AP Psychology - Unit 0: Introduction to Psychology

*This corresponds to Unit 1: Psychology’s History and Approaches in the Myers’ Psychology for the AP Course

Nature-Nurture Issue

  • nature: biological heredity and genetic predipositions inherited by an individual at birth influences their development

    • The importance of individual's innate qualities

    • Proposed by Plato, supported by Descrates and Charles Darwin through natural selection

  • nurture: environmental factors influence an individual’s development

    • Personal growth

    • Proposed by Aristotle, supported by John Locke through tabula rasa

  • nature-nurture issue: the controversy over the significance and influence of genetics and experiences to the development of psychological traits and behavior

    • Biology vs. environment / Genetic vs. experience

History of Psychology

Prescientific Psychology

Prescientific psychology had philosophical and physiological approaches

  • Socrates and Plato

    • Principles based on logic

    • Mind is separate from the body

    • Nativist — knowledge is innate (born within)

      • Supports nature

  • Aristotle

    • Principles based on observation

    • Empiricist — knowledge is not preexisting but cultivated through observations and experiences

      • Supports nurture

  • Descrates

    • mind-body dualism: philosophy that distinguishes the mind and the body as distinct entities; the mind is immaterial and the body is material

  • John Locke

    • tabula rasa (blank slate): idea that individuals are born without knowledge and knowledge comes from perception and experiences

  • Francis Bacon

    • A founder of modern science

    • Developed the scientific method

Empiricism

Through the discovery of empiricism, a scientific approach to psychology is created.

empircism: the philosophical view that knowledge comes from experience

Scientific Psychology

Modern psychology approaches psychology through observations and experimentation

  • Wilhelm Wundt

    • Reaction time experiment

    • Father of psychology

    • Established the first psychology laboratory

  • G. Stanley Hall

    • Established the first formal U.S. psychology laboratory

Early Schools of Thoughts

Scientific psychology created the branches of psychology

  • structuralism: