What is psychology?

• A. The scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
• B. The study of mental disorders only.
• C. The philosophy of mind.
• D. The biological bases of behavior only.

Answer: (A)

Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. It uses careful observation, experimentation, and measurement to understand how people think, feel, and act. Behavior refers to what we can see people doing, while mental processes are internal experiences like thoughts, memories, and emotions that we infer from clues and self-reports. This field covers learning, memory, perception, development, motivation, social interaction, and how biology interacts with the environment. The other options are too narrow or misrepresent the field: focusing only on mental disorders misses the broad scope; philosophy of mind is more about questions than empirical testing; and studying only biological bases leaves out cognition, emotion, and social factors. So the best definition captures psychology as the scientific study of both behavior and mental processes.