Psychology History and Approaches

Carl Rogers

Humanistic; founded person-centered therapy, theory that emphasizes the unique quality of humans especially their freedom and potential for personal growth, unconditional positive regard, fully functioning person.

Structuralism

An early school of psychology that used introspection to explore the elemental structure of the human mind.

Abraham Maslow

Hierarchy of needs; humanistic psychology; self-actualizing individual. Developed a theory of motivation that emphasized psychological growth.

Humanistic Psychology

Historically significant perspective that emphasized the growth potential of healthy people and the individual's potential for personal growth.

Introspection

The examination or observation of one's own mental and emotional processes.

Father of Psychology

Wilhelm Wundt. He established the first psychological laboratory 1879 in Leipzig, Germany.

General Adaption Syndrome

the body's adaptive response to stress in three states - alarm, resistance, exhaustion.

Cognitive Perspective

A psychological approach that emphasizes mental processes in perception, memory, language, problem solving, and other areas of behavior.

Gestalt Psychology

A psychological approach that emphasizes that we often perceive the whole rather than the sum of the parts. Our brains make meaningful wholes - the whole is different than the sum of its parts.

John B. Watson

Behaviorism; emphasis on external behaviors of people and their reactions on a given situation; famous for Little Albert study in which baby was taught to fear a white rat.

Mary Whiten Calkins

First female psychologist tutored by William James, denied degree at Harvard. Also the first female president of American Psychological Association.

E.B. Titchener

Founder of structuralism.

Type A

Friedman and Rosenman's term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people.

Type B

Friedman and Rosenman's term for easygoing, relaxed people.

William James

Functionalism; survival; human ideas, thoughts, emotions run as a moment-to-moment stream of consciousness.

Evolutionary Perspective

Influenced by the seminal writings of Charles Darwin. Emphasizes the role played by natural selection and adaptation in the evolution of behavior and mental processes.

Socrates and Plato

Logic and reason; mind and body are separate.

John Locke

Mind is a "blank slate" (tabula rasa). His ideas, along with Bacon's gave rise to modern empiricism.

Aristotle

Observation, knowledge through experience.

Social/Cultural Perspective

Our well-being is affected by our genes, brain functioning, inner thought and feelings, and the influences of our social and cultural environment.

B.F. Skinner

Principle of reinforcement; operant conditioning; shaping.

Sigmund Freud

Psychoanalysis, unconsciousness. Austrian physician whose work focused on the unconscious causes of behavior and personality formation; founded psychoanalysis.

Two-Factor Theory

Schachter's theory that to experience emotion one must (1) be physically aroused and (2) cognitively label the arousal.

Cannon-Bard Theory

The theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers (1) physiological responses and (2) the subjective experience of emotion.

James-Lange Theory

The theory that our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli.

Dorthea Dix

Tireless reformer, who worked mightily to improve the treatment of the mentally ill. Appointed superintendant of women nurses for the Union forces.