Psychology has been built on decades of research on behavior and mental processes, so it is easy to get lost among so many approaches and concepts that cannot be understood without understanding the theories in which they are framed.

The main theories in Psychology

Different psychological theories try to describe different important aspects of our personality, our behaviour, our cognitive development and our motivations, among many other issues.Below you can see some brushstrokes on the main psychological theories that have been sculpting what we know about the human mind.

Cartesian dualistic theory

René Descartes’ dualistic theory states that the mind and the body are two entities of different nature, that the former has the power to control the latter and that they interact with each other somewhere in the brain.

It is basically the transformation into theory of a type of philosophical position of dualism, one of whose greatest representatives is Plato. Despite the fact that the Cartesian theory of dualism has been formally discarded for decades, it continues to take new forms and is implicit in the way that many researches in psychology and neurosciences are focused. Somehow, it “infiltrates” the thinking of many research teams without their being aware of it, which is why it remains relevant despite being invalid.

Gestalt theory

The psychological theory of Gestalt deals with the way we perceive the outside world through our senses. Through the laws of Gestalt, basically developed by German psychologists in the first half of the 20th century, it reflects the way in which perception takes place while we make sense of what is perceived, and not one thing after another. You can read more about this theory in this article.

Behavioral Stimulus-Response Theory

The researchers of behavioral psychology that relied on B. F. Skinner’s operant conditioning defended the idea that the learning we do depends on the way in which certain behaviors are more or less reinforced by pleasant or unpleasant stimuli right after this behavior has been performed.

This theory was challenged by Edward Tolman, who in the mid-20th century demonstrated that learning could take place even if certain behaviours were not immediately rewarded, thus opening the way for the cognitive psychology that was to come in the 1960s.

Jean Piaget’s Theory of Learning

One of the most important psychological theories about learning is the one that starts from Jean Piaget’s constructivist approach . This Swiss researcher believed that the way in which we learn consists in a construction of our own experiences, that is, that what we live is seen in the light of what we have experienced before.

But learning does not depend only on our past experiences, but also on biological factors marked, among other things, by the stage of life in which we find ourselves. That’s why he established a model of stages of cognitive development, about which you can read more here.

Socio-cultural theory of Lev Vygotsky

While in the early 20th century many psychologists studied learning by focusing on how individuals interact with their environment, the Soviet researcher Lev Vygotsky gave a social focus to the same object of study.

For him, society as a whole (although especially through parents and tutors) is both a means and a tool for learning, thanks to which we can develop intellectually. You can learn more about this psychological theory in this article.

Bandura’s social learning theory

Throughout his research, Albert Bandura showed to what extent learning is not something that comes from facing challenges alone, but that it also takes place when we are immersed in an environment where we can see what others do and the results that others have by following certain strategies. To learn more about this psychological theory, click here.

Theory of cognitive dissonance

One of the most relevant psychological theories regarding the formation of identities and ideologies. The concept of cognitive dissonance , formulated by psychologist Leon Festinger , serves to explain the state of stress and discomfort that occurs when two or more beliefs that are perceived as contradictory to each other are held at the same time. To learn more about this topic, see these two articles:

  • Cognitive Dissonance: The Theory Explaining Self-Deception
  • How do sects react when prophecies are not fulfilled?

Information Processing Theory

This theory starts from the idea that the mind works as a set of mechanisms that process sensory information (input data) to store a part of it in “memory deposits” and, at the same time, transform the combination between this information about the present and information about the past into chains of actions, just as a robot would do.

In this way, our perceptions pass through a series of filters until the most relevant data become involved in the complex mental operations and, therefore, come to have an impact on the behaviour that is produced in response to these stimuli. This is one of the most relevant psychological theories within cognitive psychology.

Theory of embodied cognition

The idea of embodied cognition , initially proposed by psychologist George Lakoff , can be classified both as a psychological theory and a philosophical approach affecting the neurosciences. This theory breaks with the idea that cognition is based on brain activity and extends the thought matrix to the entire body. You can read more about it here.

Rational choice theory

It is part of the field of both economics and cognitive psychology , and therefore can be considered an important representative of psychological theories. According to this idea, each individual makes decisions according to his own interests and chooses the options he perceives as most advantageous (or least harmful) for himself from a rational criterion.

The theory of rational choice has had tremendous relevance in the social sciences, but it is increasingly questioned by new paradigms from which it is shown how frequent is in us the behavior classically considered “irrational”.