Prologue to Chapter 1

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Prologue to Chapter 1

• Our text surveys the basics of psychological
  principles and shows how these principles can be
  applied to solve human problems.
• You will find the text covering most areas in
  psychology but, as this is an introductory
  course, we will not be able to go into extreme
  depth with any particular topic.
• If you have any questions, ask them!

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Psyche and Science Psychology

• Definition of psychology
• Psychology is the science of behavior and mental
  processes
• What is science?
• realizing problems, making initial observations,
  hypothesizing, testing hypotheses
• What is behavior?
• any activity which is directly observable
• What are mental processes?
• not directly observable e.g., thinking,
  motivation

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Psyche and Science Psychology

• Goals of psychology
• To describe human and animal behavior and mental
  processes
• To understand human and animal behavior and
  mental processes
• To predict human and animal behavior and mental
  processes
• To influence/control human and animal behavior
  and mental processes

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The Many Faces of Psychology

• The Early Psychologists
• Although Wilhelm Wundt is usually credited with
  formally establishing psychology as a separate
  scientific discipline, many individuals with
  diverse interests and talents helped to found
  psychology.
• We will look at some of these individuals now

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The Many Faces of Psychology

• Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Bradford Titchener The
  structure of the mind
• They sought to determine the structure of the
  mind through use of analytic introspection
• Their school of thought is called Structuralism
• Wundt at the University of Leipzig in 1879
  Titchener in America
• Structuralism vs Functionalism

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The Many Faces of Psychology

• William James The functions of consciousness
• James interested in the functions of
  consciousness
• wrote the first psychology textbook in 1890
• may have had the first psychology laboratory in
  America circa 1876
• established functionalism as a school of
  thought in psychology

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The Many Faces of Psychology

• Ivan Pavlov and John B. Watson Behaviorism
• Pavlov received Nobel Prize in 1905 for his work
  on salivating dogs and the serendipitious
  discovery of classical conditioning
• Watson established radical behaviorism circa
  1912 in the United States
• Both interested in behavior and its precise
  measurement rather than consciousness of Wundt
  and James

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The Many Faces of Psychology

• Hermann Ebbinghaus Studies of Memory
• Ebbinghaus used experimental methods to measure
  memory in the late 1800s
• interested in how memory works, how it is
  established, how does forgetting happen, how
  memories deteriorate with interference, and other
  facets of memory

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The Many Faces of Psychology

• Max Wertheimer Gestalt Psychology
• Interested in perception, I.e., how do we make
  sense out of the world around us
• Gestalt, a German word, means The whole is
  greater than the sum of its parts.
• He believed the mind must be studied in terms of
  large meaningful units instead of the small units
  of structuralism
• Why do we see things the way we do?

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The Many Faces of Psychology

• Alfred Binet Measuring intelligence
• Binet sought to establish methods whereby the
  minds intellectual capacities could be measured
• Developed the first IQ test, used to assess how
  well students would do in academic settings, in
  France circa 1905
• The Standford-Binet IQ Test is, along with
  collaborative efforts of others, Binets test

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The Many Faces of Psychology

• Sigmund Freud The Psychoanalytic School
• Established psychoanalysis via work with female
  clients in Vienna, Austria, circa 1910
• Believed roots of psychological problems were
  motives that reside in the part of the mind of
  which we are unaware called the unconscious
• His over-emphasis on sex resulted in the
  Neo-Freudians, e.g., Erikson, Jung, Sullivan,
  Horney, Adler, and others.

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The Many Faces of Psychology

• Pioneers of psychology include people from Europe
  and America, as well as African-Americans,
  Latins, and other ethnic minorities, both male
  and female.
• Your text articulates information about some of
  these individuals.
• We will now look at contemporary perspectives in
  psychology.

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Contemporary Perspectives in Psychology

• Contemporary Behaviorism and Social Learning
  Theory
• Behaviorism still generally rules out the study
  of mental processes because these are
  unobservable
• Social Learning Theory believes that mental
  processes can be subjected to scientific inquiry
• Albert Bandura aggression and modeling
• Patricia Devine emotional/cognitive factors that
  influence formation and maintenance of prejudice

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Contemporary Perspectives in Psychology

• The Sociocultural Perspective
• Culture, ethnicity, and gender identity are
  important to understand a person
• What is normal is a culturally-relative term
• How do you define normal?
• All sociocultural variables must be taken into
  account to fully understand someone all
  judgments concerning normal must be relative to
  the culture in which one lives.

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Contemporary Perspectives in Psychology

• Contemporary Psychoanalysis
• Most modern psychoanalysts disagree with Freuds
  emphasis on sexual and aggressive motives for
  human behavior.
• Most believe that other motives are responsible
  for human behavior, e.g., Erik Erikson believed
  that how we are treated and how we react to
  developmental stressors has much to do with why
  we do what we do.

