Psychology Test 1 - Chapter 1

Psychology involves multiple competing theories.

Multiple theories to explain behavior and mental processes are presented throughout the class. Whether you personally agree with the theory or not, it would not be presented if it did not have some proven value in the discipline (i.e., it has stood the test of time, and in many cases has also stood the repeated tests of science). So you need to learn what is presented and know how to apply it.

Introspection

- "Looking within." - Technique of observing your mental events (thoughts and feelings) as (or immediately after) they occur. - The problems with using introspection as a scientific tool are that the process could not be objectively repeated with the same results between subjects AND that quite a few mental processes cannot be accessed via introspection (e.g., any unconscious process).

Describe the difference between an academic psychologist and an applied psychologist as discussed in lecture. Consider examples of each.

- Academic psychologists focus on conducting research and teaching, typically within university settings. Academic psychologists have many specialties previously discussed in lecture. - Applied psychologists study how to improve products and procedures and conduct research to help solve specific practical problems. They use the principles and theories of psychology in practical areas such as education, industry, the justice system, marketing, entertainment, politics, and government. They also use their training and knowledge to improve the lives of individuals via treatment techniques. - Forensic/legal psychologists engage in trial consultation (such as jury selection), provide services in prison systems, or act as expert witnesses in court (competency, insanity, and civil cases) - Industrial/organizational psychologists focus on using psychology in the workplace (e.g., designing a better work environment for employees). - Sports psychologists work with athletes to help them improve their performances. Educational or school psychologists work with educators to improve children's development - Consulting psychologists serve various roles advising professionals in business, entertainment, politics, and government

Philosophical empiricism

- Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC) and "tabula rasa" - Philosophical Empiricism ("nurture") - the philosophical view that all knowledge and abilities are acquired through experience; believed that a child's mind was a blank slate (tabula rasa) upon which experiences are written.

Describe the difference between a clinical psychologist and a psychiatrist as reviewed in lecture and the text.

- Clinical psychologists are psychologists who provide psychotherapy and are trained to administer and interpret psychological tests. Some clinical psychologists provide psychotherapy (helping clients learn to change so they can cope with troublesome thoughts, feelings, and behaviors) and administer and interpret psychological tests. These psychologists usually work in private offices, clinics, or hospitals. Others teach or perform research. - Psychiatrists are medical doctors (with M.D. degrees). As physicians with M.D. degrees, psychiatrists have extensive medical training and can prescribe drugs, whereas psychologists, in general, cannot. Psychiatrists (unlike clinical psychologists) have not been trained to interpret and understand psychological research or psychological testing. Until the late 2000's, medical school applicants were not even required to take courses in General or Abnormal Psychology.

Psychology evolves in a socio-historical context.

- Culture and changes in history influence the science of psychology (vice versa). - The single most historical event in all of psychology is WWII. (Entire field called social psychology did not even exist until after WWII). - How is it that an entire nation lined up behind this system of government that systematically eliminated a race of people? (It is pretty easy to get people to do what you want if you use the right tasks. Propaganda is a major factor.)

What are the central themes of psychology?

- Experience is subjective - Psychology is a science above all else - Psychology involves multiple competing theories - No one theory explains it all ( behavior and mental processes always have multiple causes) - Nature and nurture interact in ways that constantly affect functioning - Psychology is an evolutionary science - Psychology evolves in a socio-historical context.

Structuralism

- Focused on identifying the "building blocks" of consciousness - breaking the mind into its smallest elements.

Flouren's and Broca's contributions

- French biologist Pierre Flourens tested the ideas of Gall by removing brain parts from animals and observing any resulting changes in behavior. - Surgeon Paul Broca wrote about a patient who could understand speech, but could not produce speech (other than the syllable "tan") due to very specific damage in his brain. - Broca and Flourens were the first to demonstrate that the mind is grounded in the material substance of the brain.

Dualism

- French philosopher Rene Descartes argued that the body is made of material substance, whereas the mind (or soul) is made of an immaterial or spiritual substance. - The view that the mind and body function separately. Mind was seen as something spiritual, frequently called the soul by spiritualists and religious authorities. - Presents the problem of addressing how the mind communicates with the body.

Phrenology

- French physician Franz Joseph Gall believed that brains and minds were linked through size, not glands; that is, "more brain equals more mental ability" - 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. - Gall asserted that the size of bumps on the skull reflected the size of the brain beneath, and therefore the predominant characteristics of that person- based on anecdote and casual observation, not science.

Gestalt Psychology

- Max Wertheimer - Focused on consciousness and principles of perceptual organization; The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. - We perceive everything all at once, and the brain is designed to find meaning even where none exists. Context and mindset, the same thing can be perceived different ways based upon these two.

