Branches of Psychology

Psychology is a science of human behavior that studies the human mind and all the cognitive processes in it. For which reason psychology has a record for being one discipline that is closest to examining human experience. And because human experience is multidimensional and cannot be understood in one study, psychologists penetrates into all the aspects of mind and its components.

For the reason that psychology covers a vast aspect of human life, it has developed a myriad of specialties- each to study its own particular aspect.
For instance, in criminal psychology a psychologist attempt to peek into a criminal’s mind, whereas evaluating and studying an individual’s life-long psychological growth is kept under contemplation by a developmental psychologist.

Psychology, a vast subject, when classified into branches have many specialties. We shall discuss the most prominent and common branches of psychology, which are:

Clinical Psychology

Clinical psychology in itself is a vast branch of psychology that covers most of the aspects of a human behavior and mind. Clinical psychology is a scientific study that aims at understanding, preventing and alleviating psychologically-invoked imbalances or dysfunction and efforts to promote an individual’s well-being. Besides, it also implies to work on personal development. Such a responsibility requires a psychologist’s concentration on intellectual, emotional, behavioral, and social and other such aspects of human experience throughout his life.

However, clinical psychologists are often also involved in research, training, forensic testimony, and other areas.

Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive psychology deals with cognitive or mental processes like memory, learning, language, and other Developmental Psychologies internal processes. Hence, this branch of psychology has its roots and impact on other disciplines like philosophy, linguistics or even neuroscience.

How people attain, process and then store information occupies the central part of cognitive psychology. Practical applications for cognitive research may comprise improvising of memory, enabling decisiveness or setting up educational programs to help boost learning capabilities.

Developmental Psychology

Like mentioned earlier, developmental psychology is meant to study human developmental, from time of birth till they are young or adults. In simple words this branch of psychology includes just any psychological factors whole human life span. Developmental psychology includes psychological factors including motor skills, problem solving, moral understanding, acquiring language, emotions, personality, and self-concept and identity formation, therefore is often referred to as human development.
Like Cognitive psychology, Developmental psychology also overlaps with other branches of psychology.[sky]

Occupational Psychology

Occupational psychology, a specialty which is recognized many other respectable names like industrial-organizational psychology, I-O psychology, work and organizational psychology and personnel psychology .occupational psychologists study the performance of people at work and develops an understanding of how organizations function and how people interact or socialize in the form of groups. The occupational psychologist ensures increased effectiveness, efficiency, and consummation at work.

Neuropsychology

Neurology psychology, is more of a structural and functional study of brain to get a closer and better picture of human behavior and cognitive processes in the brain. For this purpose, a neuropsychological Evaluation plan is used by a neuropsychologist in order to determine the degree of a problem, if any, and to draw out a diagnosis, after the brain has met an injury. After the diagnosis, such patients are treated with a treatment to overcome those problems. In this case a neuropsychologist uses Individualized cognitive remediation protocol.

Evolutionary Psychology

Human behavior is very vulnerable to external factors, and is inevitably effected by psychological adjustments during the process of evolution. To keep a check and evaluate these psychological changes over time comes under the department of Evolutionary psychologists, who believes that the human psychological traits we possess are adaptations for survival in the everyday environment.

Health Psychology

Health psychology, also called the behavioral medicine or medical psychology, deals with behavior, biology and social context influence, health and illness. Health psychologists deals with a person with a certain illness keeping in mind the background he has come from, his socioeconomic status or his behavior that might have triggered reasons for his illness, unlike a doctor that only treats the illness through medications,
The health psychologist works to improve the patients overall health by analyzing the illness in light of what we called biopsychosocial factors. In contrast to medical and biological aspects of a disease studied by a doctor, a health psychologist refers to biological along with psychological and social aspects of a disease.

Social Psychology

Social psychology uses scientific methods to study social influences on human behavior. A social psychologist observes a group behavior, social perception, non-verbal behavior, conformity, aggression, prejudice, and leadership, also because social perception and social interaction are considered the keys to understand social behavior.

Forensic Psychology

Forensic psychology involves criminal investigation and the law with respect to psychology. This kind of approach is found in civil courts and criminal justice systems. In this regard a criminal psychology must understand criminal law in jurisdictions where required so in order to be able to interact with judges, lawyers and all the others involved in a legal system. In other words, forensic psychology involves the tendency to participate in court events by giving services like psychological findings, testifying and providing data to these legal professionals in a clear way. For this purpose, a forensic psychologist must have a good understanding of his country’s rules and judicial system.

Sports Psychology

Sport psychologist’s aims at providing motivation and promoting self-esteem and confidence in an individual so he can yield brilliant performances in different activities he might have taken part in. Hence, sport psychology makes efforts to enhance our lives by boosting confidence and a sense of belief in us.

Abnormal Psychology

This branch of psychology, as the meaning gets clear with the very name of it, deals with abnormal behavior. Such a study is also known as psychopathology. Obsessive compulsive disorder, dissociative behavior or antisocial behavior are a conjecture of what comes under the category of abnormal behavior.