Week 1: Introduction to Psychology

Psychology

Scientific study of behaviour, thought, perception, emotion, and experience, and how they can be affected by physical, mental, social, and environmental factors.

The Scientific Method

A way of learning through collecting observations, developing theories, and making predictions.

Biopsychosocial Model

Explains behaviour through biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors.

Empiricism

A philosophical view that knowledge comes through experience.

Determinism

The belief that all events are governed by lawful, cause-and-effect relationships.

Phrenology

A study of localization of the brain function. Believed that different traits and abilities were distributed across different parts of the brain.

Fechner

A physicist that studied sensation and perception. Coined the term psychophysics.

Darwin

A naturalist that studied plants and animals. Created the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Natural selection

Genetically inherited traits that contribute to the survival and reproductive success are more likely to survive. Includes behaviour, memory, emotion, etc.

Freud

A physician that studied hypnosis and created psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis

Psychological approach that explains how behaviour and personality are influenced by the unconscious mind.

Nature vs Nurture

How hereditary and environment influence behaviour and mental processes.

Wundt

Studied introspection, reaction time, and structuralism. Established psychology as an independent scientific field, developed first lab.

Structuralism

Analyze experience by breaking it down into basic elements and understanding how they work together.

James

A physician that studied functionalism. Wrote the first psychology textbook, The Principles of Psychology, led to the development of functionalism and evolutionary psychology.

Functionalism

The study of the purpose and function of behaviour and experience.

Evolutionary psychology

Explains modern human behaviour in terms of forces acting upon our ancestors.

Behaviourism

Studying observable behaviour with no reference to mental events or instincts as possible influences. Dominated the first half of the 20th century of North American psychology.

Pavlov

A behaviourist who observed dogs in a lab that learned to associate a research tech entering the lab and food. Deduced because the dogs would salivate before food delivery.

Skinner

A behaviourist who created radical behaviourism.

Radical behaviourism

A foundation of behaviour was how an organism responded to rewards and punishments.

Watson

Watson believed that nature does not play a role in development (tabula rasa theory) and only overt behaviour should be measured and analyzed. Studied environmental influenced on development, behaviour, and habits (“Little Albert” experiment).

Cognitive psychology

Focuses on processes including memory, thinking, and language.

Humanisitic psychology

Focuses on the unique aspects of each person, including the freedom to act and rational thought. The belief that humans are fundamentally different from other animals.

Rogers

Psychotherapist who developed Person-Centered Therapy based on humanistic principles.

Hebb

Studied how cells in the brain change during learning. Created Hebb’s law (cells that fire together, wire together), showed that memory is related to cellular level activity.

Penfield

Treated seizures, created maps of sensory and motor cortices in the brain to prevent damage to surrounding brain regions.