Ch.5 - History of Psychology

Learning Objectives

  • Describe the precursors to the establishment of the science of psychology.

  • Identify key individuals and events in the history of American psychology.

  • Describe the rise of professional psychology in America.

  • Develop a basic understanding of the processes of scientific development and change.

  • Recognize the role of women and people of color in the history of American psychology

A Prehistory of Psychology

  • John Locke and Thomas Reid were philosophers that promoted empiricism

Physiology and Psychophysics

  • German physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz measured the speed of neural impulse and explored the physiology of hearing and vision. His work proved that our sense and deceive us

Scientific Psychology Comes to the United States

  • Edward Bradford Titchener

    • A student of Wundt’s, he brought to America a brand of experimental psychology referred to as “structuralism”

      • Structuralist’s were interested in the contents of the mind

    • Organized the Society of Experimental Psychologists but excluded women, which was ironic since his first doctoral student was Margaret Floy Washburn.

  • Margaret Floy Washburn

    • First woman to earn a PhD in psychology

Toward a Functional Psychology

  • William James, G. Stanley Hall, and James McKeen Cattell worked on functionalism

    • Functionalists were interested in the activities of the mind and what the mind does.

  • William James wrote Principles of Psychology which opposed the reductionist ideas of Titchener, James proposed that consciousness is ongoing and continuous; it can not be reduced to elements.

  • Mary Whiton Calkins working under James at Harvard but was denied her diploma because she was a woman.

    • Regardless of this she became an accomplished researcher and was the first woman elected president of the APA in 1905

  • G. Stanley Hall founded the first psychological laboratory in America in 1883 at Johns Hopkins University, created the first journal of psychology, and founded the APA

The Growth of Psychology

  • Gestalt psychology was a movement that began in Germany that followed the beliefs that studying the whole experience was richer than studying the individual aspects of that experience.

    • Proposed that the mind often processes information simultaneously rather than sequentially

    • Most of the psychologists who believed in Gestalt were Jewish and were forced to flee the Nazi regime

  • John B Watson and B.F. Skinner championed behaviorism, which rejected any reference to mind and viewed overt and observable behavior as the proper subject matter of psychology.

  • Ivan Pavlov influenced early behaviorism in America, he worked on conditioning

  • Frederic C. Bartlett explored the idea of the constructive mind, recognizing that people use their past experiences to construct frameworks in which to understand new experiences

  • Jerome Bruner, Roger Brown, and George Miller were pioneers in American cognitive psychology

    • Bruner conducted pioneering studies on cognitive aspects of sensation and perception

    • Brown conducted original research on language and memory, coined the term flashbulb memory and figured out how to study the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon

    • Miller’s researched working memory and wrote The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information is one of the most cited papers in psychology

Applied Psychology in America

  • Alfred Binet developed modern intelligence tests

  • Henry Goddard introduced those tests to the US

  • and later standardized tests by Lewis Terman at Stanford University

  • Lightner Witmer received his PhD in experimental psychology with Wilhelm Wundt and he opened a psychological clinic. He believed that psychology should be of value in treating children with learning and behavioral problems. He is credited at the founder of both clinical and school psychology

Psychology as a Profession

  • The AAAP and APA merged as a result of the high demand for mental health services during WWII

Psychology and Society

  • Helen Thompson Woolley examined the assumption that women were overemotional compared to men and found that emotion did not influence women’s decisions any more than it did men’s

  • Leta S. Hollingworth found that menstruation did not negatively impact women’s cognitive or motor abilities

  • Mamie Phipps Clark and her husband Kenneth Clark were African American psychologists that demonstrated the negative impact segregation in schools had on black students self-esteem

  • Evelyn Hooker did research that showed that their was no significant differences in psychological adjustment between homosexual and heterosexual men.

Discussion Questions

  1. Why was psychophysics important to the development of psychology as a science?

  2. How have psychologists participated in the advancement of social issues?

  3. Name some ways in which psychology began to be applied to the general public and everyday problems.

  4. Describe functionalism and structuralism and their influences on behaviorism and cognitive psychology.