Myers Prologue: The Story of Psychology

  • Psychology’s Roots

    • Psychology: Scientific study of behavior and mental processes

      • Behavior: Anything an organism does (any action that can be observed & recorded)

      • Mental processes: Internal, subjective experiences inferred from behavior, like sensations, perceptions, dreams, thoughts, beliefs

    • Prescientific Psychology

      • Empiricism: The view that knowledge comes from experience via the senses and science flourishes through observation & experiment

      • Buddha: Sensations and perceptions combine to form ideas

      • Confucius: Power of ideas and educated mind

      • Hebrew Scholars: Linked mind and emotion to the body

      • Socrates & Plato: Mind is separable from body

      • Descartes: Concept of mind, how mind communicates with body

        • Spirits in brain’s cavities flowed through the nerves to the muscles, provoking movement

        • Memories formed as experiences opened pores in the brain, into which spirits also flowed

      • Francis Bacon: Human mind likes patterns

      • John Locke: Mind at birth is a blank slate

    • Psychological Science is Born

      • Wilhelm Wundt: Established the first psychology lab at Leipzig

        • Measured fastest and simplest mental processes

      • Structuralism: Early school of psychology that used introspection to explore the elemental structure of mind

      • Functionalism: School of psychology that focused on how mental and behavioral processes function - how they enable the organism to adapt, survive, and flourish

      • Margaret Floy Washburn: First woman to receive psych Ph.D., synthesized animal behavior research in The Animal Mind

      • Humanistic Psychology: Emphasized the growth potential of healthy people

      • Sigmund Freud: Personality theorist & therapist, humanity’s self-understanding

    • Psychological Science Develops

      • “Magellans of the mind”: pioneering psychologists, e.g. Freud, Pavlov, Wundt, Piaget

      • John B. Watson: Psychology is the science of behavior, conditioned responses on baby “Little Albert”

      • B. F. Skinner: Behaviorist who rejected introspection and studied how consequences shape behavior

      • Behavioralism: Studies conducted on observations and recordings of people’s behavior as they respond to different situations

      • Cognitive Revolution of 1960s: Internal thought processes, cognitive neuroscience (thought processes & brain function)

  • Contemporary Psychology

    • Nature-Nurture Ideas: Controversy over contributions that genes and experience make to the development of psychological traits & behaviors

    • Natural Selection: Principle that among the range of inherited trait variations, those contributing to reproduction & survival most likely passed onto succeeding generations

    • Charles Darwin: Argued that natural selection shapes behaviors as well as bodies

  • Psychology’s Big Debate

    • Nature: Plato, Descartes

    • Nurture: Aristotle (everything derived from senses), Locke

  • Psychology’s Three Main Levels of Analysis

    • Levels of Analysis: Differing complementary views, from biological to psychological to social-cultural, for analyzing any given phenomenon

    • Biopsychosocial Approach: An integrated perspective that incorporates biological, psychological, and social-cultural levels of analysis

    • Neuroscience: How the body and brain enable emotions, emotions, and sensory experiences

    • Evolutionary: How the natural selection of traits promotes the perpetuation of one’s genes

    • Behavior genetics: How much our genes and our environment influence our individual differences

    • Psychodynamic: How behavior springs from unconscious drives & conflicts

    • Behavioral: How we learn from observable responses

    • Cognitive: How we encode, process, store, and retrieve information

    • Social-Cultural: How behavior & thinking vary across situations and cultures

  • Psychology’s Subfields

    • Biological psychologists: Links between brain and mind

    • Developmental psychologists: Changing abilities from womb to tomb

    • Cognitive psychologists: Experiment with how we perceive, think, solve problems

    • Personality psychologists: Investigate persistent traits

    • Social psychologists: How we view and affect each other

    • Industrial-Organizational psychologists: Study and advise behavior in the workplace

  • Close-Up: Your Study of Psychology

    • Basic research: Pure science that aims to increase scientific knowledge base

    • Applied research: Scientific study that aims to solve practical problems

    • Counseling psychology: Assists people with problems in living

    • Clinical psychology: Studies, assesses, treats people with psychological disorders

    • Psychiatry: Branch of medicine ealing with psychological disorders