Chap 1: History and Approaches

Wilhelm Wundt

Wilhelm Wundt

• First psychological laboratory in Leipzig, Germany

• Introspection + structuralism

Introspection

The process of examining one's own thoughts, feelings, and emotions

Structuralism

Idea that the mind operates by combining subjective emotions and objective sensations.

William James

• Published The Principles of Psychology, the science’s first textbook

• Functionalism

Functionalism

• Psychological theory that focuses on the function or purpose of the mind and behaviour

• Mental and behavioural processes are adaptive and serve a purpose in helping an individual to survive and thrive in their environment.

Mary Whiton Calkins

Studied with William James and went on to become president of the APA (American Psychological Association)

Margaret Floy Washburn

First woman to earn a PhD in psychology

G. Stanley Hall

• Student of William James

• Pioneered study of child development

• First president of the APA (American Psychological Association)

Gestalt Psychology

Examining a person’s total experience because the way we experience the world is more than just an accumulation of various perceptual experiences.

Max Wertheimer

• Gestalt psychologist

• Argued against dividing human thought and behaviour into discrete structures

Psychoanalysis

• Unconscious mind determines how we think and behave

• Hidden part of ourselves builds up over years through repression

Repression

The pushing down into the unconscious events and feelings that cause so much anxiety/tension that our conscious mind cannot deal with them.

Sigmund Freud

• Psychoanalytic psychologist

• Criticized for being unscientific and creating unverifiable theories

Behaviourism

• Psychologists should look at only behaviour and causes of behaviour caused by stimuli (environmental events) and responses (physical reactions)

John B. Watson

• Behavioural psychologist

• Studied pioneering conditioning experiments of Ivan Pavlov

• Limit psychology to an observable phenomena, not unobservable concepts.

B. F. Skinner

• Behavioural psychologist

• Added idea of reinforcement

Reinforcement

Environmental stimuli that encourage or discourse certain responses.

Eclectic

Drawing from multiple perspectives

Humanist perspective

• Individual choice and free will

• Most of our choice is guided by physiological, emotional, or spiritual needs.

  • We choose how to act

Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers

Humanist psychologists

Psychoanalytic perspective

• The unconscious mind controls much of our thought and action

• Repression

  • Impulses and memories pushed into the unconscious mind

• Examine unconscious mind through dream analysis, word association, and other psychoanalytic therapy techniques.

Biopsychology

• Explain human thought and behaviour in terms of biological processes

• Cognition may be caused by genes, hormones, neurotransmitters, etc

Evolutionary (Darwinian) perspective

• Examine human thought and action in terms of natural selection

  • Some psychological traits might be advantageous for survival, and these traits would be passed down from parents to the next generation.

  • Charles Darwin

Behavioural perspective

• Explain human thought and behaviour in terms of conditioning

• Observable behaviours + response to stimuli

Cognitive perspective

• Explain human thought and behaviour in terms of how we interpret, process, and remember environmental events.

• Jean Piaget’s cognitive development theory

Social-cultural perspective

How thoughts and behaviours vary between cultures

Biopsychosocial perspective

Human thought and behaviour is a combination of biological + physiological + social factors