PSYCHOLOGY Chapter 1 PSYCHOLOGY The science that studies behaviour and the psychological and cognitive processes that underlie it and the profession that applies the accumulated knowledge of this science to practical problems The difference between Psychology Physiology and Philosophy Psychology psyche means soul logos means the study of a subject In the 18th Century the term psychology became a term used by scholars to describe the study of the mind Socrates Plato Aristotle The first scholars to wonder about the mind debated whether knowledge is inborn nativism or learned empiricism Rene Descartes Dualism of the mind and body the idea that humans are part of nature and are understandable in those terms William Harvey blood circulation was a function of the operation of the heart Robert Whyte Franz Gall Paul Broca Johannes Muller important insights could be gained into the workings of the body and brain through the application of systematic imperial methods Hermann von Hemlholtz Muller s student reaction time experiment 1879 Pyschology s Date of Birth Wilhelm Wundt mounted a campaign to make psychology an independent discipline rather than a stepchild of philosophy or physiology Established the first formal laboratory of psychology at the University of Leipzig According to Wundt the primary focus of psychology is consciousness awareness thus psychology became the study of conscious experience Focuses on mind and mental process The methods used to study this subject should be as scientific as physics and chemistry Stanley Hall student of Wundt established America s first research laboratory in psychology at John Hopkins University Established the first psychology journal He was the driving force behind the American Psychological Association APA and was elected its first president Structuralism vs Functionalism Structuralism emerged through the leadership of Edward Titchener it is based on the notion that psychology should analyze consciousness into basic elements and study for the elements are realted Structuralists wanted to study the the fundamental components of conscious experience such as sensations feelings and images Introspection the careful self observation of one s own conscious experience The limitations of introspection led to the downfall of structuralism Funtionalism was based on the believe that psychology should investigate the function or purpose of consciousness rather than its structure William James writes Principles of Psychology and thinks that psychology is deeply imbedded in a network of cultural and intellectual influences Charles Darwin says that Natural Selection is heritable characteristic that provide survival or reproductive advantages that pass on to next generations and over time become selected James says that consciousness is important to our species and therefore functionalism is more important to study Function over structure He wants to understand the stream of consciousness James McKeen Cattell and John Dewey begin to investigate mental testing patterns of development in children the effectiveness of educational practices and behavioural differences between the sexes Margaret Floy Waashburn was the first woman in the USA to receive a Ph D in psychology Leta Hollingworth worked on children s intelligence and debunked several theories that claimed that women were inferior to men Mary Whiton Calkins became the first woman to serve as a president of the APA Behaviourism Behaviourism is based on the premise that scientific psychcology should study only observable behaviour founded my John B Watson first pop psychologist He proposed they abandon the study of consciousness because to him the power of scientific method rested in verifiability Mental processes are private and cannot be studied Behaviour refers to any observable response or activity shopping playing chess eating speaking They studied people s responses when reacting to stimuli advertisements TV light sound waves sarcastic remarks by friends This is called stimulus response S R psychology Ivan Pavlov experiment dogs salivate at the sound of a tone paved the way for S R psych Unconscious Mind Sigmund Freud an Austrian physician studies the mysteries of unconscious mental processes The unconscious contains thoughts memories and desires that are well below the surface of conscious awareness but that nonetheless exert great influence on behaviour Its first focus is to treat mental disorders and anxieties with a procedure he called psychoanalysis Seemingly meaningless things revealed a lot about the person s personality He is famous for saying that dreams expressed important feelings they were unaware of He also shook shit up by saying that behaviour is greatly influenced by how we cope with our sexual urges This was controversial and psychoanalytic theory was challenged a lot by other psychologists that said it was unscientific Observable behaviour was easier to study and results were clearer Psychoanalytic theory gained popularity and eventually became so large 1940s that it almost took over all of psychology Scientists were forced to use his methods and eventually became to understand and like some of them incorporating psychoanalysis into psychological science Skinner and Behaviourism B F Skinner was emerging as a figure in behaviourism influenced by Watson and Pavlov He developed a system of radical behaviourism He emphasized that environmental factors influenced behaviour Behaviour is influenced by its biological endowment he argued that psychology could understand and predict behaviour without studying physiology or psychoanalysis Organisms tend to repeat responses that lead to positive outcomes and do not tend to repeat responses that lead to neutral or negative outcomes Simple yet so powerful for psychology He was able to train animals to perform unnatural behaviour like ping pong playing pigeons awesome by manipulating the outcomes This works on humans too because we re sort of like pigeons Behaviour is determined in predictable ways by lawful principles Free will is an illusion Controversial because people like to believe that they have control This became popular in the 50s and 60s he was a very important contributor to psychology Humanistic Psychology Move over psychoanalysis and behaviourism theres a new school of thought in town Humanism It believed that the other schools of thought were dehumanizing people are not masters of their own destinies There are unique qualities of