History of Psychology Exam 1

Nature of history

• studying the science of psychology → science is empirical, objective and observable

• History relies on sources of knowledge and interpretation → how do we know how reliable a source is? what about the interpretations?

Zeitgeist

“Spirit of a time” → the general moral, intellectual, and cultural climate of an era

Ortgeist

“Spirit of a place” → attitudes and conditions of a place

Presentism

Looking at historical event through a modern lens

• internal history → viewing a historical event in a vacuum

Historicism

Looking at a historical event through the scope of that time period

• external history → viewing these events within the social and political climate of that time

Why study the history of psychology?

knowing about the past to build on those ideas → early ideas still have relevance today; learn from past mistakes and understand the nuances of the field

Elementism

The idea that understanding a whole requires understanding the elements that make it up → how do these elements create a whole picture?

Elementism is a precursor to ___

Gestalt psychology—though much more broad

Anti-Elementism

Rejects the ideas of elementism → you do not need to break down complex concepts into simpler components to understand them

Reductionism

Explaining higher level phenomena through lower level factors

• memory loss → explained through the physiological occurrence in the brain that leads to memory loss

• Depression → explained by the symptoms of depression aka reducing it to its symptoms

Anti-Reductionism

Rejects Reductionism

• Depression → you cannot just explain depression with its symptoms because that would not fully explain what it feels like to have depression and what it looks like in every day life

Mind-Body Problem

What is the relationship between the mind and the body? can we really reduce the psychological conditions down to the physiological symptoms/conditions?

• still debated in the field of cognitive neuroscience

Epistemology

How do we acquire knowledge? How do we know what knowledge is reliable and valid? What counts as knowledge?

• sophists and socrates

Plato

Knowledge and the environment → our knowledge is imperfect because we can only learn about it through our senses

• introspection and rational reflection is a better source of knowledge because it is produced from within

• Environmentalism vs Behaviorism - what shapes us?

• Mind-Body Problem - are we a mind with a body or a body with a mind?

• Question everything → furthers knowledge in a pure way

Environmentalism

Our environment shapes our behavior

Behaviorism

Our instincts and innate characteristics shape us

Aristotle

“Peri Psyches”: On the soul → how souls differ depending on the living thing and their operations

• History of psychology → considered to be the founder of psychology

• Personality → actions are caused by inner states

• Senses → 5 senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch)

• The common sense → puts together the 5 senses into a unified experience of the world

• molecular vs molar analysis

• early behaviorism

Founder of Psychology

Aristotle

Molecular Analysis and Molar Analysis

Aristotle was interested in successive levels of matter and form

• A pillar is the form and the marble is the matter → A building is the form and the matter is the pillar → A polis is the form and the matter is the buildings, etc.

• God is the final form and is matter to nothing

Psychology in the Middle Ages

So basically dead lol

• anti-empiricism → don’t question the teachings of the church bozos

• authoritarianism was rampant → folks was getting executed for using their brains unfortunately :( 

• bubonic plague → dark ages where there really was no philosophical discussion happening

Renaissance

A revival of sorts → anti-authoritarianism and a rise in empiricism (yipee)

• Period of geographical exploration → broadening the horizons for discovery

• competition and individualism

• more fluid status

• All time high for cultural expression (Shakespeare, etc.)

• Galileo and Newton

Karl Muenzinger’s Scientific trends

• Physiology

• biology

• atomism

• quantification

• the founding of laboratories

Karl Muenzinger’s Philosophical trends

• Critical empiricism

• Associonationism

• Scientific Materialism

Gross Structural Correlate of Function

Relationship between the physical and behavioral events

• different functions are mediated by different structures

Sensory Nerves are __

Dorsal

Motor Nerves are ___

Ventral

Study of Reflexes

Related later to study of conditioning and stimulus-response relationships

Nervous Conduction

Helmholtz → recording time between stimulus and muscle twitch as a function of where the nerve was stimulated

Structure and function of the nervous system

Ramon y Cajal → individual neurons connected by synapses

• al or nothing principal

Phrenology

Pseudoscientific study of the shape of the skull to determine personality traits

Broca + Aphasia

links between damage in the broca’s area to aphasia → loss of language due to motor impairment

• brain speech center

Contralateral Representation

How the brain is organized → left controls right side and vice versa

Reaction time

Allows us to measure the time it takes to perform certain mental functions

Subtractive Method

Subtracting the time it takes to complete a simple task from the time it takes to do a more complex task

Statistical Developments

Normal Distribution (bell curve) and Correlation

Critical Empiricism

Logical critique of experience → how is knowledge acquired?

Nativism

The idea that ideas are innate

Empiricism

The idea that all ideas come from experience

• rely on observation, experience and measurement to obtain knowledge 

Empirism

philosophical assumption → all knowledge comes from experience and none is innate

Associationism

what makes ideas hang together? How do ideas bring forth other ideas? How do ideas congeal?

• how long does an association last? → how are things learned → what affects how the association is created?

Scientific Materialism

Attempts to describe living organisms and their processes as machines undergoing physical and chemical events

• Animals are bodies without a soul or machina → humans contain a soul making us anima