Psyc 100 0908 The scientific study of anything invlolves developing and testing theories A theory is and organized set of statements about several pheomena A hypothesis is a single statement about a single phenomena Both Theories and Hypotheses need to be falsifiable A theory starts out when a large body of emperical evidence exists that is consisent w supports a theory The theory explains a larger body of existing data Scientists the use such theories to generate hypotheses are used as further tests of the theory Hypothetical contructs contructs are basically things that can not be seen i e intelligence self esteem motiviation cant look inside someones head a directly observe these contructs therefore must observe indirectly First psychologists create models to explains particular behaviors Hypothesis testable predicitons are always about observable data i e some form of measure of behavior or performance One keeps a contruct in a theoretical model if it assists in explaining the observable data Four major psychological approaches Psychoanalysis Structuralism Behaviorism Cognitive How does each approach deal with mental activity especially concious mental activity 1 Psychoanalysis Freud s Theory has not been the viewpoint of most psychologists for nearly 100 years Freud s contribution the unconcious mind needs to be studied and understood argued against the idea that thoughts emotions and actions result from rational concious thinking 2 Wundt Base of Structuralist Theory wanted to create an experimental science of psyc First psyc lab Defined psyc as the science of experience Concerned with mental chemistry immdiate concious experience simple ideas the atoms of concious experience experience can be broken down into these Systematic Introspection had patients perform experimental tasks and introspect but couldn t replicat For Wundt the association of simple ideas to form complex ideas happened automatically Criticism 1 Gestalt Psychology 2 Behaviorism 3 Behaviorist movement John B Watson a scientific psychology should be considered only what we can observe and measure Behaviorist revolution Behaviorism Stimulus Response psychology Throw the baby out with the bath water Since we cant observe mind ideas consciousness etc we should exclude them from scientific discourse and therefore we should consider these ideas nonexistent We can observe and measure 1 physical stimuli 2 overt behavioral responses Science of experience became the science of behavior experience got redefined to mean aspects of the stimulus situation Behaviorist view takes the extreme empiricist side of the nature nuture debate Gestalt Perspective often summarized as the the sum is different than the sum of the parts They were very interested in how our perceptual experience is organized 4 Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Nueroscience a new science began in the 1960 s mind is like a c
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