Chapter 1 The Science of the Mind The Discipline of Psychology Tastes We can taste Sweetness 1 200 parts of water Bitterness 1 2 million parts of water This trait is adaptive most poisons and toxins taste bitter so this trait has served us in detecting harm Taste sensitivity decreases over a lifespan Introspection the personal observation of our own thoughts feelings and behavior Psychology the scientific study of behavior and mental process the mind Behavior any action that we can observe What are Psychology s Roots Being chased is the most common dream Philosophy the discipline that systematically examines basic concepts including the source of knowledge Physical science any science that studies nonliving matter including physics chemistry astronomy and geology Philosophers and psychologists both examine the nature of the self the effects of early experience the existence of free will and the origin of knowledge Both examine nature vs nurture The Philosophers Questions Plato first philosopher to ask what is the mind His version of the mind had 3 parts reason spirit and apetite Freud also divided the mind up id inborn aggressive and sexual impulses the ego self and the superego conscience Dualism the idea that body and mind are quite different and separate Bodies are physical and minds are nonphysical and mysterious Monism the idea that mind and body are not separate The mind is the result of activity in the brain Dualism became better known in renaissance times while monism is the contemporary scientists belief Hormones vs reactions mind and body interact Argued about nature vs nurture Born with blank slate and experience filled it Empiricism viewed the mind as a blank slate at birth that was filled with ideas gained by observing the world Contributed the ideas 1 empiricism is the foundation for science itself which allows us to gain knowledge through careful and systematic observation resulting in empirical results 2 empiricism guided the 20th century behaviorists psychologists who examined behaviors that were the result of experience and that could be directly observed Contemporary psychologists view not nature vs nurture but a complex combination of both Psychology is a major hub science meaning it is connected to many different other sciences The physical scientists methods 7 000 years ago healers would drill holes in their patients head to cure them some of them survived Greek physicians noticed the connnections of the brian to the sense organs and recognized the brain as the source of emotional problems Personality is affected by body fluids Yellow bile gastric fluid black bile blood and phlegm Sad person excess of black bile Cheerful lot of blood Bleeding a patient were applications of this theory A simple sensory nerve carries one type of info not multiple types Pushing on your eye you see a light the nerves do not know how to process information about touch or pressure so they only have 1 type of message which is light Helmholtz experiment having people push a button when they felt a touch When thigh touched reaction faster than when toe touched Thigh is closer to brain proving the toe needed more time to send the impulse Proved that voluntary behavior did not occur instantly as thought Fechner identified the softest sound a person could hear How did the science of psychology begin Wilhelm Wundt and Structuralism Wilhelm Wundt first psychologist first documented psychological experiment How quickly does a person respond to hearing Goal of psychology was to understand consciousness Structuralism an approach in which the mind is broken into the smallest elements of mental experience Gestalt Psychology Rejected structuralists psychology Gestalt means form or whole Known for their work in perception A I3 C vs 12 13 14 William James and Functionalism A response to Darwin s Origin of Species Functionalism viewed behavior as purposeful since it let to survival Instead of structure of mind they focused on why behavior and mental processes work in a particular way William James STREAM OF CONSIOUSNESS the flow of ideas people experience while awake Behaviors that enhance survival are repeated and those that are damaging are abandoned If we dream it must be because dreaming improves our chances of survival They also rejected the breaking mind into elements notion The experiment that launched Gestalt psychology Used a toy stroboscope to see if perceived movement between two stimuli can be explained This work can be seen in moving words in scrolling electric signs The Behaviorists and the Cognitive Revolution Behaviorism an approach to psychology that features the study and careful measurement of observable behaviors Many behaviorists restricted their research to studies using animals Ivan Pavlov experimented on dogs and their digestive system Found that dogs associated signals with the arrival of food and salivated This type of learning or association is now known as Pavlovian conditioning Many of our emotional responses associated with environmental cues are the result of this type of learning John Watson experimented learning with rats Had a blank slate and nurture approach give me 20 babies and I ll make them into anything He applied his understanding of association with advertisement and discovered that blindfolding participants could not tell the different between bands of cigs and now the ad industry relates their products to good things which is the basis of all of advertising now Edward Thorndike proposed a law of effect which suggested that behaviors followed by pleasant or helpful outcomes would be more likely to occur in the future whereas behaviors followed by unpleasant or harmful outcomes would be less likely to occur Cognition covers the very private and internal mental processes the behaviorists avoided studying information processing thinking reasoning and problem solving Ulric Neisser gave this field its name Computer technology allowed for these psychologists to use math and computer models to demonstrate the mental processes leading to observable behaviors Cognitive neuroscience seeks to identify brain structures and functions involved in processing information Language learning Behaviorists children acquired language in response to feedback such as parental approval or being understood Linguists human beings are born with innate mechanisms for learning language Clinical Roots Freud and the Humanists Supernatural approach psychological disorders resulted from