Psychology Chapter 1 notes:•Psychological science – is the study of mind, brain, and behavior⁃ Mind refers to mental activity •Mental activity results from biological processes within the brain•Behavior describes a wide variety of observable actions•The goals of psychology are to understand mental activity, social interactions, and how people acquire behaviors•Unconscious influences are referred as the “automaticity of everyday life”•An amiable skeptic remains open to new ideas, but is wary of new scientific findings when good evidence and sound reasoning do not seem to support them.•The ability to think systematically evaluating information to reach reasonable conclusionsis called critical thinking.•Nature/nurture debate is the arguments concerning whether psychological charac-teristics are biologically innate or acquired through education, experience, and culture. Both nature and nurture are important to psychological development•Mind/body problem is a fundamental psychological issue: Are mind and body sepa-rate and distinct, or is the mind simply the physical brain’s subjective experience? •In the 1600’s philosopher Rene Descartes promoted the first influential theory of dual-ism. This term refers to the idea that the mind and body are separate yet intertwined. •In 1879, Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology laboratory•Introspection is a systematic examination of subjective mental experiences that re-quires people to inspect and report on the content of their thoughts. •A general problem with introspection is that experience is subjective •Structuralism is an approach to psychology based on the idea that conscious experi-ence can be broken down into its basic underlying components •James noted that the mind consisted of an ever-changing, continuous series of thoughts. This stream of consciousness could not be frozen in time. Stream of consciousness: A phrase coined by William James to describe each person’s continuous series of ever-changing thoughts.•James argued that psychologists out to examine the functions served by the mind–– how the mind operates.•Functionalism is an approach to psychology concerned with the adaptive purpose, or function, of mind and behavior.•Evolutionary Theory is a theory presented by the naturalist Charles Darwin; it views the history of species in terms of the inherited, adaptive value of physical characteristics of mental activity and of behavior.•Surviving and reproducing in turn ensure that these changes, in the form of the mutated genes, will be passed along to future generations. Changes passed along in this way are called adaptations.•Natural Selection is the process by which random mutations that are adaptive are passed along and random mutations that are not adaptive are not. •Gestalt theory is a theory based on the idea that the whole of personal experience is different from simply the sum of its constituent elements. In other words, the whole is differentfrom the sum of its parts.•Whiton Calkins was a woman who Harvard denied her PhD because she was a woman•Margaret Floy Washburn was the first woman to be officially granted a PhD in