History and Systems Exam 1

Inattentional blindness

Not noticing something obvious because your attention is focused somewhere else

Historiography

• “How we study history”

• The study of how history is written and interpreted.

• Historians have to decide which information is reliable and how to explain it.

Zeitgeist

The “spirit of the times.”

• It means the general ideas, attitudes, culture, and beliefs of a certain time period.

Clown Study

Student walked around campus dressed as clown.

• 70% of students w/ company realized

• 50% of students alone realized

• 25% of students on their phone realized

gorilla study

• Had people focus on counting basketball passes.

• Many people completely missed a person in a gorilla suit walking through the scene.

Humans aren't as good at multitasking as we think.

• When we concentrate on one thing, we may miss other important information.

What conclusions can be drawn from the clown and the gorilla studies?

• historians can overlook important information because their attention is focused on certain ideas. Studying psychology's history helps us see ideas and influences that might otherwise be missed.

• When looking at psychology today, we can become so focused on individual specialties that we fail to see how they developed and relate to one another. Studying history gives us a broader perspective.

How do the clown and gorilla studies help us understand why we study the history of psychology?

history

• studying history helps integrate the areas and issues that constitute modern psychology.

What Binds All Areas of Psychology Together?

memory, learning, motivation, thought, perception, abnormal behavior

What Did the Greek Philosophers Study? (6)

philosophy + physiology = psychology

• Philosophy provided questions about the mind, knowledge, and human nature.

• Physiology provided experimental methods for scientifically studying the nervous system, senses, and body.

What Two Established Areas Most Influenced Psychology?

• Lost/suppressed data

• Altered/hidden data

• data is subject to biases of historian

• distorted in translation

• incomplete data

What are some of the problems people studying the data of history face?

John B. Watson

Who Burned His Own Letters and Papers before he died?

Freud’s Theory of personality:

• Id - “Es” directly translates to “it”

• Ego - “Itch” translates to “I”

• Super ego - “uber itch” translates to “above I”

Freud’s notion of “Free Association”

• the German word used was “enifall” which is more similar to “intrusion/invasion” than “association”

Example of history being lost in translation:

• increased job opportunities for psychologists in the 20th century to apply knowledge to solve real world problems

• more funding = more labs = more students graduating as psychologists

• many found work in other areas like public education

What impact did economic opportunities have on psychology?

The World Wars greatly increased opportunities for psychologists

Psychologists were increasingly needed for:

• Military selection

• Testing

• Training

• Clinical work

• Treatment of psychological problems

What impact did world wars have on psychology?

• women were denied admission to grad school/ excluded from faculty positions

• when they were able to get faculty positions, they were paid less than their male counterparts/ less likely to be promoted

Barriers women faced when applying/accepted to grad school:

his name

• was told to change it to something “less Jewish” because it would be difficult to find a job otherwise

What Was Abraham Maslow Told to Change?

was rejected because he was Black

• was told he would be uncomfortable/awkward working closely with whites

Why Was Kenneth Clark Rejected by Cornell?

Personalistic theory

progress/change caused mainly by the accomplishments and ideas of important individuals.

• ex: Freud's personality and ideas caused psychoanalysis to develop.

• Personalistic = person causes change

Naturalistic Theory

progress/change caused because the intellectual and cultural environment is ready for them.

• An idea may be rejected at one time but accepted years later because society and science have changed.

• Naturalistic = conditions/Zeitgeist cause change

1. A new school begins → challenges the existing approach.

2. It gains followers → becomes increasingly successful.

3. It prospers → may become the dominant approach.

4. Opposition develops → people discover weaknesses or limitations.

5. A new school appears → challenges the established school.

6. The older school declines → useful parts may be absorbed into the newer psychology.

cyclical nature of schools of thought

Mechanism

Natural processes work like a machine and can be explained by the laws of physics and chemistry.

• the universe is like a great machine

Reductionism

Explaining something complicated by breaking it into simpler parts.

• explains phenomena on one level in terms of phenomena on another level

• separate components can help us understand the whole

Determinism

The idea that events happen because of past events rather than randomly.

• if we know how something behaved in the past, we can predict it will work the same forever

Empiricism

Knowledge comes mainly from experience and observation.

Reflex action theory

Descartes's idea that some behavior happens automatically/involuntary in response to a stimulus.

• ex: touching something hot and then pulling your hand away

Positivism

Science should focus on things that are objectively observable

• “true knowledge” is only found when empirically studied (measured, verifiable)

• precursor to behaviorism

Materialism

The belief that everything can ultimately be explained through physical matter and physical processes and nature of matter

• even human consciousness can be explained by physics and chemistry

Tabula Rasa

Latin for “blank slate.”

• John Locke argued that the mind begins without built-in knowledge and experience writes upon it.

Simple ideas

basic ideas coming directly from sensation and reflection.

• ex: Experiencing a color or basic sensation. (green color, smoothness, coldness)

Complex ideas

Ideas created by combining simple ideas.

• ex: the object itself (a mug)

Theory of Association

knowledge results from connecting simple ideas together to create complex ideas

Mentalism

The idea that all knowledge comes from mental processes and depends on the person perceiving/experiencing it

• perception is the only thing we can be sure of

clock

• The physical world is like a clock: predictable, smooth, orderly

• “Mother of Machines”

• Clocks brought about regularity, order, and predictability to all levels of social

  class and economic circumstance.

• influenced government

• If a clock can be understood by studying its parts, perhaps humans and the universe can too.

What invention was considered the perfect metaphor for the "spirit of mechanism"?

The clockwork universe was the idea that the physical universe operates like a giant mechanical clock.

• God was viewed as a master clockmaker who created the universe and set it into motion. After that, the universe operated according to predictable natural laws.

