Chapter 1 - History of Psych

What is psychology

four goals of psychologists

  • description of what we observe

  • explanation of these observations

  • prediction of the circumstances that lead to the expression of a specific behaviour

  • controlling behaviour

levels of analysis

  • brain - brain structure and function

  • person - thoughts and feelings

  • group - family, friends, culture

Early days of psychology

  • Wilhelm Wundt

    • opened first psych lab in 1879

  • James Mark Baldwin

    • first psych lab in Canada 1870

School of thought

  • structuralism - Edward Titchener

  • functionalism - William James

  • Gestalt psychologist - focused on the whole

Major perspectives in psychology

  • Psychoanalysis

    • Founded by Sigmund Freud

    • focused on the role of the unconscious

    • the importance of early childhood experiences

  • behaviourism

    • founded by John B Watson

    • observable behaviour

    • phobias can be learned

    • Ivan Pavlov - classical conditioning on dogs

    • Edward Thorndike - Law of effect

    • BF Skinner - behaviour changes in response to consequences

    • Albert Bandura - social observation, bobo doll experiment

  • humanistic

    • psychoanalysis and behaviourism was dehumanizing

    • Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers

      • Car Rogers - client centered therapy

  • cognitive

    • mental processes, used scientific method to study the mind

    • become dominant perspective in psycholgoy

  • psychobiology/neuroscience

    • how brain structure and activity relates to behaviour

    • Karl Lashley - studied learning and memory changes in rats are removing different parts of the brain

    • Donald Hebb - described cell assemblies or how neurons work

    • Wilder Penifield - mild electrical stimulation on the different areas of the brain evokes different responses

    • Roger Sperry - functions of hemispheres of the brain