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,