Folk psychology, or commonsense psychology, is the natural capacity to explain and predict the behavior and mental states of other people. Processes and items encountered in daily life such as pain, pleasure, excitement and anxiety use common linguistic terms as opposed to technical or scientific jargon.
Folk psychology and analogy are linked. The easiest way to describe something is through references to familiar items. In this way, the union between analogy and folk psychology was inevitable.
Traditionally, the study of folk psychology has focused on how everyday people—those without formal training in the various academic fields of science—go about attributing mental states. This domain has primarily been centred on intentional states reflective of an individual's beliefs and desires; each described in terms of everyday language and concepts such as “beliefs”, "desires”, “fear”, and “hope".
Read more about Folk Psychology: Contention
Famous quotes containing the words folk and/or psychology:
“Some folk want their luck buttered.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“Whatever else American thinkers do, they psychologize, often brilliantly. The trouble is that psychology only takes us so far. The new interest in families has its merits, but it will have done us all a disservice if it turns us away from public issues to private matters. A vision of things that has no room for the inner life is bankrupt, but a psychology without social analysis or politics is both powerless and very lonely.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)