History and Theory midterm

Reflexivity

• Confounding of the agent and of the object of the study so that

1. The knowledge produced by the agents (and their characteristics) effects how objects respond while being studied

2. The knowledge produced by psychology applies as much to the agents as the objects

   • Agent = the psychologist

   • Object = participant

   • This is a recognition that we apply the knowledge to others, ask much as it to the researcher

example of reflexivity

• Intelligence testing

• Dr Horace Mann Bond: black people performed worse in IQ tests when the test was administered by a white tester than a black tester

• One must recognize the context, bias, and environment behind research

• This helps one to appreciate and better understand human behaviour

• Factors outside of psychology affect the definition and practise of psychology, the type of knowledge generated, how this knowledge is received

• Psychology and psychologist exist within a web of other factors: social, political, cultural

• Context is KEY

• One must look at the events going on around the researchers when major studies came out

Social Constructionism Leipzig Model, Germany, Wundt vs Paris Model, France, medical context

• Leipzig Model, Germany, Wundt

  • experimenter was also a subject

  • equal status btw experimenter and subject

• Paris Model, France, medical context

  • experimenter in control

  • subject recipient of treatment or manipulation

 

• The agent was also the object (researching on themselves) - Wundt study

• Paris model was the opposite - there was an authoritative control over participants

• Social constructionism shows the fundamental difference in how studies were conducted and how it changed the result of the findings

 

Indigenization

• Big I: Indigenous Peoples’ psychology; theories, viewpoints, etc.

• little i: psychology is connected to and originates from particular

• peoples and places

• modern psychology originated in Germany and exported around the globe in the late 1890s

• early 1900s-1920s: U.S. Psych became bigger than European Psychology

  • psychology was international (i.e. not homogenous)

• WW2 + suspicion of Germans as Nazis →US psychology became dominant

• Lower case "I" indigenization = this is the connection of people and places in psychology and embracing differences among cultures

• This is the opposite of homogenization (same)

Indigenous psychology movement

• Psychology is rooted in euro-centric and western cultural beliefs

• a movement against the homogenization of psychology, mainly in global south and low- and middle-income countries that emerged post WW2, gaining international attention in the 1980s (Danzinger, 2009)

• the movement developed in the context of anti-colonialist movements (e.g. civil rights, Black nationalist movements)

• led to both superficial and fundamental changes in psychological research

 

• Schools of thought in psychology = acknowledging the different lenses of psychology

• today, psychology is more international (i.e. not universal or homogenous) than it was before the 1980s

• explicit efforts to make it and keep it international

• efforts to be aware of the imperialist nature of psychology that came from Europe and the U.S.

• schools of psychology

assumptions of western Eurocentric/North American psychology

see below

Individuality

 individual is the focus of behavior. Determinants of behavior reside in the individual’s brain/mind, and interventions must be at this level rather than the broader societal context.

Reductionism

Small, tangible units of study that yield well to controlled experimentation are favored.

Experiment-based empiricism

An emphasis on experiments with controls and experiment group comparisons and uses of ANOVA analyses that often account for 5 to 10 percent of variance. Lab studies are often favored over field studies.

Scientism

 The belief that methods of the physical sciences can be applied similarly to social and behavioral phenomena, which results in spurious methods and conclusions that are inappropriate to the subject under study or that avoid studying certain subjects.

Quantification/measurement

“Whatever exists at all ... can be measured,” said Edward Thorndike (Thorndike, 1918). Unless something under study can be quantified, it is not acceptable for study. This, of course, leads to operationalism as the standard for assessing concepts.

Materialism

 Favors variables for study that have a tangible existence rather than higher order constructs — I can see it and touch it under amicroscope.

Male dominance

Years of male dominance favors particular topics, methods and populations for study — remember “involutional melancholia,” the psychiatric disease assigned to middle-aged women.

“Objectivity”

Assumption that we can identify and understand immutable aspects of reality in a detached way, unbiased by human senses and knowledge.

Nomothetic laws

Search for generalized principles and “laws” that apply to widespread and diverse situations and populations because of an identification and admiration for the physical sciences.

Rationality

Presumes a linear, cause-effect, logical, material understanding of phenomena and prizes this approach in offering and accepting arguments and data generation

Methods of Historians of psychology

• Historiography: techniques and principles used in historical research; actual writing of history.

