Simply Psychology: A Website Summary

Simply Psychology, a website that ostensibly gives the best and simplest summary of psychological principles, is found about four pages into the Google results for “Physiological Psychology”. The site is an accessible, social media-friendly synopsis of major psychological thinkers, theories, and principles. It can be found at www.simplypsychology.org. The site is divided into five parts, with each section listed in the header of the page: Social, Cognitive, Perspectives, Psychologists, and Developmental. As such, a reader has easy access to whatever type of information s/he is looking for. Even more specifically, each page is broken down into an organized and easily accessible layout – but more on that later. First, it will be helpful to discuss the origins of the site.

Simply Psychology was started by post-grad Psychology student Saul McLeod. McLeod is a psychology lecturer at Wigan and Leigh College and has recently obtained a Master’s degree in psychology research from the University of Manchester. While McLeod does not hold a Ph.D. in psychology, his aim is to provide as much and as accurate information regarding psychology as possible. McLeod started the website in 2007 very simply – as the name implies. He merely uploaded his teaching notes to a free domain. Four years later, he purchased the current domain (www.simplypsychology.org) and transferred all of his pages, and redesigned these pages in order to give the site a more informal and accessible appearance for its visitors.

Originally, the site was purposed for “A-level psychology students from the UK,” as McLeod states, but he is now “trying to write articles which are accessible to a broad spectrum of psychology students from basic entry psychology programs up to degree-level study.” Therefore, while the site is not designed for an average lay reader, the target audience is a broad base of psychology students. As McLeod states, the overall purpose of the site “is to write engaging and informative articles in an academic style, but still clear and simple enough to be understood by psychology students of all educational levels.” This goal, it appears, has been met, as the site has over 1 million visitors each month. McLeod continues to make it accessible via social media and handheld devices.

The information presented on the site, as the name implies, is a full range of topics having to do with psychology. Under ‘perspectives’, McLeod presents the main findings of psychodynamic psychology, humanism, cognitive development, behaviorism, clinical psychology, and biological psychology (or, as discussed here, physiological psychology). In the same way, McLeod provides extensive information on over fifty major psychologists, and scores of social, cognitive, and developmental psychological theories. Through this presented information, along with its millions of visitors, it is clear that Simply Psychology is a reliable and respected source of information for a discussion of physiological psychology. The findings are also well documented in each section, with a Works Cited section for relevant information.

The information presented regarding physiological psychology is quite extensive, for a single page. Titled “biological psychology”, the page clearly discusses physiological psychology. The page begins by defining biology as the study of life (Greek bios for ‘life’ and logos meaning ‘study’). This definition is clearly used as a foundation for the rest of the information that the site discusses. It then connects the biological perspective to the study of psychology in three specific and unique ways.

First, it briefly mentions the comparative method – that is, that “different species of animal can be studied and compared.” This is connected to psychology because it aids psychological researchers in understanding human behavior as uniquely human. Second, the site discusses physiology more specifically – that is, the connection between the brain and the rest of the body. As the page states, physiology is concerned with “how the nervous system and hormones work, how the brain functions, and finally how changes in structure and/or function can affect behavior.” The example that Simply Psychology (or, McLeod) gives is a psychological researcher asking how prescribed drugs treat depression – that is, how these drugs directly or indirectly affect behavior through their interaction with the body’s hormones or nervous system.

Finally, the site connects biology with psychology with the investigation of inheritance. This has to do with “what an animal inherits from its parents” and “mechanisms of inheritance” (i.e. genetics). One example of this is asking the question of whether intelligence is inherited (passed on through genes) from one generation to another. Each of these perspectives is relevant to a biological (or physiological) approach to psychology.

The site then moves to the history of the biological approach to psychology, discussing everything from Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” in 1859 to Jane Goodall’s work with primates in Africa almost a century later. The site then mentions Edward Wilson’s 1975 book “Sociobiology” which ostensibly was the first major work to combine the evolutionary perspective with the psychological one. The site gives links to each of these works – either their full text as found online or, at the very least, a link to the Amazon page where they may be purchased. This is helpful and particularly important for beginning students of psychology. Having the links to these seminal titles will make research and understanding that much simpler for these students. In this way, the site lives up to its name by providing a helpful and accessible tool for psychology students.

After discussing these works in brief, the site summarizes this approach to psychology with a table of its key features, methodology, basic assumptions, areas of application, strengths, and limitations. The site identifies the key features as being integral to a fundamental understanding of the biological approach. These key features are listed as: natural selection/evolution, adaptation, heredity and genetics, group studies, reductionist, sociobiology and comparative psychology. Just as with the important titles in the history of the approach, the site provides links to many of these key terms, to make research and understanding that much simpler for the reader.

In addition to the methodology, basic assumptions, and areas of application regarding physiological psychology, which are largely discussed in the textbook, the site discusses the strengths and limitations of the approach. The biggest strength, arguably, is that the approach is highly empirical, with many research studies that support physiological psychology theories. In addition to this strength, the site says that the approach has an effective application to other areas with psychology, which ultimately helped to develop comparative psychology more broadly. This is something that added to the knowledge presented in the textbook. In contrast, the site also offers the limitations of the approach – mostly that it is overly deterministic (leaving little room for free will) and reductionist (leaving little room for alternating points of view). These weaknesses are, also, something unique from this site.

Overall, this website taught me to place physiological psychology within the larger framework of psychology as a whole. The site effectively presents the most important information regarding the discipline, while also placing it in the context of other psychological theories, disciplines, and thinkers. The links provided in the text were particularly helpful in this regard. The site also taught me how to make the ideas of physiological psychology more accessible to the average reader, by providing illustrated videos and accessible lectures from great psychologists. The site is a simple yet great addition to any given student’s textbook.

Reference

McLeod, S. A. (2007). Biological Psychology. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/biological-psychology.html