Psych 100 part 1

What is psychology?

the study of mental processes and behavior

4 goals of psychologists

- description of what they observe

- explanation of why a mental process or behavior is occuring

- prediction of the circumstances that lead to a certain behavior or mental process

- provide advice on how to control behavior and mental processes

Influences of when studying behaviors and mental processes

- the brain (neuron activity, brain structure, genes)

- the person (emotions, ideas, thoughts)

- the group (friends, family, population, culture)

what is philosophy

the study of knowledge, reality, and the nature of meaning and life

what did philosophers study

- how the human mind worked

- how the body relates to the mind

- whether knowledge was inborn or learned from experience

Early philosophers and what they understood

- Hippocrates

- Plato

- Aristotle

These philosophers proposed problems and solutions which is the core of modern scientific methods

what is the role of philosophy in the psychology's development

people thinking systemactically about the human mind and behaviour

Rene Descartes

- First of the modern philosophers and an early scientist

- Believed that the meaning of the natural world should be understood through science and math

Johannes Muller

Advocated for scientists to study the relationship between physical stimuli and their psychological effects

Herman von Helmholtz

measured the speed of neural impulses and discovered that neural impulses were not instantaneous

What is the role of physiology and psychophysics?

people thinking about the relationship between human biology and anatomy and human thought and behaviors

Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution

- proposed the theory of evolution in his book The Origin of the species

- all life on Earth comes from on common ancestor

- natural selection and adaptive variations

Natural selection

chance variations in one's behavior are passed down from parents to children

Adaptive variations

some variations are more advantageous because they help an organism survive

Darwin's role in psychology

Theory of evolution by natural selection offered insight into how and why human brains and bodies developed the way they did

- our brain and nervous systems were "selected: b/c they helped us survive

Wilhelm Wundt

- Father of experimental psychology

- eastablished the first psychology lab in Germany

- Studied psychology through empirically-drvien experiments

Wilhelm Wundt's role in psychology

- begun studying psychological phenomena scientfically

- different psychological scientists began debating the right scientific methods for understanding and studying human psychology

Edward Titchener

- developed structuralism as an attempt to try to identify all the elements of consciousness

- Introspection - careful, reflective an systematic observation of the details of mental processes

Structuralism

Looking for the elements of consciousness

- the goals was the describe observable mental processes rather than to explain, predict, or control

- the principle was rejected by other psychologists, but some elements survived

Structuralism contribution to psychology

- psychologists should focus on observable events

- scientific study should focus on simple elements as building blocks of complex experiences

Functionalism

The flow of consciousness

- William James believed that mental processes were fluid instead of fixed elements

- emphasized the functions of the mind in adapting to a changing environment

Functionalist scientist contribution to psychology

- used empirical methods that focused on the causes and consequences of behavior

- emphasis was also placed on studying animals, children and individuals with mental disorders

Willam James

- set up one of the first psycholgy labs in the US at Harvard

- wrote the first psychology textbook, Principles of psychology

Gestalt psychologists

- said consciousness cannot be broken down into elements

- said that we percieve things as whole perceptual units

- the whole is greater than the sum of its parts

- learning is tied to what we percieve

Kanzia illusion

- We see things not merely as there are but how how our brains interpret them

- this visual illusion causes your visual system to create a floating square that does not actually exist

Sigmund Freud

- championed the belief that peoples' behaviors are based on their unconscious desires and conflicts

- Freud developed a form of therapy, psychoanalysis, that aimed to resolve unconscious conflists

Psychoanalytic theory

highlight the importance of unconscious processes

Behaviourism

psychological research should only focus on behavior you can observe

Edward Thorndike

proposed research finding form the study of animals could help explain human behaviour

Ivan Pavlov

- discovered dogs could learn to associate a bell with an automatic behaviour

- called classical conditioning

John B. Watson

- conducted the Little Albert experiment, demonstrating that children (people) could be classically conditioned

B.F. Skinner

- developed operant condition to shape behaviour

- reinforcement increases and punishment decreases the likelihood of a behaviour occuring

Albert Bandura

- described social learning in children

- we now know that this type of learning can be observed in several species of primates

Behaviourism contribution to psychology

observable behavior is an important way to study human psychology

- hard to know what's going on in smo's mind

Humanistic psychology

- subjective experiences may be more important than behaviour

- focus on capacity for personal, positive growth and the freedom to choose one's own destiny

Carl Rogers

- developed "client centred therapy"

- the client is an equal and a client's thoughts and feelings should be mirrored

- the atmosphere should have unconditional support and positive regard

Abraham Maslow

Developed a theory of motivation that consists of a hierarchy of needs

Huamistic psychology contributions

Subjectivity and human potential are important targets of study

- you often can't directly study this with just behavior

cognitive psychology

the role of mental processes in how people process information, develop language, solve problems and think

cogitive psychologist compare the human mind?

to a computer

Uric Neisser

coined the term "cognitive psychology" as the study of information processing

Cultural psychology

the study of how cognitive processes vary across different population due to socio-cultural envrionments

cross cultural psychology

the study of the cognitive processes that are universal regardless of culture

cognitive psychology contribution

- useful to think of the human mind like it's a computer

- the brain has some core "hardware" that helps us compute things

- the brain also has "software" that is programmed by our cultural surroundings

Psychobiology/Neuroscience

the study of brain structure and activity and how this relates to/controls behaviour

Karl Lashley

Attempted to determine which areas of the brain are responsible for memory, learning and other functions

Donald Hebb

Canadian scientist that developed the concept of cell assembly

- neurons develop networks of connections based on experiences as we develop and interact with our environments

psychobiology/neuroscience contributions

- the brain is at the centre of human psychology

- brain structure and function are important targets of study

(now technology)

3 branches of psychology

1. Clinical and counselling psychology

- work as therapists

2. Academic psychology

- work as professors, teaching and research

3. Applied psychology

- work in schools, marketing firms, research institutions, applying psychology to real-life situations

Shared value of all psychologists

- theory driven: use theories to explain behavior

- empirical: based on research

- multi-level: explained by the brain, the individual and the group

- contextual: psychological perspectives continue to evolve, which impacts work in psychology

Current trends in psychology

Growing diversity

- more women, minority

- clutural psych

Advances in technology

- computers and brain imaging techniques have led to new research in cognitive and social neurosciences