Chapter 1: Psychology- Evolution of a Science

Phrenology

A now defunct theory that specific mental abilities and characteristics, ranging from memory to the capacity for happiness, are localized in specific regions of the brain

Consciousness

A person's subjective experience of the world and the mind

Gestalt psychology

A psychological approach that emphasizes that we often perceive the whole rather than the sum of the parts

Evolutionary psychology

A psychological approach that explains mind and behavior in terms of the adaptive value of abilities that are preserved over time by natural selection

Hysteria

A temporary loss of cognitive or motor functions, usually as a result of emotionally upsetting experiences

Psychoanalysis

A therapeutic approach that focuses on bringing unconscious material into conscious awareness to better understand psychological disorders

Response

An action or physiological change elicited by a stimulus

Behaviorism

An approach that advocates that psychologists restrict themselves to the scientific study of objectively observable behavior (what people do)

Psychoanalytic theory

An approach that emphasizes the imporant of unconscious mental processes in shaping feelings, thoughts and behavior

Behavioral neuroscience

An approach to psychology that links psychological processes to activities in the nervous system and other bodily processes

Humanistic psychology

An approach to understanding human nature that emphasizes the positive potential of human beings

American Psychological Association (APA)

An organization of more than about 150,000 members that represents psychology as a profession

John Watson (1878-1958)

Applied Pavlov's techniques to human infants

Aristotle (348-322 BC)

Argued for philosophical empiricism

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Argued in favor of dualism

Plato (428-347 BC)

Argued in favor of nativism

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

Argued that the mind and body different things at all; rather, the mind is what the brain does

Max Wertheimer (1880-1943)

Associated with Gestalt psychology

Herman Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)

Associated with emorization of nonsense syllables

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), Carl Rogers (1902-1987)

Began the humanistic psychology movement

Kurt Lewin (1890-1947)

Believed that perception is reality, not the stimulus, but one's constual of the stimulus

Edward Tichener (1867-1972)

Brought structuralism to the US, focused on identifying the basic elements of consciousness

Natural selection

Charles Darwin's theory that the features of an organism that help it survive and reproduce are more likely than other features to be passed on to subsequent generations

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Developed psychoanalysis and emphasized how childhood experiences shape thoughts, feelings and behavior

Franz Gall (1758-1828)

Developed the false theory of phrenology

Illusions

Errors of perception, memory, or judgement in which subjective experience differs from objective reality

William James (1842-1910)

Father of psychology

Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893), Pierre Janet (1859-1947)

Focused on development and education and strongly grounded in the theory of evolution, studied hysteria (2 people)

Association for Psychological Sciences (APS)

Formerly American Psychological Society

social

German scientists who migrated to America (Asch and Lewin) were Gestaltists and the first to produce _____ theories.

groups

Gestaltists felt that their idea of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts also applied to the relationship between social _____ and the individual.

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

His laboratory in Leipzig Germany marked the identification of psychology as an independent field of study, first of only two experimental psychology labs at the time -Introduced structuralism

Absolutism

Holds that culture makes little or no difference for most psychological phenomena

Relativism

Holds that psychological phenomena are likely to vary considerably across cultures and should be viewed only in the context of the specific culture

Dualism

How mental activity can be reconciled and coordinated with physical behavior

Behavior

Observable actions of human beings and non human animals

Hermann von Helmholtz(1821-1894)

Reaction time: used physiology by training participants to respond to a stimulus when applied to different parts of the leg, helped to estimate how long it took for nerve impulses to travel to the brain

Stimulus

Sensory input from the environment

Normal Triplett (1895)

Social psychologist who studied how the presence of other improves performance

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)

Studied behavioral conditioning on dogs

Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

Studied the developing mental lives of children

G. Stanely Hall (1844-1924)

Studied with both Wundt and James, set up first psychology research lab in North America

B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)

Tested behavioral reinforcement on rats with his Skinner box (argued that free-will was non-existent and our "decisions" are responses to present and passed reinforcements)

Reaction time

The amount of time taken to respond to a specific stimulus

Structuralism

The analysis of the basic elements that constitute the mind (using introspection)

Reinforcement

The consequences of a behavior determine whether it will be more of less likely to occur again

Cognitive neuroscience

The field of study that attempts to understand the links between cognitive processes and brain activity

Computer

The introduction of the _____ sparked the beginning of cognitive psychology

Unconscious

The part of the mind that operates outside of conscious awareness but influences conscious thoughts, feelings and actions

Nativism

The philosophical view that certain kinds of knowledge are innate or inborn

Mind

The private inner experience of perceptions, thoughts, memories and feelings

Cognitive psychology

The scientific study of mental processes, including perception, thought, memory, and reasoning

Psychology

The scientific study of mind and behavior

Physiology

The study of biological processes, especially in the human body

Cultural psychology

The study of how cultures reflect and shape the psychological processes of their members

Social psychology

The study of the causes and consequences of sociality

Functionalism

The study of the purpose mental processes serve in enabling people to adapt to their environment (William James idea based on Darwinian evolution)

Introspection

The subjective observation of one's own experience

Philosophical empiricism

The view that all knowledge is acquired through experience

Frederic Barltett (1886-1969)

Theorized that memory is a reproduction of past experiences influenced by knowledge, beliefs, hopes, aspirations and desires

Paul Broca (1824-1880)

Worked with a patient who had suffered damage to the Broca's area of the brain impairing his speech, gave insight into structuralism