 

1. Lost or suppressed data

2. Data distorted in translation

3. Self-serving data

• Lost or suppressed data leads to problems of important data never being found

• Self serving data: people wanting to present their work in a certain way. One that best presents their work in a certain light that can be incorrect or false

 

Epistemology

• branch of philosophy concerned with theories of knowledge.

• i.e., theories about how we acquire knowledge.

• addresses where knowledge comes from

nativism

• notion that (some) knowledge is innate

  •  i.e., framework exists from birth.

empiricism

•  knowledge is acquired via experience.

  •  i.e., from observation and learning

rationalism

• reason is the source of knowledge.

  • mind has innate capacity to organise info from the senses.

  • senses are insufficient for knowledge.

  • mind is active, it interprets information from senses.

  • reasons and discerns meaning.

authority

• Epistemology: how do we know what we know.

• Rationalism: This where the mind is active with the information from our senses and uses reason to come to an understanding if things

• Authority is in direct contrast of rationalism

Differences in epistemologies

• Indigenous epistemologies: this means there re different viewpoints WITHIN the ind groups. There are also similarities. But there is no single ind epistemology

• This shows how there are difference between the ind and western worlds on how knowledge is generated.

• Ind is more social relation based, and western is more based on science and empiricism

 

• Both definitions are valid and both are good to know. This is known as two eyed seeing, where two worlds intersect.

Monism

• e., is the mind separate from the brain?

• monism, dualism

• monism = one fundamental reality

  • perfectly interconnected world

  • problem? Which reality is the real one?!

Types of monism

• Materialism is a type of monism where all real things are composed and reduced to matter.

• Idealism is the belief that mental experience is all that matters. Reality is created by your own personal and lived experience

• What's common between the two, is that either its both the mind and body, or its only the mind. But both agree that there is only one perfect and interconnected world.

Dualism

• dualism = two realities

  • mind and body

  • Dualism simply means there is a mind and a body. There are different types within it

• interactionism:

• mental and physical events are real

• mental events influence other mental events and body events

• body events influence other body events and mental events

• Interactionism: The connection between the mind and body is a cyclical event and one that is completely connected BUT not one that is the same - unlike monism.

• This one allows for the cross over between mental and physical events

psychophysical parallelism:

• mental events and physical events are real

• mental events influence other mental events

• physical events influence other physical events

• do not influence each other

 

• Mental events CANNOT influence physical events

Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650)

• founder of psychology? ... no, he wasn’t a psychologist

• influenced by Aristotle

  • Aristotle's vegetative soul, animal soul, rational soul

  • soul was the basic element or unit; things were alive because they had a soul

• Descartes wonders if anything is true?!

• concludes: “I think therefore I am, or exist”

 

• truth found through human ability to reason

• apply principles of geometry to other areas of knowledge

what were his “rules”

 

1. Rule of evidence: “never accept anything as true unless I recognised it to be certainly and evidently as such ...”

   1. axioms = self-evident and certainly true features

2. Rule of Analysis: divide each problem into smaller parts

3. Rule of Synthesis: start w/ simplest and gradually move to most complex

4. Rule of Enumeration and Review: ensure you have considered all components of the problem (i.e. break it down), and then evaluate the process

Nativist and Rationalist

• argued one can arrive at truth on their own, and believe in innate ideas, from God

• nativist ~ innate ideas exist pre-experience

• Rationalist

  • He believed the truth one has and the knowledge is there, but its yet to be uncovered

  • He believed the mind is sperate from the body as well. in slide 21

  • He has nativist views and rationalist perspectives

 

• The pineal glad is what linked the mind with the body.

• Be believed in the interaction of the mind and the body (dualism)

• He saw the body as a machine

  • Not a new idea

  • Animals - mechanistic

  • Humans are different from animals

Descartes mind body interactionism 

1. separate mind (soul) and body

2. human body & physical things – same rules

   1. -mind - own rules that are from God

3. know self via introspection; the act of looking inwards

 

• The mind is governed by its own rules given by God

• The time this was written was at a time when religion was at an all time high

• His last point means that the only way we know ourselves is though looking at ourselves and the introspection of us

Descartes: philosophy of the mind

• Soul and the brain

• Soul; as rational, unified

• Yet the brain is so divided

• Where do they meet?

