According to discrimination psychology definition, the discrimination is a process by which a subject is able to differentiate and distinguish between different stimuli. It is different from generalization, in the sense that it is more advanced. A generalization is more a process of identifying the similarities whereas discrimination is the psychological process through which differences are perceived.
Formulation:
Discrimination psychology definition was a topic very much in vogue during the period from 1920-1970. It was formulated within many different branches of psychology like the Comparative psychology, which was a study of if the constant or inconstant learning processes were involved in the acquiring of the discriminating faculty. Apart from this, discrimination was part of the developmental psychology, which delved into the changes that happen in the discriminating faculty as a person grows older and his mental state develops. It is involved in the mathematical psychology where trials were made to give a formal shape to the discriminations being made in the several branches of psychology or the cross-cultural psychology where the key matter was the function being played by the cultural aspect of a certain stimulus to discriminate it from others.
Examples:
The application of the discriminatory process helps in determining how acute the sensory perceptions of animals are. One such example could be how a dog differentiates between colors. To do this experiment, food was presented along with the stimuli of red color. But when the green color stimuli appeared, no food was presented. The stimuli are positioned randomly, so that the dog may be able to distinguish between two stimuli by only their colors and not by any other aspects. It turned out that the dog became conditioned to salivate only when it was exposed to the red color stimuli. This is how it was proved that a dog can distinguish between different colors and they are not color blind as was generally assumed.
The discrimination psychology definition can be used to experiment on very young babies too. In one experiment, the baby was made to suck on both the mother’s nipple and a computerized nipple. The baby sucked on the mother’s nipple faster and so it could be understood that the baby could make out or discriminate between the mother’s face and that of a stranger.
Conclusion:
Discrimination is one of the most innate psychological processes through a subject can learn to point out the differences between two different stimuli.
