Thursday September 9 Early Psychological Science Wilhelm Wundt o Established the first psychological laboratory 1879 in the world Univ of Leipzig Germany o Founder of the academic discipline of psychology Edward Titchener o Wundt s student at Leipzig o After graduation went to work in the US Cornell o Used the method of introspection by trained observers to examine mental processes Structuralism Elements William James o Sought a psychological equivalent to chemistry s Periodic Table of the o Dominated academic psychology s first few decades o Advocated a perspective called functionalism Functionalism views consciousness and behavior as functional and serving a purpose o Advocated studying a wide variety of human experience The Psychodynamic Perspective Behavior and emotional experience result from unconscious desires and fears o These often concern socially forbidden topics such as sex and aggression o Anxiety and other problems are postulated to result from the way these unacceptable thoughts and feelings are dealt with The Freud Problem When asked to name a psychologist most people say Freud However o Fewer than 10 of APA members and fewer than 5 of APS members do work in the area of Freudian psychoanalysis o The methods Freud employed are uncharacteristic of science The Behaviorist Perspective Logical Positivism According to the behaviorists o Only observable behavior is the proper subject matter of psychology o Mental events and conscious experience could not be studied scientifically o The types of learning called conditioning play the central role in acquiring and maintaining behaviors Behaviorism dominated academic psychology from about 1920 1970 Humanistic psychologists emphasize free will and the creative striving for self Humanistic Psychology fulfillment o Humanistic psychology was in large part a reaction to the mechanistic deterministic views of Psychodynamic psychology and Behaviorism Thursday September 9 In its early years humanistic psychology had its greatest impact on psychotherapy but recent trends in the study of emotion motivation personality and social psychology are strongly influenced by the Humanistic perspective The Cognitive Perspective The mind as well as behavior can be studied scientifically o Objective measures such as reaction times and error rates are used to make inferences about underlying mental processes Avoids problems encountered by the structuralists o The study of the mind was legitimized by the development of the o Cognitive neuroscience relates findings from studies of the brain to mental The cognitive perspective has been dominant in academic psychology since the electronic computer functions 1970 s Social and Cultural Psychology Humans live life from birth to death interacting with other people Each person s strong behavior thoughts and feelings are strongly influenced by the reactions expectations and messages of others o Human infants have a strong natural ability to imitate others Culture is the influence of membership in a larger group such as a tribe or nation o Culture transmits knowledge myths skills social norms roles etc The Nature of Science The scientific method allows us to declare our conclusions to be probable to the point where it is reasonable to treat them as factual Scientific open mindedness is the willingness to consider proper evidence and possible revise our theories It is NOT the unquestioning acceptance of any possibility in the absence of evidence o We apply the rigorous The Research Process Scientific research is a technical refinement of one of the ways that we naturally think the way that is commonly called rational o Ask a question specify a problem o Carefully and systematically make relevant observations o Form a hypothesis Scientific Theory Falsifiability Science aims to produce theories or models that enable us In the 1960s the philosopher Karl Popper argues that repeated confirmations can never lead to certainty but a single disconfirmation can show a theory to be false o Popper suggested hat a good theory is one that is falsifiable but withstands attempts to falsify it A theory is falsifiable when evidence can be described that if observed would contradict the theory o A theory that is not falsifiable is scientifically meaningless Thursday September 9 A theory that is too vague to ever make an observable prediction is not falsifiable This is a criticism often leveled against Freudian theory Limitations of the Principle of Falsifiability It is not possible to falsify hypothesis of the following form o Some x have characteristic y sometimes o Example Some people have psychic powers sometimes o This is because we would have to examine all instances of x The Burden of Proof proof Parsimony Thus in practice scientists follow the commonsense principle of burden of o If you are making a claim that something new exists or happens then you should be able to provide evidence for it If the existing evidence doesn t distinguish among theories the theory to be preferred is the one whose assumptions are fewer simpler or more consistent with well established scientific theories Also known as Occam s razor
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