Psychology Chapter 1: What is Psychology?

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Psychology Chapter 1 What is Psychology?

• Section 1 The Science of Psychology

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• Psychologists take as their subjects the entire
  spectrum of human beings as well as animals
• Want to know why people do things
• Want to know how people and animals solve
  problems, learn, remember, perceive, feel, get
  along or dont get along with others

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• Study child rearing, gossiping, remembering a
  shopping list, daydreaming, etc
• What makes people tick

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• Definition- the discipline concerned with
  behavior mental processes how they are
  affected by an organisms physical mental state
  external environment

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Psychology, Pseudoscience, Common Sense

• What Psychology is NOT
• pop psych
• Self help books talk shows
• A pseudoscience promising a quick fix to lifes
  problems

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• Serious psych is more complex, more informative
  based on rigorous research empirical evidence
• Evidence gathered by careful observation,
  experimentation, and measurement.

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• Not handwriting analysis, fortune telling,
  numerology, or astrology
• Psychology is not just a fancy name for common
  sense
• Psychological research often produces findings
  that contradict popular beliefs

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The Birth of Modern Psychology

• Like todays psychologists they wanted to
  describe, predict, understand, modify behavior
  in order to add to human knowledge increase
  human happiness
• Didnt rely on empirical evidence

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• Hippocrates
• Father of modern medicine
• Observed patients with head injuries inferred
  that the brain must be the source of our
  pleasures, joys, laughter, sorrows, pains, grief,
  tears

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• Bumpy Logic
• Phrenology Study of the mind
• Popular in the early 1800s
• Argued that different areas of the brain
  accounted for specific character personality
  traits could be determined by the bumps on the
  head

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• 1879- First psychology lab was officially
  established in Leipzig, Germany by Wilhelm Wundt
• Trained introspection- volunteers were taught to
  carefully observe, analyze, describe their own
  sensations, mental images, emotional reactions

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• Goal is to break down behavior into its most
  basic elements
• Later rejected for being too subjective
• Still important to making psychology a science

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• Functionalism- emphasized the function of
  behavior
• William James
• Looked at the causes consequences of behavior

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• Psychotherapy
• Sigmund Freud
• Psychoanalysis- emphasized unconscious motives
  conflicts
• Psychology eventually grew into a complex
  discipline encompassing many different
  specialties, perspectives, methods

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Psychologys Present

• Five Major Theoretical Perspectives
• Reflecting the different assumptions about how
  the mind works, different questions that
  psychologists ask about human behavior,
  different ways of explaining why people do what
  they do

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1. Biological Perspective

• Emphasizes bodily events and changes associated
  with actions, feelings, and thoughts
• Study how physical events interact with events in
  the external environment to produce perceptions,
  memories, emotions, etc

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• Investigate the contribution of genes other
  biological factors to the development of
  abilities personality traits
• Evolutionary psychology- focuses on how
  genetically influenced behavior that was
  functional or adaptive during our evolutionary
  past may be reflected in our present behavior,
  mental processes, traits

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2. Learning Perspective

• Emphasizes how the environment and experience
  affect a person's or animal's actions
• Behaviorists focus on the environmental rewards
  punishers that maintain or discourage specific
  behavior
• Look at what they can observe measure directly

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• Social Cognitive learning theorists combine
  behaviorism with research on thoughts, values,
  intentions
• People learning by adapting their behavior to the
  environment by imitating others, by thinking
  about the events happening around them

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3. Cognitive Perspective

• Emphasizes mental processes in perception,
  memory, language, problem solving, and other
  areas of behavior
• What goes on in peoples heads, how they reason,
  explain experiences, acquire moral standards,
  form beliefs

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• Infer mental processes from observed behavior
• Show how our thoughts explanations of events
  affect what we feel do

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4. Sociocultural Perspective

• Emphasizes social and cultural forces outside the
  individual, forces that shape every aspect of
  behavior
• Most of us underestimate the impact of other
  people, the social context, cultural rules on
  nearly everything we do

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5. Psychodynamic Perspective

• Emphasizes unconscious dynamics within the
  individual, such as inner forces, conflicts, or
  the movement of instinctual energy
• Says that psychologists should focus in what
  really matter to most people- their hopes
  aspirations

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• positive psychology- focuses on the qualities
  that enable people to be happy, optimistic,
  resilient in times of stress