Nowadays, many attempts are made to understand human behavior and clarify the main aspects of psychology. The evaluation of psychological factors that may affect behavior is the main topic of the movie under analysis. Psychology is an academic discipline that is primarily represented in the film Perspectives on Psychology. Its author focuses on the discussion of three different perspectives that determine the way of how people can understand psychology (Online Classroom Ltd., 2009). The biological perspective includes the analysis of neurology or how a human brain is structured and works, genetics, and the impact of chemicals and hormones on the brain. The psychodynamic approach deals with everything that can happen inside of an individual regarding conscious and unconscious behavior. Finally, the behaviorist approach investigates the impact of the environment and all events that can influence human behaviors from the outside. All three perspectives on psychology have clear reasons and examples to be officially approved and supported.
The peculiar feature of this movie is the presence of several secondary disciplines. Psychology should not stand alone. Cara Flanagan admits that psychology is a science of behavior and experience, and Simon Green adds that psychology helps to understand what may affect human behavior (Online Classroom Ltd., 2009). Regarding the knowledge of experts and personal experiences, the author of the movie underlines the importance of such disciplines as biology, genetics, sociology, and anthropology because they help to shed light on human decisions, actions, and behaviors.
Though not much attention is paid to the role of the methodology of psychology as the primary discipline in the movie, several clear thoughts should be mentioned. For example, Lynne Millward compares common sense psychology and scientific psychology in terms of the methods that have to be developed on a systematic basis to identify what is going on and because of which reasons (Online Classroom Ltd., 2009). The discussion of a case study method supported by Sigmund Freud, John Watson, and Skimmer also helps to understand better an existing variety of perspectives.
Taking into consideration the fact that psychology is a really broad topic, it is wrong to neglect the presence of possible biases and assumptions. For example, the author of this documentary film says that behaviorism should be evaluated through the prism of psychology and sociology because it is important to understand the world around. However, this world consists of multiple cultures, traditions, and different attitudes to the same things. In addition, time and social development cannot be ignored because they determine the level of the technological progress and the possibilities of different populations. Finally, the perspectives on psychology differ in their basic concepts: the biological perspective shows that born qualities and skills play an important role, the psychodynamic perspective proves that people cannot control their behaviors because of unconscious thoughts, and the behaviorist approach states that everything should be learned.
In general, the topic of the chosen movie lends itself well to an interdisciplinary approach because of two main reasons. First, the term “interdisciplinary” presupposes the necessity of having different disciplines to learn one unit. In this film, a number of disciplines are mentioned. Second, this movie contains three interesting approaches for understanding one particular science. The consideration of biological, psychodynamic, and environmental factors and the recognition of cognitive, societal, and developmental psychology make this content interdisciplinary. People have many differences, and psychology helps to recognize at least some of them.
Reference
Online Classroom Ltd. (Producer). (2009). Perspectives on psychology [Video file]. Web.