1.2—how psychology became a science Flashcards
(39 cards)
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1.1 Learning Objectives
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- know the key terminology of psychology’s history.
- understand how the various philosophical and scientific fields became major influences on psychology.
- the philosophical schools of determinism, empiricism, and materialism provided a background for a scientific study of human behaviour.
- the first psychologists were trained as physicists and physiologists.
- Fechner developed psychophysics, and Titchener looked for the elements of thought.
- Darwin’s theory of natural selection influenced William James’s idea of functionalism.
- apply your knowledge to distinguish among the different specializations in psychology.
- analyze how the philosophical ideas of empiricism and determinism are applied to human behaviour.
- psychology is based on empiricism, the belief that all knowledge—including knowledge about human behaviour—is acquired through the senses.
- all sciences, including psychology, require a deterministic viewpoint.
- determinism is the philosophical tenet that all events in the world, including human actions, have a physical cause.
- applying determinism to human behaviour has been met with resistance by many because it appears to deny a place for free will.
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1.1 Focus
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- why did it take so long for scientists to start applying their methods to human thoughts and experience?
- what has resulted from the application of scientific methods to human behaviour?
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Empiricism | Philosophical and Scientific Origins
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a philosophical tenet that knowledge comes through experience.
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Determinism | Philosophical and Scientific Origins
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- determinism: the belief that all events are governed by lawful, cause-and-effect relationships.
- free will vs determinism—to what extent do have control over our actions?
- behaviour is determined by both internal (e.g. genes, brain chemistry) and external influences.
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Four Humours | Philosophical and Scientific Origins
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- four humours: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm; Hippocrates (460-370 BCE) believed that these flowed throughout the body and influenced both health and personality.
- Galen of Pergamon’s (127-217) four temperaments were each related to a humour.
- temperaments: the four humours combined made emotional and personality characteristics that remained stable throughout the life.
- sanguine (blood): a tendency to be impulsive, pleasure-seeking, and charismatic.
- choleric (yellow bile): a tendency to be ambitious, energetic, and a bit aggressive.
- melancholic (black bile): a tendency to be independent, perfectionistic, and a bit introverted.
- phlegmatic (phlegm): a tendency to be quiet, relaxed, and content with life.
- Roman, and later Persian, physicians also attempted to link different foods with different humours, so if a person’s humours were out of balance a dietary adjustment was sometimes advised to help him or her return to a balanced state.
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Zeitgeist | Philosophical and Scientific Origins
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- Zeitgeist: a general set of beliefs of a particular culture at a specific time in history.
- in the 1600s, people were not ready to accept a science that could be applied to human behaviour and thought.
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Psychophysics | Philosophical and Scientific Origins
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- psychophysics: the study of the relationship between the physical world and the mental representation of that world.
- e.g. Gustav Fechner’s (1801-1887) experiments with two different weights in your hand; which perceived weight will be heavier?
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Charles Darwin | Philosophical and Scientific Origins
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Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) theory of natural selection helped us to realize that behaviours, like physical traits, are subject to hereditary influences.
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Clinical Psychology
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the field of psychology that concentrates on the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders.
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Brain Localization | Philosophical and Scientific Origins
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- brain localization: the idea that certain parts of the brain control specific mental abilities and personality characteristics.
- phrenology: Franz Gall (1758-1828) and Johann Spurzheim (1776-1832) believed that the brain consisted of 27 “organs,” corresponding to mental traits and dispositions that could be detected by examining the surface of the skull. (figure 1.7)
- they believed that by measuring the bumps on a person’s head, you could identify the different traits that an individual possessed.
- brain injuries—physician Paul Broca (1800s) studied a patient named Tan, named so because this was the only word he could speak despite understanding everything else.
- motivated by this study, Karl Wernicke identified Wernicke’s area in 1874, a critical part for language comprehension.
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Franz Mesmer | Philosophical and Scientific Origins
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- Mesmer (1700s) speculated that prolonged exposure to magnets could redirect the flow of metallic fluids in the body, curing disease and insanity.
- his claim was rejected in the scientific community, but some of his patients seemed to be cured after being lulled into a trance.
- psychosomatic medicine: patients being cured due to their belief in the treatment.
- hypnosis—inspired by the trances of Mesmer’s patients
- hysterical paralysis: a condition in which individuals lose feeling and control in a specific body part, despite the lack of any known neurological damage or disease.
- Freud began to use hypnosis to treat his own patients of hysterical paralysis.