Psychological Model

- Mental illness is caused from life experiences such as lack of sleep, stress, poor diet, traumatic experiences, etc. - Example: The first year of college is the highest risk year of your life for developing a psychological disorder. Vulnerability is heightened due to risk. - Aristotle's ideas formed the basis of the modern psychological model.

Monism

- Modern philosophers and psychologists support monism - the idea that the mind and the body are one (the mind is the result of the activity of the brain). - Medical research from the 17th-19th centuries showed that mental experience is affected by changes in the brain; that mind is based in the physical body. This suggested that the mind could be studied with techniques that were already used to study the physical world, producing objective data to test theories about experience and behavior.

Experience is subjective

- No two people experience the same event in the exact same way; The way that we remember, feel, and react. - Our brains are so cognitively advanced. Every experience will be unique because our brains process through our experiences. - Human beings are the hardest, unpredictable, and complex organisms on Earth.

Humanistic psychology

- Reaction against both Freud's psychodynamic theory and behaviorism. Unlike the behaviorists, the humanists felt that internal experience was extremely important for understanding behavior. - The humanists proposed that human nature is inherently good, and that all people want to improve themselves if they can. It is the school of psychology that assumes people have positive values, free will, and deep inner creativity—the combination of which leads them to choose life-fulfilling paths to personal growth. - The humanistic approach focuses on people's highest aspirations for themselves. It rests on the ideas that the "client" (no longer the "patient" as in psychodynamic approaches) must be respected as equal to the therapist, and that each person has dignity and self-worth - ideas that are still very influential in clinical psychology today. - Psychologists such as Carl Rogers (therapist) and Abraham Maslow (researcher who developed a theory of motivation) developed therapies and theories based on the humanistic approach. - Carl Rogers's client-centered therapy incorporated Maslow's theory that people have an urge to self-actualize—that is, to develop to their fullest potentials—and that, given the right therapeutic environment, this development will occur in time. Many therapies now in use reflect the influence of humanistic psychology.

Psychology is a science above all else.

- Science is a method for observing the world around; Eliminates emotion, uses measurable facts, and develops ways of testing theories and ideas using the facts. - Based upon tested facts, not based upon beliefs.

What is science?

- Science strives to know facts by using objective. - Science avoids assumptions, beliefs, and allusions. - Science eliminates errors and avoid bias - Phenomenon (thought feeling and behavior) - Test the resulting ideas by collecting additional facts (through careful measurement, experimentation, manipulation, observation).

Describe how the advent of computers and information processing systems related to the development of cognitive psychology as discussed in lecture, and define this approach. How does the human mind function like a computer? Compare the mind and the brain to the software and hardware of a computer system. How did cognitive psychology refute the claims of behaviorists regarding the scientific approach to mental processes in psychology?

- Scientists had no way to measure thought, emotion, etc. - The invention of the computer changed that. We invented the thinking machine, which was an observable, measurable model of the human mind. - The hardware of the computer is similar to the brain, studies the software of the mind (similar to the apps and programs, the intelligence, reasoning, attention, and memory). - The cognitive revolution gave birth to cognitive psychology, which attempts to characterize the nature of human information processing by characterizing the mental events that allow information to be stored and operated on internally. In this view, mental processes are like computer software, whereas the brain is the hardware. Computers showed, once and for all, why it is important that there is a science of the unobservable events that take place in the head, not just a science of directly observable behavior. Modern cognitive psychologists study human information processing, thinking, attention, reasoning, memory, and problem solving (focus on the software of the mind).

Psychodynamic Theory

- Sigmund Freud - A detailed theory of how thoughts and feelings affect people's actions. It is the first of the modern psychological theories. Believed that the push-and-pull interaction between conscious and unconscious forces produce abnormal behaviors. - Freud stressed that the mind has separate components, some of which are unconscious, meaning outside of awareness and not able to bring to conscious awareness at will. - Freud believed that people have many unconscious sexual and aggressive urges. Consciously, people find these unconscious urges unacceptable and, therefore, keep them hidden in the unconscious. Unconscious urges build up until they demand release as thoughts, feelings, or actions. - Freud believed that much of our unconscious mind is shaped during early interactions in life (particularly with parents and caregivers)

B.F. Skinner

- Skinner's behaviorism is reinforcement, which is any consequence that results from a given behavior and strengthens or supports the behavior. - Consequences of behavior come to alter that behavior over time. - First to apply scientific methods to study and perfect the behavior of reward and punishment. - He started doing animal research. Seemed more like an animal trainer. (Trained pigeons to type)

Medical Model

- The idea that just because someone is acting strange or weird that it was not their fault. More so that the person was sick. - People were treated more humanely. - More modern, yet still outdated. - Believed that you could catch a mental disorder the way that you can catch the flu, through physical contact. (We now know that mental illness is genetic, you inherit it from your parents) - Plato's ideas formed the basis of this approach but were abandoned for over 2000 years.