John Jocke (1632 - 1704)

• Knowledge comes from experience, very similar to empiricism

• The mind is a blank slate

Gottfried Leibniz (1646 - 1716)

• mind like veined marble

• mind innate properties, like reason

• “necessary truths”

• “except the intellect itself!”

 

• He did not believe the mind is blank or made of paper, we have innate properties

• The veined marble means you can take away the colors of the marble, but the veins make is difficult to change the base structure of the marble

• He proposed the psychophysical parallelism and how its governed by the hand of god.  There is no interaction between the mind and the body

 

• psychophysical parallelism

• two clocks

• hence, study the mind separate from the body

• philosophical basis for psychology as separate from physiology

his theory on monadology

• The fundamental building blocks of the universe are made of simple building blocks called monads

• These are infinite

• They are soul like and not material atoms that make up the mental and physical reality

Levels of awareness 

• apperception – highest level, focus attention, self-consciousness or reason

• perception – aware, but not as sharp as apperception

• petites perception – below level of awareness, but critical for higher levels of perception

• Leibniz’ waterfall analogy; petite perceptions as individual droplets

• thresholds

Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804)

• agrees with elements of empiricism and rationalism

• agrees knowledge from experience

• But! need a priori knowledge

• “Critique of Pure Reason” (1781/1787)

• Hume, the skeptic

• noumenal world: external world, “things-in-themselves,” existing in a “pure” state

•  phenomenal world: internal world, subjective

• psychology would never be a science (see your text)

Kants domains of reality

• Hume, the skeptic

• Noumenal world: external world, "things in themselves" existing in a "pure" state

• Phenomenal world: internal world, subjective

• Psychology would never be a science

• He believed psychology would never be a science because mental phenomena cannot be observed directly by an independent observer as can be done with physical phenomena

German psychophysics

•  Study of the relation between the perception of a stimulus event and the physical dimensions of the stimulus being perceived.

  • Psychological part: perception

  • Physical part: physical dimensions

• These methods were mainly a German phenomenon

Ernst Weber (1795 - 1878)

• Two-point thresholds

• Weber’s Law

• Some key terms/points:

  • Not absolute difference that matters, but proportional relation

  • Thresholds

  • “Just noticeable difference” (jnd)

• Just noticeable difference (JND) The threshold of where you can sense the noticeable difference between weight or size of substance

 

1. Measurement and math to understand mental events

2. Physical world: psychological experience is not one-to-one ratio

• Mathematical relation between mental and physical

• These are an application of mathematical principles to mental events - in this case, sensation and perception

 

Gustav Fechner (1801-1889)

• Fechner wanted to disprove materialism because it ignored the existence of a soul and the interconnection between physical and soul

• experimental psychologist?

•  psychophysics to tackle mind-body question

• measure psychological sensations and physical stimuli

• 1860 publication, “Elements of Psychophysics

•  

 

• Deeply religious and very big on the workings of the soul

• He created psychophysics to tackle the questions of the mind and body questions. He wanted to measure both experiences

• Its said the he was the first to create a book on experimental psychology

Fechner elements of psychophysics

• Use jnd as a unit of measurement

• Absolute threshold = as the intensity increases above the threshold, a person experiences a jnd (then another, and another)

• Difference thresholds

 

• The JND above the threshold is whats known as the difference threshold

• The JND happen slowly, light a light changing, but we don’t know the EXACT point in which the change happens

Muller and the law of specific energies of nerves

• “an impression made on two different nerves of sense, though with the same instrument, will produce two distinct sensations” (Bell, 1811

• Müller: nervous system acts as a filter between people and the external world

• Handbook on Human Physiology (1833-1840)

 

• A good example of this is the tongue and how some nerves are for taste, and some for sensation

• Our understanding of the world is made through the physiology of our nervous system

• He made THE authoritative textbook on human physiology in the 1800s

Mulers influence on Helmholtz

• Helmhotz studied with Müller; befriended Ernst Brücke, Emil du Bois Reymond, and Karl Ludwig

