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Folk psychology is the knowledge that helps people interpret emotions and behavior, but philosophers and cognitive psychologists have questioned its accuracy. The debate continues, but for the average person, understanding how to relate to others is more important than the theory behind it.
Folk psychology is a difficult term to explain even though there are theorists who suggest that we are all experts in its practice. The term is a little confusing at first because it’s not a theory of how to practice psychology. Instead, it is described by some as knowledge that each person possesses that helps them interpret things such as personal emotions, desires, and also enables them to interpret other people’s emotions, desires, and possibly behavior. In this view, everyone is a popular or naïve psychologist who is constantly reading or interpreting their own feelings and trying to understand what someone else is feeling or planning to do; according to this view everyone possesses the ability to do this, although there may be variations in a person’s ability to understand themselves or others.
Given this definition, it would seem that folk psychology would be an easy enough thing to understand, but it gets more complicated. Over time, many philosophers have attempted to answer questions about whether popular psychology as explained above is really true or whether it is utter nonsense. Certainly, many studies in cognitive psychology and in neuroscience have shown that many things the average person thought they knew about human emotions are not true.
For example, understanding the chemical nature of depression has brought relief to many. In true depression, a person is not just sad, he is deprived of several useful neurotransmitters. Relying on popular explanations that attribute a person’s depression to other things, loss of job, death of a pet, etc., may not be useful constructs and challenge how a society might interpret, predict, or define sadness . These things can definitely exist, but they say nothing about what’s going on with brain neurotransmitters and may be less diagnostically helpful.
This has led some groups such as the elimitavists to question the nature of popular psychology and to call it a bad theory that should be completely discarded. However, while philosophers or sometimes psychologists determine what to do with the matter of naïve psychology and how relevant or useful it is, most people are less aware of practicing it, however it is described or whenever it is actually practiced. Whether people have an overwhelming theory of folk psychology that informs their actions, or they examine the behaviors of others to make decisions, everyone is busy reading themselves, reading others, and trying to relate to each other. other. For the average person it may matter a lot less, how people are able to relate to each other, and it may matter more about how people relate to each other and how to find better ways to do so as they progress through life.
The philosopher interested in this psychology as a theory might be more interested in defining whether or not folk psychology serves humans. Since this psychology is often called the basis for all other forms of psychology, interest in the correctness of theories about it can be high. If everything that most people in the world think they know about human behavior and how it is perceived is incorrect, this would have interesting ramifications for the world of psychology and human behavior. So far, the discussions between several philosophers are nowhere near a conclusion and have formed a rich source of debate that is likely to continue for a long time.
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