PSYC 414 HISTORY OF PSYCH EXAM 2

Structuralism

To describe the structure of the mind in terms of the most primitive elements of mental experience

Introspection

Psychological evidence cannot be other than introspective evidence, strict guidelines for introspective reporting. Concerns about stimulus error.

Margaret Floy Washburn

Studied animal behavior, first woman to receive a Ph.D. in psychology, 2nd female president of the APA, introspective by analogy.

Christine Ladd-Franklin

Theory of color vision

Franz Brentano

Concept of intentionality into contemporary philosophy

John Locke’s Experiment

Personal Identity: defined by consciousness rather than physical body

Carl Stumpf

Founder of Berlin School of Experimental Psychology

Oswald Külpe

Experimental study of thought processes

Herman Ebbinghaus

Experimental study of memory, forgetting curve and the spacing effect

Curve of Forgetting

Rapid decline of memory over time when information isn’t actively reinforced, you can forget 50-80% of new material within just 24 hours

William James

Father of American psych

Stream of consciousness: continuous dynamic flow of subjective experiences (thoughts, sensations, memories, feelings)
Selective Attention: cognitive process of focusing on a specific stimulus or task while actively filtering out irrelevant distractions

Hugo Münsterberg

False confessions, forensic psychology, human efficacy at work

William Moulton Marston

Inventor of early prototype of the polygraph and created Wonder Woman

G. Stanley Hall

Established first psych lab in U.S.
Founded APA
Started the child study movement and created the term for adolescence
Book of psych of aging

John Dewey

Belief in democracy, politics, education, communication, and journalism

James McKeen Cattell

Established at UPenn and Columbia
Galton’s fingerprint analysis

Robert Sessions Woodworth

Dynamic psychology
Experimental psych, cause and effect
Correlation doesn’t equal causation

Mary Whiton Calkins

Student of James at Harvard
Memory research, primacy and recency, paired associates

Francis Sumner

Father of Black Psychology, first African american to receive Ph.D. in psychology

Kenneth Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark

African American psychology, doll experiments

Alfred Binet

Invented the first practical intelligence test

Eugenics

Aims to prove genetic quality of human population, selective breeding

Ivan Pavlov

Russian scientist, Nobel prize in medicine and physiology
Noticed dog salivation too early, classical conditioning
Acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, discrimination, conditioned inhibition, emotional reactions, higher order conditioning

Classical Conditioning

Involuntary natural reflex becomes associated with a previously neutral environmental trigger

E.L. Thorndike

Animal research at home, chickens
Cat in a box, found cats didn’t reason but learned through trial and error
Law of effect: positive effect of action in situation leads to more of that action

Law of Effect

Behaviors followed by satisfying consequences are more likely to be repeated, vice versa

John Watson

Little Albert Experiment, animal research in rats and birds

The Little Albert Experiment

Baby Albert conditioned for fear towards white rat via association with loud noise, fear of similar stimuli.

Mary Cover Jones

First deconditioning, mother of behavior therapy

Edward Tolman

Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men
Behavior is purposive and cognitive
Animals build expectancies about environment and cognitive maps

Latent Learning and Cognitive Maps

Latent Learning: if there was no food for rats, they still learned the maze. Learning that occurs without immediate reinforcement, builds cognitive maps that are mental representations of spatial or conceptual environments

B.F. Skinner

Focused on prediction and control
Operant conditioning

Operant Conditioning

Learning process where voluntary behaviors are modified by their consequences, relies on rewards and punishments

Max Wertheimer

Development of Gestalt psychology, study of perception

Gestalt

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

Wolfgang Köhler

Chimpanzee problem solving, co-founder of Gestalt psychology

Kurt Koffka

Co-founder of Gestalt

Phi Phenomenon

Optical illusions where brain perceives continuous motion between two or more stationary objects, discovered by Max Wertheimer

Law of Prägnanz

Humans are faced with complex or ambiguous visual information, brain naturally interprets them in simple forms

Productive Thinking

Goal directed mental process that generates new insights and solutions

Insight Learning

Solution to a problem suddenly appears, mental rearrangement or restructuring of the elements in a problem to achieve a sudden understanding of the problem

Kurt Lewin

Field theory, explains human behavior as a function of the person and their environment
Three Stage Model of ChangeL unfreeze, change, refreeze

Group dynamics

Zeigarnik Effect

Stating our brains remember interrupted or uncompleted tasks better than completed ones

Functional Fixedness

Cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally defined, acts as a mental block

Sigmund Freud

Founder of psychoanalysis, influenced development of fields like behaviorism and cognitive psych

The Pleasure Principle

Instinctive drive to seek immediate gratification of basic biological and psychological needs, driving force of Id

Id

Primal unconscious drive for pleasure and instant gratification

Ego

Conscious, rational mind, mediates the impulsive Id

Superego

Ethical component of personality, internalizes societal rules

Defense Mechanisms

Unconscious strategies used to protect mind from anxiety, distressing thoughts, and threats to self esteem

Psychosexual Stages of Development

Oral: birth to one year, derive pleasure through oral activities
Anal: one to three years, toddlers derive pleasure from controlling bladder and bowel movements
Phallic: three to six years, children discover physical differences between sexes
Latency: six years to puberty, libido energy is repressed and focus on social skills
Genital: puberty to death, libido becomes active again

Alfred Adler and Birth Order

Freud’s disciple
Individual psychology: superiority, mastery of environment, perfection
Inferiority complex and power motivation

Carl Jung and Archetypes

Psychiatry and work with schizophrenia in Zurich
Inherited behavioral tendencies of a mystic nature, most important being self that integrates conscious and unconscious components.

Karen Horney and Womb Envy

Explains male power intent, posits men experience a jealousy of women’s ability to bear and nurture children. Feminist salvo against Freud

Melanie Klein

Object Relations Theory, lifelong relationship skills and emotional worlds are shaped by early experiences and attachments

Anna Freud

Pioneer of child psychoanalysis and argued that the conscious rational part of the mind deploys defense mechanisms to protect itself

Søren Kierkegaard

Father of Christian existentialism, object and abstract truths are meaningless to human existence.

Existentialism

Emphasizing individual freedom, radical personal responsibility, creation of meaning

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Psychological motivational theory proposing that human actions are driven by five universal categories of needs

Gordon Allport

Trait theory of personality, composed of traits
Cardinal traits: overarching characteristics dominating entire life and reputation
Central traits: core of everyday personality, guides behavior across most situations
Secondary traits: situation specific, only appear under certain conditions

Carl Rogers and Client Centered Therapy

“Aims directly toward the greater independence of the individual, therapist provides a supportive environment
Genuineness, unconditional positive regard, empathic understanding

Autoethnography

Qualitative research method that involves researchers using their own life histories to explore social and cultural phenomena

Fritz Perls and Gestalt Therapy

Here and now, personal responsibility, enhancing awareness of bodily sensations, emotions, and environment

Joseph Rychlak

Bridged the gap between humanistic psychology and scientific research, empirical defense for free will, goal directed behavior, and dialectical thinking

Contributions of the Third-Force in Psychology

Humanistic psychology, emphasizes free will, human potential, subjective experience, drive toward self actualization.