PSYC 101 Chapater 1

Chapter 1: The Evolution of Psychology
Sunday, September 1, 2013
4:36 PM

Psychology is practical
- literally means study of the psyche, but now stands for study of the mind
Wilhelm Wundt wanted to make psychology its own discipline
- 1879 psychology's date of birth
- Founder of psychology
Consciousness
- The awareness of immediate experience
Structuralism
- Edward Titchener
- Based on the notion that the task of psychology is to analyze consciousness into its basic elements and investigate how these elements are related
○ Elements such as sensations, feelings, and images
- Introspection
○ The careful, systematic self-observation of one's own conscious experience
○ Required training
Functionalism
- William James
○ Landmark book, Principles of Psychology is the most influential in the field
- Should investigate the function or purpose of consciousness, rather than its structure
○ Similar to natural selection, there must be a reason for consciousness to persist in humans
- Consciousness as a flow of thoughts as opposed to static elements
○ Stream of consciousness
○ Habits
Freud
- Psychoanalysis
- Existence of the unconscious
○ Contains thoughts, memories, and desires that are well below the surface of conscious awareness but that nonetheless exert great influence on behavior
- Psychoanalytic theory
○ Attempts to explain personality, motivation, and mental disorders by focusing on unconscious determinants of behavior
○ Behavior is dominated by primitive, sexual urges

Behaviorism
- Watson
- Theoretical orientation based on the premise that scientific psychology should study only observable behavior
○ Should abandon the study of consciousness
○ Needs to be verifiable/objective
- Behavior
○ Overt(observable) response or activity by an organism
- Pavlov's discovery of conditioned reflex an example of behaviorism
○ Stimulus-response (S-R) psychology
○ Starts the study of animals instead of humans
- Skinner develops theory
○ Organisms tend to repeat responses that lead to positive outcomes, and they tend to not repeat responses that lead to neutral or negative outcomes
 Behavior is determined by external stimuli
□ Predictable
□ "free will is an illusion"
Humanism
- Theoretical orientation that emphasizes the unique qualities of humans, especially their freedom and their potential for personal growth
- Optimistic view
- Humans are different from animals
○ Governed by "self-concept"
 Human drive toward personal growth
- Carl Rogers pioneers client-centered therapy
Applied psychology
- The branch of psychology concerned with everyday, practical problems
Clinical psychology
- The branch of psychology concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of psychological problems and disorders
○ Thrived after WWII and the veterans needed help

Cognitive perspective
- Cognition
○ Mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge
- Mental processes influence how we behave
- Roger Sperry shows the right and left halves of the brains are specialized
Biological perspective

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Biological perspective
- Behavior explained by bodily structure and biochemical processes

Evolutionary Psychology
- Examines behavioral processes in terms of their adaptive value for members of a species over the course of many generations
Positive psychology movement
- Martin Seligman
- Theory and research to better understand the positive, adaptive, creative, and fulfilling aspects of human existence
- 3 areas of interest
1. Positive subjective experiences
2. Positive individual traits
3. Positive institutions and communities
Psychology
- The science that studies behavior and the physiological and cognitive processes that underlie behavior, and it is the profession that applies the accumulated knowledge of this science to practical problems
- 7 major areas (Fg 1.8)
1. Developmental psychology
- Looks at human development across the life span
2. Social psychology
- Interpersonal behavior and role of social forces in governing behavior
3. Experimental psychology
- Encompasses the traditional core of topics: sensation, perception, learning, conditioning, motivation, and emotion
4. Physiological
- Examines the influence of genetic factors on behavior and the role of the brain, nervous system, endocrine system, and bodily chemicals in the regulation of behavior
5. Cognitive psychology
- Higher mental processes of memory, reasoning, information processing, language, problem solving, decision making, and creativity
6. Personality
- Describing and understanding individuals' consistency in behavior
7. Psychometrics, educational psychology, health psychology
- Measurement of behavior and capacities
- Studies how people learn the best ways to teach them
- How psychological factors relate the promotion and maintenance of physical health and the causation, prevention, and treatment of illness

Applied psychology
- 4 areas of specialization (Fg 1.9)
1. Clinical psychology
2. Counseling psychology
3. School psychology
4. Industrial/organizational psychology
Themes Related to Psychology as a Field of Study
- 3 crucial ideas
1. Psychology is empirical
- Knowledge is acquired through observation
2. Psychology is theoretically diverse
3. Psychology evolves in a sociohistorical context
- Ex. After WWII
Themes Related to Psychology's Subject Matter
- 4 main themes
4. Behavior is shaped by cultural heritage
- Markus and Hamedani (2007)
 Culture is unavoidable when it comes to cognition and behavior
- Culture
 Widely shared customs, beliefs, values, norms, institutions, and other products of a community that are transmitted socially across generations
5. Behavior is determined by multiple causes
- Multifactorial causation of behavior
6. Heredity and environment jointly influence behavior
- Are people born or made?
 Both
7. People's experience of the world is highly subjective

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