A Brief History of Psychology Know the importance of these individuals to the field of psychology the direction and examples of work they produced the type of research from which they gained their knowledge in psychology and the school of thought that they founded or are associated with in psychology 1879 Founded the first formal laboratory for psychological Wilhelm Wundt research o Leipzig Germany Father of Experimental Psychology Edward B Titchener Worked with Wundt Creator of structuralism o Interested in the structural elements of the mind o Formed group called the experimentalists o Lab rat Obsessed with lab work William James Functionalism Sigmund Freud Psychoanalysis John B Watson Behaviorism o Opposed the lab obsession of Tichener and Wundt o Interested in tangible information and how people adapted to the world o Didn t provide much research for his work o Popularized the talking cure Verbal therapy for patients with hysteria o Science should be rooted in observation o Psychology should be science of behaviour not of the mind o Stimulus Response focus Stimulus Thing or event that evokes a specific functional reaction cause Response Any behavior in reaction to the The Black Box stimulus effect o Before Watson and behaviorism everyone was concerned with why people do and think the way they do o Behaviorism was the shift to studying how people do and think the way they do B F Skinner Behaviorism Noam Chomsky Introspection o Operant conditioning positive negative reinforcement and how it affected behavior Challenged Skinner s idea on language acquisition Linguistic behavior is innate not learned Examination of one s own conscious thoughts and feelings Wundt and Titchener were the first to really study introspection view of introspection changed with the rise of behaviorism Required trained observers to carefully reflect and report on their mental experiences Behaviorism 1920 1960 led by Skinner and Watson Behaviorism was the shift to studying how people do and think the way they do that they do o Before it was about why people act and think the way In the Stimulus Response focus behaviorism stopped caring about the Black Box because it could only be speculated they only focused how people acted not why Cognitive Revolution 1960 Present Shift away from behaviorism Jean Piaget Studied children Realized that children looked at things differently o Stages of development Applied Psychology Basic Psychology Work in the field studying practical problems Lab work experiments characterized by writing papers and doing pure research Be familiar with the following key concepts that have contributed to or have had important contributions in the history of psychology Know some of the different disciplines in psychology that exist today and some of the focuses of those disciplines cognitive psychology neuroscience etc Neuroscience How the body and brain enable emotions memories and sensory experiences o How do the chemical processes in your brain affect Evolutionary How the natural selection of traits promoted behavior the survival of genes o Based a lot on Darwin s principles Cognitive How we encode process store and retrieve information unlocking the black box o How do we remember reason and think Social cultural How behavior and thinking vary across situations and cultures o Intersection of psychology and sociology Know the source of Sigmund Freud s ideas of psychology and pathology and the shortcomings in the way he developed his ideas Understand Tichener s views on introspection and what exactly they entailed Used introspection to identify basic elements or structures of experience Wanted to create a map of the elements of consciousness Know how William James thought of psychology and how his approach towards psychology differed from Wundt and Tichener Was interested in tangible information and how people adapted to the world More concerned about how something fit in than how to measure it Know why behaviorism came to dominate the field of psychology and what led to the eventual downfall of its dominance Understand the historical dominance of behaviorism from 1920 to 1960 Know what figures are associated with the movement of behaviorism Know the view of behaviorists on introspection Popularized by Watson who argued that Titchener and other introspectionalists were leading psychology down a misguided path many were impatient with touchy feely nature of functionalism Ended because there were inadequate explanations for certain phenomena Led by Watson and Skinner Introspection We don t need to know what s inside the organism to grasp why they act the way they do we can comprehend human behavior exclusively by observed from the outside Understand the contribution of Noam Chomsky and his impact on Skinner and behaviorism Chomsky challenged Skinner s theory of language acquisition o Skinner said that language acquisition is like any kind of cognitive behavior it is learnt by reinforcement and shaping o Chomsky argued that linguistic behavior is innate not learned Understand the difference between the goals of basic and applied research and some examples of each Basic Applied o Working a lab doing experiments o Seek long term goals o Social biological cognitive and developmental o Working in the field solving practical problems o Work has immediate utility o Counseling What is the Black Box as we talked about it in class Who thought it was important Who thought it was unimportant Be able to fully understand this concept The human mind is a black box We know what goes into it and what comes out but we don t know how or why we respond the way we do Behaviorialists felt that the black box was unimportant Pre and post behavioralists were interested in unlocking the black box psychology Who was Jean Piaget What era is he associated with Why is he important He was a Swiss psychologists associated with cognitive Realized that children conceptualize the world in very different ways than adults do Psychology as a Science Know the definitions of the following terms and key concepts Parsimony Hypothesis Empirical Theory Scientific principle that things are usually connected or behave in the simplest or most economical way especially with reference to alternative evolutionary pathways Statement predicting the outcome of a scientific study a statement describing the relationship between variables Hypothesis that can be observed or measured Not based on theory or pure logic Explanation for a large
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