Chapter 1 The Evolution of Psychology Wilhelm Wundt The founder of modern psychology Founded the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig Germany 1879 Psychology s DOB Voluntarist interested in volitional behavior Used introspection to probe the perceptual processes of his experimental subjects Declared primary focus of psychology to be of consciousness Psychology became the scientific study of the conscious experience Wanted psych to be an independent not of philosophy or physiology Mary Whiton Calkins Founded early psychology laboratory at Wellesley College First woman president of APA Margaret Floy Washburn First woman to earn Ph D in psychology Cornell Authored The Animal Mind Second woman president of APA Leta Stetter Hollingworth Pioneering work on adolescent development and the fallacy of women s inferiority First person to use term gifted referring to exceptionally scoring students G Stanley Hall First president of APA Most significant contribution to psychology expose scholars to Freud s psychoanalytic theory Established first psychology research lab in America at Johns Hopkins University Structuralism Proposes that the task of psychology is to break down consciousness into basic elements and analyze how these elements are related Functionalism Proposes that psychology should focus on the purpose or function of conciousness Behaviorism Believe that only observable events can be studied scientifically and studied the effects of the environment on overt behavior of humans and animals behavioral approach often referred to as stimulus response psychology contributed to the rise of animal research in psychology B F Skinner Behaviorist Arguably the most influential psychologist to date Work on operant conditioning revolutionized the behavioral movement Extended his theoretical work to humans and most notably argued against the notion that we have free will Influenced by Ivan Pavlov and John B Watson Believes in pleasure principle organisms tend to repeat responses that lead to a positive outcome and they tend not to repeat responses that lead to a neutral or negative outcome Beyond Freedom and Dignity 1971 all behavior is fully governed by external stimuli People are controlled by their environment not by themselves free will is an illusion John B Watson Behaviorist first pop psychologist Proposed that psychologists abandon the study of consciousness altogether if psychology was to be a science it would have to give up consciousness as its subject matter and become instead the science of behavior Asserted that psychologists could study anything that people do or say Argued that each is made not born babies start off with blank state you can do be anything you want as long as you start from birth and reward behaviors that promote what you want to do be and disregard all else Behavior is governed primarily by the environment Influenced by Ivan Pavlov s discovery of the conditioned reflex Freud World famous for psychoanalytic theory Helped shape field of clinical psychology Treated people troubled by psychological problems such as irrational fears obsessions and anxieties with an innovative procedure he called psychoanalysis Concluded that psychological disturbances are largely caused by personal conflicts existing at an unconscious level Proposed that behavior is greatly influenced by how people cope with their sexual urges Unconscious Contains thoughts memories and desires that are well below the surface of conscious awareness but tat nonetheless exert great influence on behavior Psychoanalytic Theory Attempts to explain personality motivation and mental disorders by focusing on unconscious determinants of behavior Carl Jung Psychoanalytic Adherent of Freud who eventually broke with him he is most widely remembered for his study of the collective unconscious Alfred Adler Psychoanalytic Abraham Maslow Humanist Maintained that to fully understand people s behavior people must take into account the fundamental human drive towards personal growths Asserted that people have a basic need to continue to evolve as human beings to fulfill their potentials Carl Rogers Humanist Argued that human behavior is governed primarily by each individual s self concept People are not pawns of deterministic forces Cognition Refers to the mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge Human behavior cannot be fully understood without examining how people acquire process and store information Noam Chomsky Cognitive Theorist Elicited interest in underpinnings of language Jean Piaget Children cognitive Herbert Simon Did ground breaking research in the school of cognition that earned him a Nobel prize Since then cognitive theorists argue that the study of internal mental processes must be included to fully understand behavior James Olds Biological Psychologist Showed that electrical stimulation of the brain could evoke emotional responses such as pleasure and rage in animals Roger Sperry Biological Psychologist Showed that the right left halves of the brain are specialized to handle different types of mental tasks David Hubel and Torstein Weisel Nobel Prize winning work on how visual signals are processed in the brain Evolutionary Psychology Examines behavioral processes in terms of their adaptive value for members of a species over the course of many generations First major new theoretical perspective since the cognitive revolution David Buss Martin Daly Margo Wilson Leda Cosmides John Tooby Published widely cited studies on a broad range of topics that included mating preferences jealousy aggression sexual behavior language decision making personality and development First major new theoretical perspective since the cognitive revolution Clinical Psychologists Concerned with the evaluation diagnosis and treatment of individuals with psychological disorders as well as treatment of less severe behavioral and emotional problems Grew with World War II veterans seeking help for trauma financed by VA Provoked APS Association for Psychological Science which is exclusively an advocate for the science of psychology Graduate programs for clinical psychology are most difficult to gain admittance to Counseling Psychology Overlaps with clinical psychology in that specialists in both areas engage in similar activities however counseling psychologists usually work with a somewhat different clientele providing assistance to people struggling with everyday problems of moderate severity Educational Psychologists Work
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