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.