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Sigmund Freud | Philosophical and Scientific Origins
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- developed psychoanalysis.
- many modern psychologsis make inferences about unconscious mental activity, just as Freud had advocated.
- medical model: influenced by Freud; the use of medical ideas to treat disorders of emotions, though, and behaviour.
- Freud emphasized how physiological needs and urges relating to survival and reproduction can influence our behaviour.
- Frued placed great emphasis on how early life experiences influence our behaviour as adults.
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Sir Francis Galton | Philosophical and Scientific Origins
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- Sir Francis Galton, inspired by his cousin Darwin, believed that heredity (genetics) explained psychological differences among people.
- used it to reinforce his beliefs about social class; it seemed natural that people who did better in scholarship, business, and wealth were able to do so because they were better people (genetically speaking).
- eminence: a combination of ability, morality and achievement.
- one observation supporting his claim for a hereditary basis for eminence was that the closer a relative, the more similar the traits.
- nature and nurture relationships.
- but Galton ignored nurturing effects, rather than biological ones, could explain similarities between families; and ignored that great people can and do come from very humble beginnings.
- eugenics; Galton promoted the belief that social programs should encourage intelligent, talented individuals to have children while inferior people should be kept out of the gene pool.
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Wilhelm Wundt | Structuralism and Functionalism
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- Wundt (1832-1920) was largely responsible for establishing psychology as an independent scientific field.
- introspection: “to look within”; required a trained volunteer to experience a stimulus then report each individual sensation he or she could identify.
- basic sensations were the mental “atoms” that combined to form the molecules of experience.
- reaction time; mental activity is not instantaneous, but requires a small amount of effort measured by the amount of time it takes to react.
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Edward Titchener (1867-1927) | Structuralism and Functionalism
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- Titchener (1867-1927), a student of Wundt, adopted introspection to devise an organized map of the structure of human consciousness.
- he used the term elements to be analogous to the periodic table; he believed mental experiences were made up of a number of limited sensations, like the elements in chemistry.
- different sensations can form and create complex compounds.
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William James | Structuralism and Functionalism
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- James (1842-1910) was influenced by Darwin, and sought to examine behaviour in context and explain how our thoughts and actions help us adapt to our environment.
- evolutionary psychology: an approach that interprets and explains modern human behaviour in terms of forces acting upon our distant ancestor.
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Edwin Twitmeyer | Behaviourism
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- Twitmyer (1873-1943) studied reflexes.
- used a rubber mallet to strike a volunteer’s knee.
- a bell would ring beforehand so that the volunteer wasn’t startled.
- the participant’s knee would kick at the sound of the bell, before the mallet struck.
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Ivan Pavlov | Behaviourism
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- the credit for discovering classical conditioning typically goes to Pavlov (1849-1936).
- noticed that dogs in the laboratory learned to salivate to a tone if the tone had a history of sounding just prior to the delivery of food.
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John B. Watson | Behaviourism
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- Watson (1878-1958) believed that all behaviour could ultimately be explained through conditioning.
- was adamant that only observable changes in the environment and behaviour were appropriate for scientific study.
- criticized introspection and believed very little in the power of genetics.
- was fired from his university and took up a job in marketing.
- did not focus on the product itself, but made associations between a product’s brand image and positive emotions.
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B.F. Skinner | Behaviourism
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- Skinner (1904-1990) was a behaviourist who believed that psychology was the study of behaviour, and not of the observable mind.
- the foundation of behaviour was how an organism responded to rewards and punishments.
- believed this could apply to all organisms, both human and nonhuman.
- faced with criticism because theory left little room for free will.
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Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow | Humanism
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- Carl Rogers (1902-1987) and Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) were humanistic psychologists who focused on the positive aspects of humanity and the factors that lead to a productive and fulfilling life.
- believed people could attain mental well-being and satisfaction through gaining a greater understanding of themselves, rather than by being diagnosed with a disorder or having their problems labelled.
- believe humans strive to develop a sense of self and are motivated to personally grow and fulfill their potential.
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Humanist Psychology
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focuses on the unique aspects of each individual human, each person’s freedom to act, his or her rational thought, and the belief that humans are fundamentally different from other animals.
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Psychoanalysis
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a psychological approach that attempts to explain how behaviour and personality are influenced by unconscious processes.
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Materialism | Philosophical and Scientific Origins
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- materialism: the belief that humans, and other living beings, are composed exclusively of physical matter.
- accepting this idea would mean that we are nothing more than complex machines that lack a self-conscious, self-controlling soul.
