Chapter 5: Foundations: History

clinical domain

clinical domain

a question that considers treatment options for someone addicted to drugs deals with the

social domain

a question that deals with relationships between drug users and their families

biological domain

A question that concerns the effect of drugs on behavior

biopsychosocial approach

emphasizes the need to investigate the interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors as contributing to a behavior or a mental process.

evolutionary approach

draws upon the theories of Darwin.

Sociocultural

According to this approach, cultural values vary from society to society and must be taken into account if one wishes to understand, predict, or control behavior.

unconscious mind

those mental processes that we do not normally have access to but that still influence our behaviors, thoughts, and feelings.

conscious mind

a mental state of awareness that we have ready access to

Carl Rogers

stressed the role of unconditional positive regard in interactions and the need for a positive self-concept as critical factors in attaining self-actualization.

Abraham Maslow

proposed the idea of self-actualization, the need for individuals to reach their full potential in a creative way.

Classical conditioning

first identified by Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), was one of the behaviorists’ most important early findings.

Behaviorism

posits that psychology is the study of observable behavior.

William James

An American psychologist, opposed the structuralist approach.

materialism

is the belief that the only things that exist are matter and energy.

Thomas Hobbes

Believed that the idea of a soul or spirit, or even of a mind, is meaningless.

mind

refers to the sensations, memories, motives, emotions, thoughts, and other subjective phenomena particular to an individual or animal that are not readily observed.

Mary Whiton Calkins

was the first female graduate student in psychology, although she was denied a PhD because of her gender.

Hobbess philosophy

is known as materialism, which is the belief that the only things that exist are matter and energy.

Psychology

is the study of behavior and the mind.

John Watson

his assistant Rosalie Rayner applied classical conditioning to humans in the famed Little Albert experiment: they made loud sounds behind a 9- month- old whenever he would touch something white and furry, and voila: he was afraid of everything white and furry afterwards.

Rene Descartes

believed that humans were the exception to this rule because they possess minds.

Margaret Floy Washburn

was not only the first female PhD in psychology, she also served as the second female president of the American Psychological Association (APA), an organization formed in 1892.

Wundt

was trained in physiology and hoped to apply the methods that he used to study the body to the study of the mind.

Darwin

James, heavily influenced by ________, believed that the important thing to understand is how the mind fulfills its purpose.

philosophical concept

suggests that all people are born with no pre- existing mental content or knowledge and that knowledge is acquired through experience.

ancient Greeks

The ________ speculations on the nature of the mind heavily influenced the pre- history of psychology as a science.

Carl Rogers

stressed the role of unconditional positive regard in interactions and the need for a positive self- concept as critical factors in attaining self- actualization.

Charles Darwin

proposed a theory of natural selection, according to which all creatures have evolved into their present state over long periods of time.

Abraham Maslow

proposed the idea of self- actualization, the need for individuals to reach their full potential in a creative way.

Dorothea Dix

was crucial in advocating for the rights of mentally ill poor people, and she was instrumental in founding the first public mental hospital in the United States.

Freud

drew a distinction between the conscious mind- a mental state of awareness that we have ready access to- and the unconscious mind- those mental processes that we do not normally have access to but that still influence our behaviors, thoughts, and feelings.

Behavior

________ can best be explained in terms of how adaptive that ________ is to our survival.

Dualism

is a theme that recurs often in early psychology, but the distinction between body and spirit prefigures current debates around the difference between the brain (that is, the command center of the central nervous system) and the mind (that is, the sensations, memories, emotions, thoughts, and other subjective experiences of a particular individual)

Classical conditioning

first identified by Ivan Pavlov (1849- 1936), was one of the behaviorists most important early findings.

Evolutionary theory

affected psychology by providing a way to explain differences between species and justifying the use of animals as a means to study the roots of human behavior.

blank slate

It is the idea that everyone is a "________ "upon entering the world and that their beliefs, attitudes, and perspectives are shaped by the environment and the experiences that they have.

Sigmund Freud

developed a theory of human behavior known as psychoanalytic theory.

B F Skinner

through the development of his Skinner Box, described operant conditioning, in which a subject learns to associate a behavior with an environmental outcome.

Dualism

divides the world and all things in it into two parts: body and spirit.

Freud

________ was concerned with individuals and their mental problems.

Dualism divides the world and all things in it into two parts

body and spirit

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

proposed a theory of natural selection, according to which all creatures have evolved into their present state over long periods of time

Evolutionary theory

affected psychology by providing a way to explain differences between species and justifying the use of animals as a means to study the roots of human behavior

Behavior

a natural process subject to natural laws, refers to the observable actions of a person or an animal.

John Locke

extended Descartes’s application of natural laws to all things, believing that even the mind is under the control of such laws.

tabula rasa

Latin for “blank slate”

Edward Titchener

was a student in Wundt’s laboratory and was one of the first to bring the science of psychology to the United States.

Structuralism

entails looking for patterns in thought, which are illuminated through interviews with a subject describing his or her conscious experience.

Biological psychology

is the field of psychology that seeks to understand the interactions between anatomy and physiology (particularly, the physiology of the nervous system) and behavior.

Behavioral genetics

is the field of psychology that explores how particular behaviors may be attributed to specific, genetically based psychological characteristics.

Cognitive psychology

is an approach rooted in the idea that to understand people’s behavior, we must first understand how they construe their environment—in other words, how they think.

humanistic approach

is rooted in the philosophical tradition of studying the roles of consciousness, free will, and awareness of the human condition.

self-actualization

means accepting yourself and your nature, while knowing your limits and strengths.