A Historical Overview of Psychology: From Its Roots to Modern Perspectives, Study notes of Developmental Psychology

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Introduction to

Psychology

Chapter 1

Welcome to the Study of

Psychology!

 What do psychologists study these days?  Normal behavior: causes and mechanisms  Abnormal behavior and mental illness  Goals of modern psychology  Study the “essentials of behavior and mind” 

Why do people act, think, and feel the

way they do?

 Develop a knowledge base about human and animal behavior

What’s it For?  Goal: Survive in your environment  Mental processes contribute to survival  Solving adaptive problems = Find a way to meet challenges to survival  Example: How do you recognize and avoid danger?  Understanding purpose of processes leads to better understanding of those processes

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1.1 Psychology’s Roots—The

Great Philosophers

 Plato (428 BC–347 BC) argues for nativism  innate knowledge  Aristotle (384 BC–322 BC) and “tabula rasa”  philosophical empiricism  Descartes (1596–1650) – dualism  pineal gland  Phrenology – takes “Gall” (1758–1828)  mapping the mind?

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1.1 Psychology’s Roots—Coming

to the USA

 Titchener (1867–1927)  (^) hard introspective labor  Elemental qualities of consciousness  James (1842–1910)  functional approach  Darwin— The Origin of Species (1859)  natural selection  G. Stanley Hall (1844–1924)  child development & adolescence

The First Psychology Laboratory  1879, University of Lepzig  Wilhelm Wundt  Philosophy professor with background in physiology  Advocated scientific techniques for studying mental processes  Main focus: Immediate conscious experience

Functionalism  William James, James Rowland Angell  Understand mental processes by understanding the goal or purpose of those processes  Example: What is the goal or purpose of memory?  Greatly influenced by work of Darwin

Behaviorism  John B. Watson, B. F. Skinner  Problems with introspection:  Cannot directly observe mental events  Subjective, varies by individual  Solution: Focus only on observable behavior in carefully controlled experiments  Special emphasis on animal behavior

Freud’s Ideas  Psychoanalysis: Freud’s theory of how the mind works and how to address disorders  Psychological problems solved through insight  Unconscious mind  Conflicts, memories outside of awareness  Many psychological problems arise from childhood experiences

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1.4 Beyond Behaviorism

 Advent of computers  (^) decline in behaviorism  Information processing systems  (^) can we think of mental events as the flow of information through the mind?  (^) computer metaphor  Cognitive psychology  (^) Remembering, attending, thinking, believing, evaluating, feeling, and assessing

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1.4 The Rise of Cognitive

Neuroscience

 Cognitive psychologists studied the “software” of the brain  but what about the hardware?  Karl Lashley (1890–1958)  train rats to run maze  surgically remove brain parts & run maze again  hope to find spot in brain where learning occurs  Scientists who followed developed area now called behavioral neuroscience

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1.5 Social and Cultural

Perspectives

 Social psychology  Triplett’s bicycle study  Lewin’s “field theory”  Asch’s “mental chemistry”  Allport—stereotyping, prejudice, and racism

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1.6 Psychology’s Past and

Present

 July 1892—APA is born at Clark University  7 original members  150,000 members today  20% come from academia  APS formed in 1982  renamed in 2006

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1.6 Psychology’s Past and

Present

 Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930)  first woman elected president of APA  Francis Cecil Sumner (1895–1954)  first African American to hold PhD in psychology  Kenneth Clark (1914–2005)  first member of a minority group to become president of APA  elected in 1970