  • vitalism = idea that there exists a life force

  • materialism = the only reality is physical matter

• Helmholtz’s Theory of Colour Perception

• Christine Ladd-Franklin’s Evolution Theory of Colour Perception

 

• Mullers students started to challenge his work with the idea of vitalism (there is a life force) and materialism (the only reality is physical reality)

• That there's life outside human physiology

Wilhelm Wundt (1832 - 1920) and a new science

• He was the first to open up the doors of experimental psychology

• He wanted to asses the questions of the mind and the brain

• He was one of the first to formalize the study if psychology as we know it today

• He wanted to make psychology less physiology (can't be tested) and wanted to make them more experimental so it could be tested

• He provided one of the first multi disciplinary perspectives to psychology (bio, social..)

Introspection and psychology

• introspection methodology is a cornerstone of psychology

• however, the nature of introspection was hotly debated, namely:

  • How it should be defined

  •  How it should be used

  •  Implications of the findings using this method

• key figures who disagreed on introspection included: Wundt, Oswald Külpe (Würzburg School), William James, Edward Titchener

Wundts Volkerpsychologie

• Folk Psychology” or “Cultural Historical Psychology”

  • higher mental processes (language, morality, culture, religion, learning) connected to history, cultural background and social environment

• non-experimental methods only were useful for studying higher mental processes: cross-cultural comparisons, historical analysis, case studies, ethnographic data, phenomenological accounts of experience

• cultural evolution of human processes: Primitive Man, Totemic Age, Age of Heroes and Gods, Development of Humanity

• By studying culture, we could better understand the human mental process. Looking at the primitive man, and those with lower mental ability

Wundt and ethnocentrism

• Wundt did not believe mental ability of those from “primitive cultures” was inferior; rather, they still had thepotential to develop complex forms of thought, social organization, etc.

• i.e., it was a lack of cultural experience and development, nothing about individual’s abilities

• ethnocentric bias: his work still implies Western European cultures are better, characteristic of the time Wundt worked

 

• People from more primate cultures, and the opportunity and potential to develop more complex forms of thought. It was just a lack of cultural experience, and not so much at the individual level

• Western European cultures are superior, and with time, more primitive cultures just needed the time to "catch up"

 

• Both of these people came up with paired association (when given a list of words, your later asked to recall the word that associates with the first word) tasks to test memory

• 
  

  

G stanley Hall (1844 - 1924)

• First PhD in psychology

• Leipzig in 1879

• Lecture at Harvard and subsequently hired at John Hopkins

• First experimental psychology lab in 1883

 

• He wrote the first book on adolescence

• He went to go study with wudnt the same year he opened his lab and figured that things can be done better

• He opened the first experimental lab in psychology in the US

• He is known as one of the pioneers on the notion of developmental psychology

• founded the American Journal of Psychology (1887)

  • First journal in the US to publish psychology research

•  instrumental in forming the APA in 1892

• pioneer of the study of adolescence and developmental psychology

• early proponent of eugenics (discussed later)

 

Chrisine Ladd Franklim (1847 - 1930)

• studied math at Johns Hopkins, completed requirements in 1882

• Did not receive her PhD until 1927

• elaborated on work by Müller and Helmholtz on colour vision

• challenged “men’s only” policy in psychology

 

• Although she went to school at JH (they thought she was a man based on her name at first), she wasn't given her PDh till about 40 years later because women couldn’t be given advanced degrees

• She is one of the instrumental women who fought back against the sexiest beliefs that women cannot work in the field.

James Mark Baldwin (1861 - 1934)

• PhD from Princeton

• opened first psychology lab at the University of Toronto in 1889

• founded the journals called Psychological Review and Psychological Bulletin

 

• He argued that psychology's first goal should always be structural. Then the second should be functional. Know what works, then know how it works

• Anatomy created the basis for physiology, so structuralism should be the basis for functionalism

Titchener and the experimentalists

• He created an informal group pf experimental psychologists made of up all men

• He wanted to a group made of all men where they didn’t have to sensor themselves and could do whatever they wanted pretty much

• He didn’t want women in the group, but he supported women in his labs

KNOW THIS TIMELINE

Evaluating Titcheners contributions

• Titchener was one of the first to propose that psychology was an experimental discipline

• focused on trained adult observed

• however, there are important limitations to his contributions, including:

  •  individual differences?

