Every person is, in a sense, a psychologist. We all study other people every day, their actions and emotions, building hypotheses and theories of human behavior in our thoughts. It is these hypotheses that are everyday psychology, which is tested by a person's personal experience. How does it differ from scientific psychology?
First of all, everyday psychology is more concrete. Everyday knowledge is tied to a specific situation or a specific person. It is not always possible to apply the knowledge gained to another person. That is why in everyday life we make mistakes, make mistakes in people, or incorrectly predict the outcome of a situation. Psychology as a science, on the contrary, tries to separate its knowledge from the situation, it seeks to generalize so that its theories can cover large areas.
A person gains knowledge about other people intuitively. Not often do we take a notebook with us, writing down every step of our interlocutor in order to understand him, and we do not often set such a goal for ourselves, but simply communicate. A scientist, on the other hand, acquires his knowledge according to a certain plan. His methods are always thought out and as rational as possible.
But we get everyday knowledge about other people not only on our own, directly communicating with people. In this we are also helped by fairy tales, fables, sayings and proverbs, which for centuries have accumulated human experience, changing with it. Science uses textbooks and documentaries to convey information.
As already mentioned, everyday knowledge is tested. This means that it is difficult to understand the correctness of your conclusions without making a mistake. In scientific psychology, the method of testing knowledge is a scientific experiment. The material obtained in the course of it is comprehended, checked, systematized and accumulated within the framework of a certain branch of psychology.
Scientific psychology would not have appeared and could not exist without everyday psychology, but only its knowledge is definitely not enough to understand the whole essence of human psychology.
