Final answer:
Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology focusing on human thinking, particularly how individuals interpret and interact with the world around them.
Step-by-step explanation:
The approach to human functioning that stresses the importance of each individual's perception of reality is known as cognitive psychology. This branch of psychology focuses on the study of human thinking and how it influences behavior. Cognitive psychology emerged during the cognitive revolution as a response to behaviorism's focus on external behavior, bringing back the scientific interest in the mind and its processes. By emphasizing the role of cognitive processes like perception, memory, and problem-solving, cognitive psychologists seek to understand how people interpret and interact with the world around them.
Cognitive psychology can be contrasted with other fields. For example, evolutionary psychology examines how universal patterns of behavior and thought processes have evolved as adaptations over time. Social psychology focuses on situational factors and how they affect individuals' behavior and thoughts in a social context. Finally, epigenetics is a field that involves the study of how genes and their expression are influenced by environmental factors and behaviors.
In the realm of sociology, theoretical perspectives such as symbolic interactionism would approach phenomena like religion from a micro-level, assessing the impact on individual support and well-being. This aligns well with the cognitive approach, which also often examines the individual experience and the internal mental processes that give rise to behaviors and interactions.