PREHISTORY AND HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY

• Psychology is the study of behavior and the mind.

• Behavior, a natural process subject to natural laws, refers to the observable actions of a person or an animal.

• The mind refers to the sensations, memories, motives, emotions, thoughts, and other subjective phenomena particular to an individual or animal that are not readily observed.

• The ancient Greeks’ speculations on the nature of the mind heavily influenced the pre-history of psychology as a science.

Dualism

• Dualism divides the world and all things in it into two parts: body and spirit.

• Dualism is a theme that recurs often in early psychology, but the distinction between body and spirit prefigures current debates around the difference between the brain (that is, the command center of the central nervous system) and the mind (that is, the sensations, memories, emotions, thoughts, and other subjective experiences of a particular individual).

René Descartes (1596–1650)

• An early modern philosopher, continued the dualist view of the human being.

• He believed that the physical world and all of the creatures in it are like machines, in that they behave in observable, predictable ways.

• Descartes believed that humans were the exception to this rule because they possess minds.

John Locke (1632–1704)

• extended Descartes’s application of natural laws to all things, believing that even the mind is under the control of such laws.

• Locke’s school of thought is known as empiricism—the acquisition of truth through observations and experiences.

• Locke proposed that humans are born knowing nothing; Locke used the term tabula rasa (Latin for “blank slate”) to describe the mind of an infant.

  • It is a philosophical concept that suggests that all people are born with no pre-existing mental content or knowledge and that knowledge is acquired through experience.

    • It is the idea that everyone is a “blank slate” upon entering the world and that their beliefs, attitudes, and perspectives are shaped by the environment and the experiences that they have.

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)

• Believed that the idea of a soul or spirit, or even of a mind, is meaningless.

• Hobbes’s philosophy is known as materialism, which is the belief that the only things that exist are matter and energy.

• Charles Darwin (1809–1882) - proposed a theory of natural selection, according to which all creatures have evolved into their present state over long periods of time.

• Evolutionary theory - affected psychology by providing a way to explain differences between species and justifying the use of animals as a means to study the roots of human behavior.

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920)

• The founder of the science of psychology.

• Wundt was trained in physiology and hoped to apply the methods that he used to study the body to the study of the mind.

Edward Titchener (1867–1927)

• was a student in Wundt’s laboratory and was one of the first to bring the science of psychology to the United States.

• Structuralism, entails looking for patterns in thought, which are illuminated through interviews with a subject describing his or her conscious experience.

William James (1842–1910)

• An American psychologist, opposed the structuralist approach.

• He argued that what is important is the function of the mind, such as how it solves a complex problem.

• James, heavily influenced by Darwin, believed that the important thing to understand is how the mind fulfills its purpose.

  • This function-oriented approach is appropriately called functionalism.

• Dorothea Dix was crucial in advocating for the rights of mentally ill poor people, and she was instrumental in founding the first public mental hospital in the United States.

• Mary Whiton Calkins was the first female graduate student in psychology, although she was denied a PhD because of her gender.

• Margaret Floy Washburn was not only the first female PhD in psychology, she also served as the second female president of the American Psychological Association (APA), an organization formed in 1892.

APPROACHES

• Approach 1: Biological: Biological psychology is the field of psychology that seeks to understand the interactions between anatomy and physiology (particularly, the physiology of the nervous system) and behavior.

• Approach 2: Behavioral Genetics: Behavioral genetics is the field of psychology that explores how particular behaviors may be attributed to specific, genetically based psychological characteristics.

Approach 3: Behavioralist

• Behaviorism posits that psychology is the study of observable behavior.

  • The mind or mental events are unimportant as they cannot be observed.

• Classical conditioning, first identified by Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), was one of the behaviorists’ most important early findings.

• John Watson (1878–1958) and his assistant Rosalie Rayner applied classical conditioning to humans in the famed Little Albert experiment: they made loud sounds behind a 9-month-old whenever he would touch something white and furry, and voila: he was afraid of everything white and furry afterwards.

• B. F. Skinner (1904–1990), through the development of his Skinner Box, described operant conditioning, in which a subject learns to associate a behavior with an environmental outcome.

• Approach 4: Cognitive: Cognitive psychology is an approach rooted in the idea that to understand people’s behavior, we must first understand how they construe their environment—in other words, how they think.

Approach 5: Humanistic

• The humanistic approach is rooted in the philosophical tradition of studying the roles of consciousness, free will, and awareness of the human condition.

• Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) proposed the idea of self-actualization, the need for individuals to reach their full potential in a creative way.

• Attaining self-actualization means accepting yourself and your nature, while knowing your limits and strengths.

• Carl Rogers (1902–1987) stressed the role of unconditional positive regard in interactions and the need for a positive self-concept as critical factors in attaining self-actualization.

Approach 6: Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic

• Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) developed a theory of human behavior known as psychoanalytic theory.

• Freud was concerned with individuals and their mental problems.

• Freud drew a distinction between the conscious mind—a mental state of awareness that we have ready access to—and the unconscious mind—those mental processes that we do not normally have access to but that still influence our behaviors, thoughts, and feelings.

• Approach 7: Sociocultural: According to this approach, cultural values vary from society to society and must be taken into account if one wishes to understand, predict, or control behavior.

Approach 8: Evolutionary

• The evolutionary approach draws upon the theories of Darwin.

• Behavior can best be explained in terms of how adaptive that behavior is to our survival.

• Approach 9: Biopsychosocial: The biopsychosocial approach emphasizes the need to investigate the interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors as contributing to a behavior or a mental process.

DOMAINS

• A question that concerns the effect of drugs on behavior refers to the biological domain.

  • But a question that deals with relationships between drug users and their families refers to the social domain.

    • And a question that considers treatment options for someone addicted to drugs deals with the clinical domain.

• Other domains include:

  • Cognitive (What thoughts might someone entertain to justify their drug use?)

  • Counseling (How might a school counselor talk to a student about drugs?)

  • Developmental (At what ages might someone be more susceptible to peer pressure?)

  • Educational (How effective are school-based programs?)

• Yet other domains include:

  • Experimental (dealing with experiments)

  • Industrial-organizational (dealing with workplaces)

  • Personality (dealing with—you guessed it!—personality)

  • Psychometric (dealing with how to measure things in psychology)

  • Positive domain (which focuses on positive aspects and strengths of human behavior).

Next Chapter: Chapter 6: Foundations: Methods and Approaches