ABSTRACT
Aggression, happiness, and learning difficulties are complex phenomena. For this reason, critics of psychology thought for a long time that it is not possible to explore the human mind and behavior with scientific methods. The difference between explanations in Western and Eastern cultures has parallels to the person-situation debate in psychology. The take-home message so far is that psychology is an empirical science based on evidence. Despite the complexity of human psychology, scientists were able to develop methods to study the mind and behavior, both in the laboratory and in the real world. The steep decline in remembering resuscitation techniques shows that people forget skills when they rarely use them, even when they might consider them important. The question whether genes or the environment determine behavior is the nature-nurture debate in scientific psychology. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
