Psychology Notes

Definition of Psychology

• Psychology is the study of the mind and behaviour.
• Goals of psychology:
  • Describing behaviour
  • Understanding or explaining that behaviour
  • Predicting the behaviour
  • Controlling or modifying behaviour
• History: Ancient Greece, Philosophy, old medicinal practices
• Wilhelm Wundt: first experimental laboratory of psychology in 1879
• American Psychology Association (APA) was established in 1892.

Predecessors of Psychology

• Perception-Action Coupling: Descartes proposed that perception and action are tightly interconnected processes.
• Reflex: automatic, involuntary responses to stimuli.
• Franz Gall (1758-1828) believed in phrenology, that the shape of a person’s skull reveals mental facilities and personality traits.
• Plato (427-347 BC):
  • Rationalism: finding truth followed a path of logical reasoning
  • Nativism: knowledge came from one’s immortal soul (innate)
• Aristotle (384-322 BC):
  • Empiricism: relied on information via observation and the sense for knowledge
• Descartes (1596-1650):
  • "Cogito, Ergo Sum,” meaning “I think, therefore I am,”
  • Dualism (Cartesian Dualism): the mind and body can influence each other, inborn knowledge is innate

Predecessor Disciplines: Biology and Medicine

• Pierre Broca (1824-1880): Broca’s area, an area that plays a role in speech production.
• Carl Wernicke (1848-1905): Wernicke’s area, an area that plays a role in meaningful production of speech.
• Charles Darwin (1809-1882): theory of evolution (evolutionary perspective) or the law of natural selection.

Early Psychophysics

• Ernst Weber (1795-1878): just noticeable difference (JND), Weber’s Law: \frac{\Delta I}{I} = k.
• Gustav Fechner (1801-1887): founder of psychophysics, Fechner's law.
• Herman von Helmholtz (1821-1894): theory of colour vision.
• Franciscus Cornelius Donders (1818-1889): mental chronometry, Donders’ method of subtraction (Task A, B, C).

Modern Academic Psychology

• Empirical approach to behaviour
• Quantifiable and objective measurements
• Application of scientific and experimental methods
• Wilhelm Wundt, William James, and Stanley Hall are the creators (‘fathers’) of modern psychology
• Wilhelm Wundt – “New Psychology”
  • First experimental psychology textbook (1874)
  • First experimental psychology laboratory (1879)
  • Method of introspection (“inner perception”)
  • Wundt’s folk-psychology – Völkerpsychologie
• Herman Ebbinghaus published his famous “Über das Gedächtnis,