Many people, including psychology students, teachers, and professionals, find classical and operant conditioning concepts confusing. So, I decided to provide a simple explanation of classical and operant conditioning processes. It can’t get any simpler than what you’re about to read. Classical and operant conditioning are two basic psychological processes explaining how humans and animals learn. …
To understand what causes overthinking, we need to understand why we think at all. After that, we can begin to explore why this process goes into overdrive and what can be done to overcome it. In the first half of the 20th century, behaviourists dominated the field of Psychology. They believed that behaviour was the …
To help you understand Attachment theory, I want you to imagine a scene where you’re in a room full of your relatives and friends. One of them is a mother who has brought her baby along. While the mother is busy chatting, you notice the infant beginning to crawl up to you. You decide to …
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.” – Epictetus The above quote captures the essence of Cognitive Behavioural Theory (CBT). Cognition refers to thinking. Cognitive Behavioural Theory talks about how cognition shapes behavior and vice versa. There’s a third component to the theory- feelings. CBT explains how …
Theories of motivation attempt to explain what motivates human behaviour, especially in the context of a workplace. Motivation theories try to explain what motivates workers in the hopes of yielding insights that can help organizations improve the productivity of their workers. Though motivation theories largely focus on business contexts, understanding them can help you understand …
Abraham Maslow, a humanistic psychologist, arranged the different types of needs in a hierarchy. Humanistic psychologists believed in humanism, an approach that assumed humans have inherently good qualities and potential for achieving greatness. Maslow formulated his theory in the first half of the 20th century when psychodynamic and behaviouristic approaches dominated the field of psychology. …
Gaslighting someone means manipulating their perception of reality so that they begin to question their own sanity. The manipulation is so effective that a person being gaslighted comes to doubt their ability to perceive reality and recall events from memory accurately. Simply put, person A perceives something about person B, who denies it and accuses …
Why do conflicts arise? What can we do to maximize the positive outcomes of conflict? And what can we do to minimize the negative outcomes of conflict? These are some of the important questions that conflict management theory seeks to answer. To understand conflict management, you have to start with the obvious fact that humans …
Neurosis generally refers to a mental disorder that is characterized by feelings of anxiety, depression, and fear that are disproportionate to the circumstances of a person’s life but not completely incapacitating. In this article, however, we’ll look at neurosis from the psychoanalytic perspective. It states that neurosis is the result of mental conflict. This article is based …
In the last decade or so, the practice of mindfulness at work has gained immense popularity in self-help and therapy circles. There are innumerable articles, courses, and books on the topic and a group that seems to be the most in need of being mindful is the workforce. The goal of mindfulness is to shift …