Chapter 1: Making sense in psychology – Approaches and explanations in psychology

Approaches and explanations in psychology

• Psychology aims to make sense of mental life by observing behavior: what people say and do, and inferring internal states (thoughts, feelings) from these behaviors.
• Everyday reasoning mirrors scientific inference: a smiling person is likely happy; behaviour provides insight into internal experiences.
• The chapter introduces different approaches/frameworks in psychology and their development over time.

1.1 Early approaches in psychology

• Long history of attempting to explain behaviour; examples include:
  • Ancient Egyptian text (c. 1552\text{ BCE}) describing dementia.
  • Hippocrates’ early theory of personality.
• Psychology as a distinct discipline emerged in the second half of the ninth-nineteenth century with experimental psychology and the use of scientific methods to study internal mental processes.
• Wilhelm Wundt (introduced formal methods to study sensations, feelings, thoughts): introspection (self-observation) as a training method.
• Edward Titchener, a student of Wundt, extended introspection to identify basic mental structures; this approach became known as structuralism.
• William James, influenced by Darwin, used introspection but argued that mental states and behaviours should be understood by their functions; this approach is functionalism.
• Limitations of introspection: access to one’s own mental processes is incomplete; this led some to doubt its usefulness for explaining behaviour.
• Psychodynamic approach emerged from Sigmund Freud’s work and proposed unconscious processes influence behaviour; Freud’s ideas have had lasting impact on psychology and popular culture.
• Freudian slips illustrate unconscious wishes/desires influencing speech; e.g., "A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother" (illustrative example in class).
• Key definitions:
  • Introspection: Examining your own sensations, thoughts, and feelings.
  • Structuralism: An early approach using introspection to identify basic mental structures underlying conscious experience.
  • Functionalism: An early approach focusing on the function of mental states and behaviours (e.g., how they help humans adapt to their environment).
  • Psychodynamic approach: An approach seeking to understand unconscious motives underlying human behaviour.
• Additional context from the era included cultural phenomena (e.g., Freudian slips) that popularized ideas about the unconscious.

1.2 Freud, the iceberg, and personality structure

• Freudian theory emphasises conscious awareness and the unconscious as central to the mind’s functioning.
• The mind is likened to an iceberg: only a small portion is above the surface (conscious awareness); most is beneath (unconscious processes, such as instincts, urges, desires).
• People feel compelled to satisfy urges (e.g., hunger, sleep) but social norms may require delaying gratification.
• Freud proposed a tripartite model of personality:
  • id: drives and desires present from birth.
  • ego: mediates between id and reality; emerges around age ~3.
  • superego: moral conscience; develops around age ~5.
• These components interact to shape personality and behaviour; development occurs at different rates across components.
• Freudian slips and the iceberg metaphor illustrate how unconscious processes can influence everyday behaviour and speech.

1.3 Classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and the rise of cognitive psychology

• Classical conditioning (Pavlovian): learning by association between a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus.
  • Example setup (Figure 1.2):
  • Before conditioning:
    • Unconditioned stimulus (US): e.g., food.
    • Neutral stimulus (NS): e.g., bell.
  • During conditioning:
    • Pair US with NS repeatedly (food presented with bell).
  • After conditioning:
    • Conditioned stimulus (CS): bell now elicits response.
    • Conditioned response (CR): salivation in response to the bell.
• Thorndike’s puzzle boxes (1898): learning by trial and error; cats learned to press a latch to escape and obtain food, with time to escape decreasing over trials.
• Skinner (1953) extended the idea to operant conditioning: behaviour is shaped by its consequences.
  • If a behaviour is punished, it becomes less likely to recur; if rewarded (positive reinforcement), it becomes more likely to recur.
  • This framework explains a wide range of behaviours, from socialization to phobias and fears.
• Key terms:
  • Positive reinforcement: A consequence that increases the frequency of a behaviour.
  • Operant conditioning: A form of conditioning where the outcome depends on the organism’s action (e.g., obtaining food by turning a latch or negotiating a maze).
• Historical debate within psychology:
  • Traditional behaviourists argued that science should rely only on directly observable behaviour; mental states were considered unobservable and thus not suitable for study.
  • Behaviourists controlled inputs (stimuli) and measured outputs (behaviour) to establish causal relationships.
  • By the late 1950s, cognitive psychology began to reassert the importance of internal mental processes in explaining behaviour, marking a shift back toward the study of cognition.
• Cognitive psychology (late 1950s onward): focuses on understanding internal mental processes such as perception, attention, memory, thinking, and learning and how they influence behaviour.
• Connections to real-world relevance:
  • Conditioning frameworks explain development of habits, learning in children, and formation of phobias.
  • Freudian ideas influenced talk therapies, cultural understandings of the unconscious, and everyday interpretation of slips and dreams.
• Ethical and practical implications:
  • Debates about the extent to which freely chosen behaviour can be explained by conditioning vs. internal cognition.
  • The rise of cognitive psychology shifted emphasis toward mental processes that can be studied and measured (e.g., memory tests, attention tasks), while behavioural measures remained central to experimental rigor.

1.4 The scientific study of the mind: bridging mind and behaviour

• Cognitive psychology re-emerged as a central framework, arguing that mental processes are key to understanding how people perceive, attend to, remember, think about, and learn from their environments.
• This movement helped to integrate information from both behaviourist and psychodynamic approaches, leading to a more comprehensive view of psychology as the science of mind and behaviour.
• Practical implications include educational strategies, clinical approaches, and everyday understanding of how information is processed and stored in memory, as well as how attention and perception influence learning.

Summary of key concepts and connections

• The study of psychology spans multiple approaches, each offering different explanations for behaviour:
  • Structuralism and functionalism focused on the nature and purpose of mental processes via introspection.
  • Psychodynamic theory emphasised unconscious motives and conflicts (Freud).
  • Behaviourism stressed observable behaviour and learning via conditioning and reinforcement.
  • Cognitive psychology highlighted the role of internal mental processes in shaping behaviour.
• Core experimental paradigms include:
  • Classical conditioning: learning through association (Pavlov).
  • Operant conditioning: learning through consequences (Skinner).
  • Observational and trial-and-error learning: inferring strategies from repeated attempts (Thorndike).
• The evolution from introspection to behaviourism and then to cognitive psychology reflects a broader methodological shift toward observable data and theoretical models that link mental processes to behavior.
• Real-world relevance includes explanations for everyday behaviours (e.g., slips, habits, phobias), educational practices, and therapeutic approaches that target both cognitive processes and behavioural patterns.

Notation and references used in this summary

• Freudian concepts: id, ego, superego; iceberg metaphor; conscious vs unconscious processing.
• Classical conditioning elements: US, NS, CS, UR, CR.
• Conditioning and reinforcement terminology: positive reinforcement, operant conditioning.
• Key historical figures: Wundt, Titchener, James, Freud, Thorndike, Pavlov, Skinner, with influence from Darwin.
• Important dates to contextualize development: 1923 (Freud’s personality theory publication), 1949 (Freud’s later writings on personality structure), 1898 (Thorndike’s puzzle box experiments), 1953 (Skinner’s work on operant conditioning), 1950s (rise of cognitive psychology).