• The human body and even human behavior could potentially be understood using mechanical laws.

• This idea helped make the scientific study of humans possible.

“Clockwork universe.” What did this mean in terms of the psychological

world? Human thought and behavior?

Automata

mechanical devices designed to move or behave as though they are alive.

• Some could walk, play musical instruments, write, or perform other complicated movements.

• They strengthened the idea that seemingly complicated human-like behavior could result from mechanical processes.

Charles Babbage

Who formulated principles that drive modern computers?

• Invented a calculator called “the difference engine/the analytical engine”

The difference engine

(Created by Charles Babbage)

Did basic math, had memory, played games

• Calculator imitated human mental actions

• After 10 years Babbage abandoned his calculator because of loss of funding

• Babbage then turned his attention to designing “the analytical engine.”

Mind-body problem

“Are mind and body—the mental world and the material world—distinct from each other?”

(separate)

mind controls the body body, but not vice versa

• Mind: puppeteer

• Body: puppet

How was the mind-body problem seen before Descartes?

(mind and body are joined)

• The mind could affect the body, but the body and sensory experiences could also affect the mind.

• This is called mind-body interactionism.

How was the mind-body problem seen proposed by Descartes?

Derived ideas

ideas that come from experience and interaction with the outside world.

• ex: You see a tree → your sensory experience gives you the idea of a tree.

• DERIVED = comes from experience.

Innate ideas

Ideas that exist in the mind without needing sensory experience.

• ex: God, the self, perfection, and infinity.

• INNATE = already in the mind.

Sensation (John Locke)

information derived from direct sensory input

• ex: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, or touching.

(simple idea)

Reflection (John Locke)

forming ideas from that input

(complex idea)

primary qualities

Characteristics that actually belong to an object regardless of perception

• ex: size, shape

• (objective)

secondary qualities

characteristics that exist in our perception of the object

• ex: color, odor

• (subjective)

The mind works like a machine in a predictable way.

• run by internal forces

• external stimuli cause the mind to react

• The mind can be studied by breaking it into basic parts: sensations and ideas.

• (There is no free will in this view.)

What did James Mill mean by “the Mind is a Machine”?

Creative synthesis

John Stuart Mill argued that combining simple ideas can produce something new with different qualities from the individual ideas.

• ex: hydrogen + oxygen = water

• (simple idea + simple idea = new complex idea)

Mental chemistry

complex ideas are not summations of simple ideas

• idea derived from creative synthesis

Personal equation

Individual differences between people's observations or reaction times that can affect measurements.

• proposed by Fredrich Wilhelm Bessel

Extirpation

Surgically removing or destroying part of a brain to determine what function that area controls.

Clinical method

Studying a person's brain after death to detect damaged areas assumed to be responsible for behavioral conditions that existed before the person died.

electrical stimulation

Applying a small electrical current to the brain to determine what areas control particular functions.

• first promoted by Gustav Fritsch and Eduard Hitzig

two-point threshold

The smallest distance where you can tell that two separate points are touching your skin instead of one.

just noticeable difference

The smallest difference between two stimuli that you can notice.

• ex: person asked to lift two different weights at once. the smaller the difference, the less they noticed. The larger the difference, the more they noticed

• David K worked at the royal observatory noting times of star movements

• 20 years later, Fredrich investigated his errors and concluded different people naturally observe and record the same event at slightly different times.

  • personal equation

What conclusions did Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel make after studying David K’s mistakes?

Any science that relies on human observation

• astronomy, psychology, physiology

What sciences did Fredrich Wilhelm Bessel’s discovery have an impact on?

stimulating a particular sensory nerve produces the type of sensation associated with that nerve, regardless of exactly how the nerve is stimulated, because nerves have specific energies

• The nerve being activated helps determine what sensation you experience.

• ex: The optic nerve always produces a visual/light sensation, no matter how it is stimulated.

What did Johannes Muller theorize stimulation of a particular nerve leads to and why?

Doctrine of the specific energies of nerves

What is the name of the idea proposed by Johannes Muller about nerves

Marshall Hall

observed that decapitated animals could still move when their nerves were stimulated.

• This showed that movement is controlled by the brain and nervous system.

• Different parts of the brain and nervous system control different behaviors.

• studied reflex behavior

Pierre Flourens

Removed parts of pigeons’ brains and spinal chord to see how their behavior changed.

• Helped map different areas of the brain.

• extirpation

Paul Broca

worked with a man who couldn’t speak for many years.

• After the man died, Broca found that his brain had sustained an injury to the speech center.

• proposed the clinical method

Phrenology

incorrect belief that someone's personality and mental abilities could be determined by examining the shape and bumps of their skull.

• aka: cranioscopy

• ex: Someone feels a bump on your skull and claims it means you're highly intelligent.

Luigi Galvani experimented with frog legs.

• He found that electrical stimulation could make the muscles of a frog's leg contract.

• demonstrates: Nervous-system activity has an electrical nature.

What did Luigi Galvani’s work tell us about the nature of neural impulses?

• Discovered the direction of travel for nerve impulses

• concluded that the nervous system is made of separate individual nerve cells called neurons, rather than being one continuous network

What conclusions did Santiago Ramon y Cajal make about neural impulses?

He had difficulty communicating his findings to the scientific community because scientific journals of the day did not use Spanish

Why was it difficult for Santiago Ramon y Cajal to share his findings?

• German universities strongly supported scientific research.

• valued observable facts

• More resources/research labs and research universities

Why experimental psychology emerge in Germany and not elsewhere.

Showed that thinking and movement don’t happen at the exact same time (as previously believed)

• thought happens first, then movement follows after a measurable delay.

Why was Hermann von Helmholtz’s discovery that the speed of neural impulses was 90 ft/sec was so important for psychology?