What are the two major roots of the psychology family tree? Describe their relationship. What areas of interest do they share?

What will be an ideal response?

ANSWER: The psychology family tree includes two major roots: philosophy and the physical sciences. Psychologists answer questions traditionally posed by philosophers by borrowing the methods of the physical sciences.

Philosophers and psychologists share an interest in questions regarding the nature of the self, the effects of early experience, the existence of free will, and the origin of knowledge. Both disciplines consider the relative balance of biological factors (nature) and environmental factors (nurture) in the end product of human behavior. Both attempt to determine the relationships between self-interest and the welfare of the community, between body and mind, and between humans and the other species with whom we share the planet. Although we typically consider questions of the unconscious mind and abnormal behavior to be the realm of the psychologist, philosophers investigated these issues thousands of years before the first psychologist was born.