A 3hour Tour

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A 3-hour Tour

• Ok, so not quite 3 hours just a (VERY BRIEF)
  History of Psychology

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First things first . . .

• What is psychology?
• The scientific study of behavior mental
  processes
• Science making verifiable, objective predictions
• Behavior observable acts
• Mental Processes storing, recalling, using
  info/feelings
• How is it different from other social sciences?
• Focus on individual behavior
• Where did it come from?
• Philosophy
• Physiology
• Psychology is born (roughly) in 1879

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Historical Origins of ? from Philosophy

• Rene Descartes (1596 1650)

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Historical Origins of ? from Philosophy

• Rene Descartes
• Beliefs
• Rationalist True knowledge comes through
  reasoning
• Nativist Heredity provides individuals with
  inborn knowledge and abilities and we use this to
  reason
• We are to doubt everything thats the only way
  we can be certain about anything
• I think, therefore I am.

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Historical Origins of ? from Philosophy

• John Locke (1632 1704)

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Historical Origins of ? from Philosophy

• John Locke
• Saw the mind as receptive and passive, with its
  main goal as sensing and perceiving
• Tabula rasa we are born as a blank slate,
  everything we know is learned
• This is in direct contrast to the rationalist
  Descartes

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Psychology Becomes More Scientific

• Hermann Helmholtz (1821 1894)

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Psychology Becomes More Scientific

• Hermann Helmholtz
• He was a mechanist he believed that everything
  can be understood with basic physical and
  chemical principles
• He pushed for the need to test and demonstrate
  things.

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Psychology Becomes More Scientific

• Gustav Fechner (1801 1887)

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Psychology Becomes More Scientific

• Gustav Fechner
• Psychophysics he pushed to investigate the
  relationship between the physical world and our
  conscious psychological world
• He thought it possible to measure the perceived
  as well as the physical intensities of sensory
  stimuli and to determine a mathematical
  relationship
• Just noticeable difference (JND) approach

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The Father of Psychology

• Wilhelm Wundt

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The Father of Psychology

• Wilhelm Wundt
• 1st ? lab (1879)
• University of Leipzig, Germany
• Focus on consciousness
• Find basic elements of conscious processes
• Discover how elements (sensations and feelings)
  are connected
• Specify laws of connection
• Introspection
• Self-observation seeing mental processes in
  immediate experience

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The First Schools of ?

• Structuralism
• Lots of work on sensation perception and
  breaking those down into minute detail
• Three basic mental elements
• Images, feelings sensations
• Titchner
• Found 43,000 elements associated with sensory
  experiences
• 30,000 associated with visual
• 11,000 associated with auditory
• 4 associated with taste (was correct with this
  one)

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The First Schools of ?

• Functionalism
• Focus on adaptation
• Applying Darwins theory of natural selection to
  mental processes
• William James
• Stream of consciousness
• Consciousness is personal/selective, continuous
  (cant be cut up for analysis), and constantly
  changing
• Structuralism was foolish to search for common
  elements to all minds

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The First Schools of ?

• Behaviorism
• Focus on observable behavior
• J. B. Watson
• Felt that the main goal of psychology should be
  the prediction and control of behavior
• Stimulus-response theory
• We respond to stimuli with our behavior, not
  thoughts
• Pavlovs dog studies
• Reinforcement for behavior
• If our behavior produces rewarding consequences,
  then we will do it again

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Subsequent Schools of ?

• Gestalt psychology
• Wholes vs. multiple individual elements
• You shouldnt dissect an experience into separate
  elements to discover truths instead, look at
  the whole
• Max Wertheimer
• Phi phenomenon

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Subsequent Schools of ?

• Freuds Psychodynamic Theory
• Conscious vs. unconscious conflicts
• Unconscious motivations and memories of which we
  are not aware
• Mental illness arises from being overwhelmed by
  which of these is in control
• Psychoanalysis as therapy tell me about your
  childhood.

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Todays Theoretical Perspectives

• Behavioral
• Observable S-R relationship
• Psychodynamic
• Unconscious forces motivating behavior
• Humanistic
• Self-actualization, free will
• Cognitive
• Thought processes
• Psychobiological
• Genes, brain function
• Evolutionary

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So what is it you do?

• Basic vs. applied
• Areas of psychology
• Developmental
• Personality
• Clinical
• Cognitive
• Social
• Experimental/biological
• Quantitative