Psychology Week 1

William James

(1842-1910) was the first American psychologist who espoused a different perspective on how psychology should operate (Figure). James was introduced to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and accepted it as an explanation of an organism's characteristics. believed that introspection could serve as one means by which someone might study mental activities, but James also relied on more objective measures, including the use of various recording devices, and examinations of concrete products of mental activities and of anatomy and physiology

Carl Rogers (1902-1987)

American psychologist who founded the school of humanistic psychology.

Which processes are studied by cognitive psychologists?

Attention, memory, and decision-making

Alfred Adler (1870-1937)

linked emotional conflict to perceptions of inferiority

Cecil Sumner

multicultural psychology; 1st African American to get a PhD in psychology in the US; focused on understanding and eliminating racial bias; established a psych program at Howard University --> led to a new generation of black psychologists

Cognitive Psychology

the scientific study of all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

evolutionary psychology

the study of the evolution of behavior and the mind, using principles of natural selection. Seeks to explain the ultimate biological causes of behavior

Wundt's version of introspection

used only very specific experimental conditions in which an external stimulus was designed to produce a scientifically observable (repeatable) experience of the mind (Danziger, 1980). The first stringent requirement was the use of "trained" or practiced observers, who could immediately observe and report a reaction.

Abraham Maslow

was an American psychologist who is best known for proposing a hierarchy of human needs in motivating behavior. Although this concept will be discussed in more detail in a later chapter, a brief overview will be provided here. Maslow asserted that so long as basic needs necessary for survival were met (e.g., food, water, shelter), higher-level needs (e.g., social needs) would begin to motivate behavior. According to Maslow, the highest-level needs relate to self-actualization, a process by which we achieve our full potential.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

was an Austrian neurologist who was fascinated by patients suffering from "hysteria" and neurosis. Hysteria was an ancient diagnosis for disorders, primarily of women with a wide variety of symptoms, including physical symptoms and emotional disturbances, none of which had an apparent physical cause. Freud theorized that many of his patients' problems arose from the unconscious mind. In Freud's view, the unconscious mind was a repository of feelings and urges of which we have no awareness. Gaining access to the unconscious, then, was crucial to the successful resolution of the patient's problems. According to Freud, the unconscious mind could be accessed through dream analysis, by examinations of the first words that came to people's minds, and through seemingly innocent slips of the tongue.

Noam Chomsky

1928-present; Field: language; Contributions: disagreed with Skinner about language acquisition, stated there is an infinite # of sentences in a language, humans have an inborn native ability to develop language

cognitive neuroscience

A field that attempts to understand the links between cognitive processes and brain activity.

Kurt Lewin's Field Theory

Behavior is the result of the both individual characteristic's and the individual's environment. This theory had a major impact on social psychology, supporting the notion that our individual traits and the environment interact to cause behavior.

The advent of _______ in the 1950s had an enormous impact on the development of cognitive psychology

Computers

______ is infamously noted for his experiments with Little Albert.

J.B. Watson

Skinner

Like Watson, Skinner was a behaviorist, and he concentrated on how behavior was affected by its consequences. Therefore, Skinner spoke of reinforcement and punishment as major factors in driving behavior. As a part of his research, Skinner developed a chamber that allowed the careful study of the principles of modifying behavior through reinforcement and punishment

Skinner chamber

The operant conditioning chamber

sport and exercise psychology

The scientific study of people and their behaviors in sport and exercise activities and the practical application of that knowledge

Biopsychology

The specialty in psychology that studies the interaction of biology, behavior, and mental processes.

Maz Wetheimer (1880-1943), Kurt Koffka (1886-1941), Wolfgang Kohler (1887-1967)

Were three German psychologists who immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century to escape Nazi Germany. These men are credited with introducing psychologists in the United States to various Gestalt principles

Watson

While Wundt and James were concerned with understanding conscious experience, Watson thought that the study of consciousness was flawed. Because he believed that objective analysis of the mind was impossible, Watson preferred to focus directly on observable behavior and try to bring that behavior under control. Watson was a major proponent of shifting the focus of psychology from the mind to behavior, and this approach of observing and controlling behavior came to be known as behaviorism

Which type of research would fit the interests of a social psychologist?

Why individuals stereotype others

Empirical method

method for acquiring knowledge based on observation, including experimentation, rather than a method based only on forms of logical argument or previous authorities

Carl Jung (1875-1961)

neo-freudian who believed that humans share a collective unconscious

Introspection

process by which someone examines their own conscious experience in an attempt to break it into its component parts

Empiricism

the belief that accurate knowledge can be acquired through observation

psychoanalytic theory

Focus on the role of the unconscious in affecting conscious behavior

Which psychologist disagreed with Freud's emphasis on the sexual nature of humans and instead, focused on social interests?

Adler

Behaviorism (Watson, Pavlov, Skinner)

A major object of study by behaviorists was learned behavior and its interaction with inborn qualities of the organism. Behaviorism commonly used animals in experiments under the assumption that what was learned using animal models could, to some degree, be applied to human behavior.

Humanism (Maslow, Rogers)

A perspective within psychology that emphasizes the potential for good the is innate to all humans.

Functionalism (William James)

A school of psychology that focused on how our mental and behavioral processes function - how they enable us to adapt, survive, and flourish. Functionalism focused on how mental activities helped an organism fit into its environment. Functionalism has a second, more subtle meaning in that functionalists were more interested in the operation of the whole mind rather than of its individual parts, which were the focus of structuralism.

Which psychologist does not belong in the psychoanalytic perspective?

Abraham Maslow

In his text, "Beyond Freedom and Dignity", ___________ argued that behavior is determined by its consequences and that free will is an illusion.