  • what about children, adolescents?

  •  lack of application outside of the lab

• He did a lot of basic lab research so his work wasn't easily applicable outside the lab

Fall of structuralism

• Structuralism was very isolated

•  primary reason for its downfall? → its methods

1. specifically, introspection

2. inconsistent results across RT studies

3. controversy over imageless thoughts (kinesthetic sensations)

4. bias by using trained observers

• behaviourism contributed a great deal to end structuralism

• revisit in week on Behaviourism

• He has inconsistent results in his reaction time studies

why didnt Wundts Volkerpsychologie catch on

• Why didn’t Wundt’s folk psychology catch on?

1. Cultural differences? (Ellis & Stam, 2015)

• Germany: defend science to philosophers

• North America: defend to academics and administrators

  • Quantified the value of the research, and this would have been connected to application of new statistics

2. cross-cultural work of the 1900s by psychologists was poorly done and mainly

by “sabbatical opportunists” (Lonner, 1974)

•  culture considered an external force to be statistically considered

• sought to confirm eugenic and racist ideas

Contributions of functionalism

 

• Most of modern psychology as we know it is

•  functional. Its supposed to be broad and not as fixed

• When titchner died, structuralism died

KNOW THIS TIMELINE

Indigenization

• resistance against Euro-centric or German-centric versions of psychology

• emergence of a functional, more applied psychology

review this summary of everything

• emergence of Psychology as a distinct science via opening of research labs in Germany and North America

  • Big P and little p psychology

•  different variations in the use of introspection as a metho

•  experimental psychology (vs. Folk Psychology) emerged as the exemplar

• evolution of psychology in North America

  • study in Europe, return to America, open research labs

  • different topics, schools of thought

• Structuralism and Functionalism as dominant schools of thought for the new

science

Different definitions of psychology (indigenous and western)

Ind definition is very dependant on individual worldviews and these views differ depending on which group and tribe you are a part of.

Different methodologies

3 ways Darwinian theory or evolutionary theory impacted psychology

• As Heidbreder (1933: 106) observed, Darwinian theory implied that

  • psychologists had to study people in terms of their "development both genetic and phylogenetic,

  •  [their] position in the array of animal species,

  • and the means by which [they] adapt themselves to [the] environment:'

•  Each of these implications became an area of study in psychology. 

• Comparative psychology. Darwin established "the continuity between human and

nonhuman animals. From his time on, one could not reasonably regard humans as fundamentally independent of the rest of the animal kingdom" (Dewsbury, 2009b: 69). This

suggests that a great deal can be learned about people by comparing them with other

species. Thus, the study of animals should be part of psychology

• Another Darwinian idea to have a profound influence on psychology was variation between members of the same species (Herrnstein and Boring, 1966: 407). Individual members of a species differed from each other, and these individual differences determined how well or how poorly individuals adapted to the environment. The measurement of individual differences became the focus of a great deal of work in

psychology

3 methods for making psychological measurements outlined by Fechner

1. Method of just noticeable differences. Also known as the method of limits, this procedure can be used to measure both the absolute threshold and the differential threshold. In its simplest form the method involves increasing or decreasing the magnitude of a stimulus until the subject detects a change. Thus, for example, one could have a device that emitted a tone ofwhich the volume could be continuously varied (e.g., Woodworth and Schlosberg, 1954: 196). You could begin with the volume control completely off and then gradually increase the volume until a listener reported being able to hear the tone. You would then record the volume at which the listener began to report being able to hear the tone.

2. Method of right and wrong cases. This procedure is also called the method of constant stimuli because it relies on a set of preselected stimuli that vary in magnitude. These stimuli are presented to the observer in a random order, and it is the observer's task to say whether or not each one is perceptible. The absolute threshold corresponds to that value of the stimulus which the observer reports being able to perceive 50 per cent of the time.

3. Method of average error. The method of average error is similar to the method of limits in that it involves one stimulus that does not vary and another stimulus that does. However, in this case the variable stimulus is under the control of the observer and is not varied by the experimenter. For example, the observer could be shown a line and asked to adjust a variable line so that the two appear equal in length. This is called the point of subjective equality. There will almost inevitably be some error in the subjects' judgments, the average of which constitutes the difference threshold.