Foundations of Psychology

Ink Blot Test

• what you see determines something about you psychologically

• created by Hermann Rorschach, a follower of freud

Freud’s Grand Theory of the Mind

• everything about you ~ broadly how the mind works

• day-to-day, development, maturation, mental illness, religion, war, love, etc.

• psychoanalysis encompasses everything in his theory

• believed in unconscious representations of sexuality (really reflects on him more than the world)

penis envy

• discover you don’t have a penis

• infer that you’ve been castrated

• become attracted to your father, then men in general because they have what was taken from you

Freuds interesting ideas

• unconscious processing explains much of our behavior

• we are often wrong about the reasons for our actions

• we can study unconscious mind through subtle behaviors, like slips in speech

id

• unconcious, unsophisticated

• instinctual drives, desire for food, sex, warmth, safety

• not rational, wants only to fulfill desire

ego

• conscious, sophisticated

• YOU

• “planner” that decides how/whether to get things that the id desires

superego

• unconscious, unsophisticated

• internalized societal rules that tell you what (not) to do

• can’t listen too hard because causes immense stress and anxiety

1. oral

• birth - 1 year

• mouth associated with pleasure

• stuck (weaned off breast milk too early): neediness, addictive personality, orality

2. anal

• 1 year - 3 years

• anus associated with pleasure (potty training, etc.)

• stuck (potty training went awry): compulsive, stingy, “anal retentive”

3. phallic

• 3 - 5 years

• genitals associated with pleasure

• stuck: need for domination

3,5. Oedipus Complex

• happens during phallic stage

• Mom is nice, I like her, I like her, but so does dad, should kill dad, but dad can castrate me so he wins.

• Forget about sex for a while

4. Latency

• 5 - puberty

• sexuality is repressed

• can’t get stuck here

5. Genital

• puberty onward

• conscious version of phallic stage

• attraction to mother generalizes to women

• if you were attracted to dad then you’re gay

• focus on love and work if didn’t get stuck in other stages

projection

attributing your own unacceptable impulses to others

repression

moving unacceptable feelings into unconsciousness

regression

falling back on an earlier, “easier” stage of development

criticisms of freud

• not rooted in empirical evidence

• unfalsifiable; vague predictions that can’t be proven or disproven

• perfect circularity ~ this is why you do something, and if you say its not, its cause you’re repressing it

• favors complex explanations for simple phenomena

B.F. Skinner’s Grand Theory of The Mind

behaviorism

behaviorist criticism of freud

• too mentalistic and unscientific

• behaviorism is anti-mentalistic and ultra-scientific

behaviorism

• interested in observable reward, punishment, stimulation, environment, response

• only do things you can physically study

• strong emphasis on learning; all nurture no nature

• minimal differences between species - human learning mechanisms are so simple that they are present in other animals

habituation

decline in response due to repeated exposure to stimulus

classical conditioning

• learning associations between one stimulus and another

• Watson, pavlov

• used with phobias and PTSD: exposure to scary stimulus in safe environment can decrease fear

pavlov’s dogs

• Unconditioned stimulus: food

• Unconditioned response: saliva

• Conditioned stimulus: bell

• Conditioned response: saliva (w/o food)

Little Albert

• Watsons classical conditioning experiment

• babies enter world without fear and gain it through CC

operant conditioning

learning associations between actions and consequences

Thorndike’s Puzzle Box

• cat do random actions at first with no educated input, then when notice progress from an action they continue to do it

• don’t solve the puzzle by insight, but rather trial and error that leads to reward, which then becomes memorized

Law of Effect

actions get reinforced according to consequences

shaping

rewarding incremental improvements (dog gets treat for touching broom, eventually can work way up to cleaning for you)

positive reinforcement

increase likelihood of behavior through rewarding stimulus

ex: give dog bone

negative reinforcement

increase likelihood of behavior through the removal of a negative stimulus

ex: remove heavy collar

punishment

decrease likelihood of a behavior by applying negative stimulus

ex: yell at dog

Fixed Schedules of Reinforcement

• reinforce every time

• reinforce every Nth time

• less effective

Variable Schedule of Reinforcement

• reinforce every Nth time, on average

• ex: slot machine

• keeps person/thing coming back to get more

Behaviorism Falsities

• incorrect claim that internal/unobservable phenomena are unscientific

• untrue that everything is learned — the dog knew to salivate for food, and the baby knew loud noises were scary without any prior conditioning

Behaviorism doesn’t explain…

• why we talk to ourselves

• create art

• give bad news to an enemy

• fantasize about pleasant situations

• Skinner say we do bc it feels good (self-reinforcement), Chomsky say that’s empty (doesn’t say anything about why we do it) and simply false (self-talk doesn’t always feel good)

Both exist and We can study both scientifically

• human nature: we are not blank slates, we are shaped by evolution like every animal

• internal mental states: we have thoughts, goals, and desires, not just behaviors