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What is Psychology? David Myers (8th Edition)

PowerPoint SlidesMr. Mable

Tucker High School

2016

Student’s will be able to:

• Define Psychology

• Explain the specific jobs Psychologist do

• Name key psychologist in its history

• Describe where Psychology came from

• List the Major Modern Perspectives

• List the types of degrees needed in psych

• Explain how to be a better psych student

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WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY?

Psychology is:

The scientific study of behavior and mental

processes

• Ology = The study of

• Psych come from the Latin Psyche meaning the SOUL

Psychology

Psychology attempts to answer the following questions:

• Why do I do the things that I do?

• Who am I ?

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Behavior vs. CognitiveCognitive

• Cannot normally be seen• Cognitive means thinking• It is any mental activity• For example:

dreaming

perception

memories

judgments

planning

Behavior• Can be seen• Something that can be

measured• i.e. Pushups

kissing

dancing

playing

football

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Pre-Scientific Psychology

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Psychology’s RootsPrescientific Psychology

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In India, Buddha wondered how sensations and perceptions combined to form ideas.

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Prescientific PsychologyConfucius (551-479 B.C.)

In China, Confucius stressed the power of ideas and the importance of an educated mind.

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Prescientific PsychologyHebrew Scriptures

Hebrew scriptures linked mind and emotion to the body.

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Prescientific PsychologySocrates (469-399 B.C.) and Plato (428-348 B.C.)

Socrates and his student Plato believed the mind was separate from the body, the mind continued

to exist after death, and ideas were innate.

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Prescientific PsychologyAristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Aristotle suggested that the soul is not separable from the body and that knowledge

(ideas) grow from experience.

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Aristotle

• Wrote the first book about psychology called Peri Psyches

• Greek: “About the Soul”

• The Greek letter Psi

Is the symbol of

Modern Psychology.

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Prescientific PsychologyRene Descartes (1596-1650)

Descartes, like Plato, believed in soul (mind)-body separation, but wondered how the immaterial

mind and physical body communicated.

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Prescientific PsychologyFrancis Bacon (1561-1626)

Bacon is one of the founders of modern science, particularly the experimental method.

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Prescientific PsychologyJohn Locke (1632-1704)

Locke held that the mind was a tabula rasa, or blank sheet, at birth, and experiences wrote on it.

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Historical Perspectives

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Where did Psychology come from?

Modern Scientific PsychologyYou should know the differences between:

•Philosophy = Why?

•Physiology = Science of Anatomy

•Psychology = What Causes Behavior?

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Psychological Science is BornStructuralism

Wundt and Titchener studied the elements (atoms) of the mind by conducting

experiments at Leipzig, Germany, in 1879.

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Wilhelm Wundt

• Made the first Psychological Laboratory EVER in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany.

• A student of his named G. Stanley Hall made the first Psych lab in the United States at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. His lab was modeled after Wundt’s.

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G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924)

• Started 1st laboratory in USA

• Invited Sigmund Freud & Jung to visit USA

• Translated Freud’s work into English

• 1st President of the APA

• Founded American Journal of Psychology

• Studied adolescence and childhood

• Promoted the study of educational psychology

• Earliest study of the differences between men and women

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Psychological Science is BornFunctionalism

Influenced by Darwin, William James established the school of functionalism,

which opposed structuralism.

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William James

• Wrote the first modern textbook EVER in 1890 called Principles of Psychology.

• James was a professor of Psychology at Harvard University.

• Much of what was in his book still holds true today!

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Gestalt Psychology• A theory of mind and brain that

proposes that the operational principle of the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies; or, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts

• Counters attempts to believe one can break down the mind or experience into bits and parts, as if we were machines .

• The idea that we tend to see the “Big Picture”, the forest instead of individual trees. Experience is always more than the sum of its parts

• Gestalt means SHAPE or FORM.

What do you see?

What do you see?

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The Whole is greater than the sum of its parts!

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Psychological Science is BornThe Unconscious Mind

Sigmund Freud and his followers emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind and

its effects on human behavior.

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Sigmund FreudAustrian Neurologist (1856-1938)

• Invented Psychoanalysis the “talking cure”

• Unconscious mind• Dream Interpretation• Importance of early

childhood experiences• Theory of personality (Id,

ego, superego)• Defense mechanisms

such as repression, displacement

• Oedipal conflictTime Magazine voted him the 2nd Most

Influential Person in 20th Century

Sigmund Freud

• Medical Doctor of Neurology.

• “Archaeologist of the Mind”.

• Founded:Psychoanalysis/Psychoanalytic Approach

Dream Analysis

Free Association(the “talking cure”)

The Unconscious Mind

And lots more…

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Psychological Science DevelopsBehaviorism

Watson (1913) and later Skinner emphasized the study of overt behavior as the subject

matter of scientific psychology.

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Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)Brilliant Russian ScientistWon Nobel Prize in Medicine for study

of the digestive system

Contribution to Psychology

• Concept of the “Conditioned Response”

• Classical Conditioning (learning by association)

Famous for his

experiments with dogs illustrating

the effects of conditioning

Who is conditioning whom?

John B. Watson and Behaviorism

• He believed it is unscientific to study consciousness.

• Behaviorism: the school of psychology, founded by John Watson, that defines psychology as the scientific study of observable behavior

Little Albert – Where is he now?

Watson succeeded in conditioning fear into a normal child who previously did not react fearfully to the sight of a white rat, now the child feared all things white and furry (generalization)

B.F. SkinnerAmerican Psychologist (1904-1990)

• Pioneered “Operant Conditioning” which is a kind of conditioning based on reinforcement (rewards & punishment)

• Promoted “Radical Behaviorism”, everything we do, think and say is the result of conditioning

• Invented all kinds of laboratory devices to study the learning process and measure simple behaviors in laboratory animals called a “Skinner Box”

Skinner Boxes

Skinner was a genius at developing ways to precisely measure behavior in laboratory settings.

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Psychological Science Develops

Humanistic Psychology

Maslow and Rogers emphasized current environmental influences on our growth

potential and our need for love and acceptance.

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Maslow’s Hierarchy of

Human Needs