B.F. Skinner

Dualistic view (Descartes)

Belief that the physical body was mechanical and obeyed the laws of physics. The mind or soul, however, was not physical, but interacted through the pineal gland to product intentional behavior.

Robert Sperry

Biology Nobel Prize for his research on split-brain patients who had their corpus callosum cut

Developed the concept of "Conditions of worth"

Carl Rogers

Neuroscientific Approach

Centers on the brain and nervous system as central to our understanding and behavior, thought, and emotion.

Nativism (Plato)

Certain kinds of knowledge are inborn or innate

According to Chomsky, which observation of language development in children destroys a behavioral explanation for how language develops?

Children can generate novel grammatically correct sentences

Solomon Asch

Conducted classic experiments to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could cause a person to conform to the group.

First psychologist to bring psychology to the united states

Edward Titchener

Tall men reproduce more than short men. Which type of psychology would explore this phenomenon?

Evolutionary Psychology

Karl Lashley discovered that by removing small sections of a rat's brain, he could completely erase it's memory of a previously learned maze.

False

Social psychology and cultural psychology are really the same thing.

False

The Unpredictable nature of results from introspection led to the decline of functionalism

False

Mariah is a teacher and believes that all her students have an inherent need to develop, grow, and reach their full potential. Mariah's beliefs are best characterized by which approach?

Humanism

Cultural psychology

Involves the study of human culture, the socially shared and learned system of beliefs, values, customs, and language necessary for people to function as members of a particular social group.

Which theorist would have been most likely to agree with this statement: Perceptual phenomena are best understood as a combination of their components

Max Wertheimer

Margret Mead

Person who concluded that temperment is the result of cultural factors rather than biological factors

Methods of Carl Rogers

Rogers used a therapeutic technique known as client-centered therapy in helping his clients deal with problematic issues that resulted in their seeking psychotherapy. Unlike a psychoanalytic approach in which the therapist plays an important role in interpreting what conscious behavior reveals about the unconscious mind, client-centered therapy involves the patient taking a lead role in the therapy session

Which of the following scenarios represent the principle of reinforcement?

Studying hard because it results in good grades

Early work of humanistic psychologists

The early work of the humanistic psychologists redirected attention to the individual human as a whole, and as a conscious and self-aware being. By the 1950s, new disciplinary perspectives in linguistics, neuroscience, and computer science were emerging, and these areas revived interest in the mind as a focus of scientific inquiry. This particular perspective has come to be known as the cognitive revolution

Lance notices that when he jogs with Cheryl, he runs faster than when he jogs by himself. Which psychological approach would best explain this behavior?

Triplett

Attempts to understand the atrocities of the Nazis gave rise, in part, to the field of social psychology.

True

Both William James and Sigmund Freud believed that mental illnesses provided important clues into the nature of the mind

True

Gestalt psychologists believed that the mind imposes organization on what it perceives.

True

In Pavlov's experiments with dogs, the ringing of a bell became the conditioned stimulus.

True

Like the empiricists, Skinner believed that the mind was a "blank slate"

True

The work of William James was largely inlfuenced by Darwin's theory of natural selection

True

counseling psychology

a branch of psychology that assists people with problems in living (often related to school, work, or marriage) and in achieving greater well-being

developmental psychology

a branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span

Pavlov

a form of learning behavior called a conditioned reflex, in which an animal or human produced a reflex (unconscious) response to a stimulus and, over time, was conditioned to produce the response to a different stimulus that the experimenter associated with the original stimulus. The reflex Pavlov worked with was salivation in response to the presence of food. The salivation reflex could be elicited using a second stimulus, such as a specific sound, that was presented in association with the initial food stimulus several times. Once the response to the second stimulus was "learned," the food stimulus could be omitted. Pavlov's "classical conditioning" is only one form of learning behavior studied by behaviorists.

Gestalt

a major emphasis of Gestalt psychology deals with the fact that although a sensory experience can be broken down into individual parts, how those parts relate to each other as a whole is often what the individual responds to in perception. For example, a song may be made up of individual notes played by different instruments, but the real nature of the song is perceived in the combinations of these notes as they form the melody, rhythm, and harmony. In many ways, this particular perspective would have directly contradicted Wundt's ideas of structuralism

Personality Trait

a pattern of thought, emotion, and behavior that is relatively consistent over time and across situations

industrial-organizational psychology

a subfield of psychology that studies and advises on workplace behavior. Industrial/organizational (I/O) psychologists help organizations select and train employees, boost morale and productivity, and design products and assess responses to them

clinical psychology

area of psychology that focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and other problematic patterns of behavior

Structuralism (Wundt)

early school of thought promoted by Wundt and Titchener; used introspection to reveal the structure of the human mind. was a German scientist who was the first person to be referred to as a psychologist. His famous book entitled Principles of Physiological Psychology was published in 1873. Wundt viewed psychology as a scientific study of conscious experience, and he believed that the goal of psychology was to identify components of consciousness and how those components combined to result in our conscious experience. Used Introsppection.

Forensic Psychology

field that blends psychology, law, and criminal justice

Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development

psychoanalytic theory (Freud)

focus on the role of the unconscious in affecting conscious behavior, as well as early childhood experiences, and this particular perspective dominated clinical psychology for several decades. involves the patient talking about their experiences and selves, while not invented by Freud, was certainly popularized by him and is still used today. Many of Freud's other ideas, however, are controversial.

health psychology

focuses on how health is affected by the interaction of biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors

social psychology

focuses on how we interact with and relate to others

personality psychology

focuses on patterns of thoughts and behaviors that make each individual unique

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

physiological(1), safety(2), social(3), esteem(4), self-actualization(5) top.