of us emotions are very personal states, difficult to define or to identify except in the most obvious instances. Moreover, many aspects of emotion seem unconscious to us. Even simple emotional states appear to be much more complicated than states as hunger and thirst.
"The word emotion includes a broad repertoire of perceptions, expressions of feelings and bodily changes."
To clarify the concept of emotions, three definitions of various aspects of emotions can be distinguished:

1. Emotion is a feeling that is private and subjective. Humans can report an extraordinary range of states, which they can feel or experience. Some reports are accompanied by obvious signs of enjoyment or distress, but often these reports have no overt indicators. In many cases, the emotions we note in ourselves seem to be blends of different states.
2. Emotion is a state of psychological arousal an expression or display of distinctive somatic and autonomic responses. This emphasis suggests, that emotional states can be defined by particular constellations of bodily responses. Specifically, these responses involve autonomously innervated visceral organs, like the heart or stomach. This second aspect of emotion allows us to examine emotions in both animals and human beings.
3. Emotions are actions commonly "deemed", such as defending or attacking in response to a threat. This aspect of emotion is especially relevant to Darwin's

4. point of view of the functional roles of emotion. He said that emotions had an important survival role because they generated actions to dangerous situations.
These are three generally accepted aspects of behavior, but some researchers add two others aspects: motivational state and cognitive processing.

Categories
Some psychologists have tried to subdivide emotions in categories. For example Wilhelm Wundt, the great nineteenth century psychologist, offered the view that emotions consist of three basic dimensions, each one of a pair of opposite states: pleasantness/unpleasantness, tension/release and excitement/relaxation. However, this list has become more complex over time.
Plutchik suggests that there are eight basic emotions grouped in four pairs of opposites:
1. joy/sadness
2. acceptance/disgust
3. anger/fear
4. surprise/anticipation

In Plutchik's view, all emotions are a combination of these basic emotions. This hypothesis can be summarized in a three dimensional cone with a vertical dimension reflecting emotional intensity.