- dualism: the belief that there are properties of humans that are not material (a mind or soul separate from the body).
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Nature and Nurture Relationships | Philosophical and Scientific Origins
the inquiry into how heredity (nature) and environment (nurture) influence behaviour and mental processes.
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Structuralism
an attempt to analyze conscious experience by breaking it down into basic elements, and to understand how these elements work together.
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Functionalism
the study of the purpose and function of behaviour and conscious experience.
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Behaviourism
an approach that dominated the first half of the 20th century of North American psychology and had a singular focus on studying only observable behaviour, with little to no reference to mental events or instincts as possible influences on behaviour.
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Karl Lashley | Brain Science
* Lashley (1890-1958) was interested in locating the engram: the place in the brain where a memory trace was stored.
* using rats, Lashley examined how the size and location of brain damage affected performance on tasks such as maze navigation. produced two findings:
* the exact location of location of the damage didn’t affect performance; long-term memories are stored throughout many parts of the brain
* principle of mass action: the size of the damage did have an effect, with larger lesions causing a greater impairment in performance.
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Donald Hebb | Brain Science
* Hebb (1904-1985), a former student of Lashley’s, conducted studies examining how cells in the brain change over the course of learning.
* Hebb’s Law: when a brain cell consistently stimulates another cell, metabolic and physical changes occur to strengthen this relationship.
* reinforced the notion that behaviour can be studied at a number of different levels ranging from neurons (brain cells) to the entire brain.
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Wilder Penfield | Brain Science
* Penfield (1891-1976) developed a surgical procedure to help patients with epilepsy.
* the procedure involved removing cells from the brain region where the seizures began.
* before the procedure, he had to map out the functions of the brain surrounding the area so he wouldn’t damage other important areas.
* Penfield electrically stimulated each patient’s brain while the patient was under local anesthetic, and then the patient reported the sensations.
* he also showed that people’s subjective experiences can be represented in the brain.
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Hermann Ebbinghaus | Brain Science
* Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) collected data on remembering and forgetting.
* forgetting curves showed that most of what a person learns will be forgotten rapidly, but that rate of forgetting will then slow down, enabling us to remember some of the information that we’ve learned.
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Frederick Bartlett | Brain Science
* Bartlett (1886-1969) found that memory was influenced by a number of outside factors, including a person’s cultural knowledge and experiences.
* demonstrated that we’re more likely to remember the general storyline than what the characters were wearing or the exact words spoken.
* our cultural knowledge shapes what elements of a storyline we find important enough to remember.
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Gestalt Psychology | Cognitive Psychology
* **gestalt psychology**: an approach emphasizing that psychologists need to focus on the world of perception and experience, rather than its parts; precursor to cognitive psychology.
* e.g. if you were handed an apple, you wouldn’t think, “red, round, has a stem…”
* you’d probably think, “this is an apple.”
* looking at experience in terms of Wundt’s parts only made as much sense as understanding water only by studying its hydrogen and oxygen atoms.
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Ulrich Neisser | Cognitive Psychology
* Neisser (1928-2012), in 1968, coined the term “cognitive psychology”.
* cognitive psychology: a modern psychological perspective that focuses on processes such as memory, thinking, and language.
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Cognitive Neuroscience
* cognitive neuroscience: working to identify the neural areas involved with complex abilities like memory, emotions, and decision making.
* in the 1970s and 1980s, brain-imaging tools became more sophisticated.
* this field is growing faster than any other area of psychology.
* social-cognitive neuroscience—using cognitive and brain-imaging techniques to examine issues related to social behaviour.
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Social Psychology
* social psychology: the study of the influence of other people on our behaviour.
* psychologists noted that not all people responded to social groups or the presence of others in the same way.
* these observations led to the development of personality psychology: the study of how different personality characteristics can influence how we think and act.
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Norman Triplett | Social Psychology
Triplett (1861-1931) conducted one of the first formal experiments in social psychology, observing that cyclists ride faster in the presence of other people than when riding alone.
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Kurt Lewin | Social Psychology
* Lewin (1890-1947) was the founder of modern social psychology.
* suggested that behaviour is a function of the individual and the environment, B = f{I,E}.
* that is, behaviours can be predicted and explained through understanding how an individual with a specific set of traits would respond in a context that involved a specific set of conditions.
* cross-cultural psychology: the field that draws comparisons abut individual and group behaviour among cultures; helps us understand the role of society in shaping behaviour, beliefs, and values.
