A Short History of Psychology

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A Short History of Psychology
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What is Psychology?

• Without referring to your books or reading,
  define psychology?
• Why is psychology important?
• Its more than just common sense use
  experimental methods to understand human behavior.

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Psychology is . . .

• The scientific study of behavior and mental
  processes that emerged out of philosophy and
  natural science.

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Pre Scientific Psychology

• Ancient Egypt
• First psychological experiment.
• Showed that early man was thinking about how the
  mind works.
• All thought came from the gods---no free will

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Ancient India

• Buddha attributes human thought to sensations and
  perceptions
• Major themes have been around since 6th century
  BCE

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Ancient Greece

• Greeks developed a rudimentary understanding of
  human thought and behavior.

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Famous Greek Philospher/Psychologists

• Alcmaeon-- sense organs send info to brain for
  interpretation.
• Democratis-- vision
• Hippocrates-- biological basis for personality
  and mental illness
• Plato- soul divided into 3 parts
• Aristotle-- sensation, memory and imagination
  help to form perceptions of world

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Psychology in the Middle Ages

• St. Augustine
• Mind/body connection
• Three functions of the mind
• Nature of memory
• St. Thomas Aquinas
• Origin of ideas
• Emotions
• Religion and Psychology

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Psychology in the Age of Reason (17th 18th
Centuries)

• John Locke
• 1632-1704
• Knowledge acquired through observation
• No innate ideas
• Brain is tabula rosa

• Rene Descartes
• 1596-1650
• mind/body influence each other
• voluntary and involuntary behavior
• Two types of ideas
• Innate
• Derived

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19th Century Pre-Scientific Psychology

• Mental Healing
• Spiritualism

• Phrenology
• Physiogamy
• Mesmerism

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Founders of Scientific Psychology

• William Wundt
• 1832-1920
• founded first psych research lab
• studied behavior by looking at senses
• used introspection

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Founders of Scientific Psychology

• Max Wertheimer
• 1880-1943
• Founded Gestalt Psych
• Consciousness is different from parts of the
  brain
• Research in perception, learning and thinking
• Foundation for Cognitive psych

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Early Milestones

• G. Stanley Hall
• Est. 1st U.S. psychology research lab (1883)
• Started first psychology journal (1887)

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Early Milestones

• Herman Ebbinhaus
• Classic studies on memory (1885)
• proved learning and memory could be studied using
  experimentation
• developed learning and forgetting curves

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Early Milestones

• Edward B. Titchener
• founded structuralism
• Studied experience from the point of view of the
  experiencing individual.
• Major questions
• Introspection (Demonstration)
• Reductionism

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Early Milestones

• William James
• Founded functionalism
• Critic of structuralism
• Published Principles of Psychology (1890)

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Early Milestones

• Sigmund Freud
• formed ideas about origin and treatment of mental
  illness.
• Unconscious mind fuels behavior
• pioneered free association

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Early Milestones

• American Psychological Association founded in
  1892
• centered around scientific research
• in 70s moved toward support for clinical
  specialization

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Early Milestones

• Margaret Floy Washburn
• First female psychology Ph.D. (1894)
• Denied entrance to Columbia University
• Major work in motor theory and animal behavior

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Early Milestones

• Mary Whiton Calkins
• First female president of APA (1905)
• Est. Psych department at Wellesley
• Denied Ph.D. at Harvard
• major work on psychology of self

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Early Milestones

• Ivan Pavlov
• First to study conditioned reflexes
• Founder of Behavioral perspective
• Alfred Skinner
• Schedules of Reinforcement
• Positive/negative reinforcement

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Early Milestones

• John B. Watson
• Leader of Behaviorism
• Only relevant study in psych is behavior.
• Environmental determinism.
• pioneered psychology in advertising.

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Early Milestones

• Francis Cecil Sumner
• First African American Ph.D.
• Chair of Psychology Department at Howard
  University (1928-1954)

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Early Milestones

• Founded in 1988
• Focuses on scientific experimentation
• Competes with APA