The Psychology Portal

Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both conscious and unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feelings, and motives. Psychology is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. Biological psychologists seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups.

A professional practitioner or researcher involved in the discipline is called a psychologist. Some psychologists can also be classified as behavioral or cognitive scientists. Some psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior. Others explore the physiological and neurobiological processes that underlie cognitive functions and behaviors.


Psychologists are involved in research on perception, cognition, attention, emotion, intelligence, subjective experiences, motivation, brain functioning, and personality. Psychologists' interests extend to interpersonal relationships, psychological resilience, family resilience, and other areas within social psychology. They also consider the unconscious mind. Research psychologists employ empirical methods to infer causal and correlational relationships between psychosocial variables. Some, but not all, clinical and counseling psychologists rely on symbolic interpretation. (Full article...)

The triangle in the middle represents CBT's tenet that all humans' core beliefs can be summed up in three categories: self, others, future.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of psychotherapy that aims to reduce symptoms of various mental health conditions, primarily depression, PTSD and anxiety disorders. Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on challenging and changing cognitive distortions (such as thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes) and their associated behaviors to improve emotional regulation and develop personal coping strategies that target solving current problems. Though it was originally designed to treat depression, its uses have been expanded to include many issues and the treatment of many mental health and other conditions, including anxiety, substance use disorders, marital problems, ADHD, and eating disorders. CBT includes a number of cognitive or behavioral psychotherapies that treat defined psychopathologies using evidence-based techniques and strategies.

CBT is a common form of talk therapy based on the combination of the basic principles from behavioral and cognitive psychology. It is different from other approaches to psychotherapy, such as the psychoanalytic approach, where the therapist looks for the unconscious meaning behind the behaviors and then formulates a diagnosis. Instead, CBT is a "problem-focused" and "action-oriented" form of therapy, meaning it is used to treat specific problems related to a diagnosed mental disorder. The therapist's role is to assist the client in finding and practicing effective strategies to address the identified goals and to alleviate symptoms of the disorder. CBT is based on the belief that thought distortions and maladaptive behaviors play a role in the development and maintenance of many psychological disorders and that symptoms and associated distress can be reduced by teaching new information-processing skills and coping mechanisms. (Full article...)

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Bellevue Hospital front gate, New York City
image credit: Jim.henderson

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  • "Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or even cares." — Daniel Dennett

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Zimbardo in 2019

Philip George Zimbardo (/zɪmˈbɑːrd/; March 23, 1933 – October 14, 2024) was an American psychologist and a professor at Stanford University. He was an internationally known educator, researcher, author and media personality in psychology who authored more than 500 articles, chapters, textbooks, and trade books covering a wide range of topics, including time perspective, cognitive dissonance, the psychology of evil, persuasion, cults, deindividuation, shyness, and heroism. He became known for his 1971 Stanford prison experiment, which was later criticized. He authored various widely-used, introductory psychology textbooks for college students, and other notable works, including Shyness, The Lucifer Effect, and The Time Paradox. He was the founder and president of the Heroic Imagination Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting heroism in everyday life by training people how to resist bullying, bystanding, and negative conformity. He pioneered The Stanford Shyness Clinic in the 1970s and offered the earliest comprehensive treatment program for shyness. He was the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and many awards and honors for service, teaching, research, writing, and educational media, including the Carl Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science for his Discovering Psychology video series. He served as Western Psychological Association president in 1983 and 2001, and American Psychological Association president in 2002. (Full article...)

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