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Contemporary Perspectives in Psychology

• Contemporary Psychoanalysis
• Most contemporary psychoanalysts believe that
  cognitive processes also mediate why we do what
  we do, e.g., Alfred Adlers notion of the
  inferiority complex and its effects on our
  behavior.

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Contemporary Perspectives in Psychology

• Contemporary Cognitive Perspective
• Increasingly popular since the mid-1970s, this
  perspective studies the processes involved in
  perceiving, believing, thinking, and other
  cognitive activities using sophisticated
  scientific instrumentation.
• For example, is there a particular neural network
  in the brain responsible for allowing you to
  perceive your grandmother? Particular neural
  circuits involved in experiencing prejudice?

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Contemporary Perspectives in Psychology

• Contemporary Humanistic Psychology
• Considered the Third Force in psychology
  (behind psychoanalysis and behaviorism).
• Believes that individuals determine their own
  fates through decisions they make
• Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow are examples of
  humanistic psychologists
• Not as scientifically oriented as other branches
  of psychology

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Contemporary Perspectives in Psychology

• Contemporary Biological Perspective
• Interested in the role of the brain in
  psychological processes
• Interested in the role of heredity in
  psychological processes
• sociobiology
• heredity in psychological abnormality
• heredity in cognitive skills, etc.

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Contemporary Perspectives in Psychology

• Specialty fields in modern psychology
• Basic areas of psychology
• the domain of psychology that is involved in the
  generation of new knowledge upon which later
  applications can be built
• psychological research done in many field areas
• Applied areas of psychology
• these psychologists apply the basic knowledge to
  solve human problems
• applied areas include counseling, clinical, and
  educational psychology

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Contemporary Perspectives in Psychology

• The relationship between psychology and
  psychiatry
• A psychologist usually has a Ph.D. in psychology
  from an accredited graduate school. It requires
• 4 years of undergraduate work in psychology
• 2 years of Masters-level graduate work
• 3 years of Ph.D.-level graduate work

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Contemporary Perspectives in Psychology

• The relationship between psychology and
  psychiatry
• A psychiatrist has an M.D. and residency in
  psychology. It requires
• 4-year undergraduate degree
• 4-year medical degree
• 3-year residency in psychology
• The pecking order in psychology is M.S., M.S.W.,
  Ph.D., M.D./P.C.

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Questions?

• Do you have any questions about Chapter One?

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Chapter 2

• Scientific Research/Methods

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Scientific Methods

• How do we learn about human behavior?
• What is science?
• How do we do science?
• Where does basic psychological information come
  from?
• How is basic psychological knowledge applied
  scientifically?

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Scientific Methods

• Science is the use of systematic observation of
  phenomena in an effort to detect orderly
  relationships (laws) governing interrelationships
  of variables. It involves description as its
  most simple tool and experimentation as its most
  complex tool.

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Scientific Methods

• Descriptive methods include
• Survey method the use of interviews and
  questionnaires in studying human behavior
• Naturalistic observation involves the careful
  observation and recording of behavior in
  real-life settings
• Clinical method observation of people while a
  psychologist is helping them with a problem

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Scientific Methods

• Correlations methods the examination of the
  quantitative relationships between two or more
  variables
• how does one behavior relate to the occurrence of
  another behavior?
• if we know one behaviors pattern can we then, in
  turn, predict the pattern of occurrence of
  another behavior?

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Scientific Methods

• Formal Experiments deliberately determining the
  cause-effect relationships between two or more
  variables
• correlation methods preclude establishing
  cause-effect relationships formal experiments
  will determine precise cause-effect relationships
  between variables
• there are many experimental designs that
  psychologists use

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Scientific Methods

• Ethical Principles of research with human
  subjects
• freedom from coercion
• informed consent
• guidelines for deception of subjects and
  debriefing after experiments
• confidentiality

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Scientific Methods

• Ethical principles of research with animal
  subjects
• only use animals when it is necessary
• maintain the health of animals in experiments and
  animal compounds
• humane treatment of animals is absolutely
  important no animal should be sacrificed unless
  data critical to helping humans

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What we know about human behavior

• Human beings are biological creatures.
• Each person is different, yet much the same.
• People can be understood only in the context of
  their culture, ethnic identity, and gender
  identity.
• Human lives are a continual process of change.
• Human behavior is motivated.

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What we know about human behavior

• Humans are social animals.
• People play an active part in creating their
  experiences.
• Behavior has multiple causes.
• Behavior can be adaptive or maladaptive.
• Human behavior and mental processes can be
  studied by the scientific method.

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Application of Psychology

• Psychology applied to your own study skills
• Your textbook uses the SQ3R method of pedagogy
  (developed by educational psychologists)
• Good study techniques include
• spacing out your study time dont cram
• study in the same place all the time
• use mneumonic (memory) devices to help you retain
  information learned

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Questions?

• Any questions about Chapter 2?