psych history + contemporary psych

psych people and what they did

Wilhelm Wundt

• introspection, people reported their own thoughts and feelings to stimuli

• his student made structuralism

• focus on contents of mental process rather than function - break down mental processes, analyze structure of the mind

• ex. measured reaction times

• understanding inner experience

William James

• functionalism

• how mental activities helped organism fit into environment

• WHOLE MIND, not parts (diff from structuralism)

• purpose behind mental processes

• also believed in introspection

• led to evolutionary psych

• understanding inner experience

Sigmund Freud

• studied hysteria & neurosis

• studied the unconscious mind through dream analysis

• psychoanalytic theory - role of a person’s unconscious & early childhood experiences

• structural model of the psyche - instinctual desires, ego (rational thought), and superego (moral standards)

• understanding inner experience

Gestalt Psychology

• Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Köhler

• sensory experience broken down into different parts, but how those parts relate to each other is how a person responds in perception

• perception depends on the whole, not the parts

• contradict wundt’s idea of structuralism, breaking down mental processes doesn’t allow us to understand perception

• understanding inner experience

Ivan Pavlov

• classical conditioning

• worked with conditioned reflexes (like salivation)

• stimulus → response → learning

• influenced behaviorism, learning occurs through conditioning

John Watson

• believed objective analysis of the mind was impossible, unlike wundt and james

• focus on observable behavior & controlling that

• coined behaviorism!

• CBT

• no introspection

• used animals to experiment since that could be applied to humans

B.F. Skinner

• behaviorist

• operant conditioning

• response → outcome → learning

• how behavior was affected by consequences

• modify behavior through reinforcement and punishment

• positive & negative reinforcement

Abraham Maslow

• humanism

• humans have capacity for good

• hierarchy of human needs

• objected pessimism and determinism of freud

• behaviorism was too simple

• basic level needs met → higher level needs motivate behavior

Carl Rodgers

• client centered therapy

• patient takes lead

• unconditional positive regard, genuineness, and empathy

Cognitive Revolution

• human as a whole

• study mind

• incorporate mental functioning

• thru tasks (stroop task)

W.E.I.R.D

western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic

the communities that most psychological research studies

subdivisions of psych

• biopsychology

• evolutionary

• sensation and perception

• cognitive psychology

• developmental psychology

• personality psychology (five factor model)

• social psychology

• health psychology

• sport/exercise psychology

• clinical psychology

• forensic psychology