Supernatural Approach

- The majority of human cultures with the exceptions of the Greeks and the Egyptians has taken the view that the cause of mental illnesses came from supernatural forces influencing your body. - Punishment for sin or as possession by an evil spirit. The treatment for this was banishment, imprisonment, or death. Which the most common form of treatment in human history was exorcism; including drowning, stoning, beating/torturing. - Trepanation - based in the belief that you have inhaled an evil spirit in your body while you were sleeping. Carve holes in skulls to let the spirit out of the head. - Sigmund Freud believed that men could not suffer from mental illness because men are mentally superior and not weak like women.

Behaviorism

- The school of psychology that focuses on how a specific stimulus (object, person, or event- any sensory input from the environment) evokes a specific response (behavior in reaction to the stimuli- action or physiological change elicited by a stimulus). - John Watson pioneered the Behaviorist movement by proposing that psychology focus on behavior, or what people do, instead of what people experience, because behavior can be measured objectively. - Watson proposed that the goal of scientific psychology should be to predict and control behavior in ways that benefit society. He pioneered the use of visually (and sexually) appealing stimuli to successfully sell products. - Behaviorism removed the mind from the equation and began studying other animals- behaviorists pioneered animal research in psychology that was originally suggested by functionalists.

What is the mind?

- Thoughts and emotions, the mind is what the brain does. An organ that controls the way that one thinks and feels. - Medicine and medical science and the enlightenment caused for there to be a connection between.

Wilhelm Wundt

- Usually considered the founder of scientific psychology, set up the first psychology laboratory in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany. - Simple perception - wanted to understand the basics of the five human senses. How is it that sensory information is translated into something meaningful from the brain.

Functionalism

- William James - Influenced by Darwin's Theory of Evolution; studied how the mind helps individuals to function in their environment and how animal observations provide clues for human behavior. - Focused on pragmatic issues such as improving education. - In 1890, The principles of psychology, which was the most influential book in the field of psychology. - William James idea was that psychologists could learn and study animals.

Psychology is an evolutionary science.

- William James wrote a book, that formed a framework and groundwork of psychology; Came up with the idea that formed the basis of every major theory that is scientifically accepted in this field. - The human mind evolves, and changes; the way it functions and grows; from generations. - Every theory is tied into Darwin's Theory of Evolution

Describe the sociohistorical evolution of clinical psychology as discussed in lecture. What major historical event had the most profound influence on psychology of any event in the history of the science?

Additionally, historical events related to the war also changed the direction of research in psychology (e.g., the atrocities committed by the Nazi party led to the field of social psychology as well as the development of ethical principles guiding treatment of research subjects). - Specifically, the historical confluence of WWII and the advent and mass production of antibiotics (penicillin) are the main reasons why we have the field of clinical psychology today.

What is behavior?

Any outwardly observable or measurable action or activity.

What limitation do psychodynamic theory and behaviorism share in common as discussed in lecture?

As different as psychodynamic theory and behaviorism may appear to be, they two theories shared one principle in common- that human beings have little control over their lives or their destinies (controlled by the unconscious according to Freud and by the environment according to the behaviorists)

Describe the perspectives of Biological psychology (behavioral neuroscience), Social psychology, Developmental psychology, and Personality psychology (individual differences).

Biological psychology (behavioral neuroscience) emphasizes the physiological mechanisms influencing mind and behavior, including nervous system anatomy and physiology, genetics, and biochemistry (such as hormones). Typical research questions might ask how changes in neural activity are associated with psychological processes. Social psychology emphasizes the ways in which psychological processes are influenced by interactions with other people (how does the social environment affect individual and group behavior). Typical research questions might ask how another person or group can manipulate one's choices or actions. Developmental psychology emphasizes the ways that mind and behavior change throughout the lifespan, from the first days after conception through old age and death. Typical research questions might ask when in childhood certain cognitive abilities typically emerge. Personality psychology (individual differences) asks how psychological processes (ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving) differ from person to person. Typical questions ask whether variability in personality traits can predict behavior.

Define cognitive neuroscience. What is the primary difference between cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience?

Cognitive psychology has also been crucial in the development of cognitive neuroscience, which blends cognitive psychology and neuroscience (the study of the brain) when attempting to specify how the brain gives rise to mental processes that store and process information. Cognitive neuroscientists argue that "the mind is what the brain does" and hope to discover the nature, organization, and operation of mental processes by studying the brain. New brain-scanning technologies have allowed us to observe human brains at work.

Define culture and Cultural psychology as discussed in lecture. Describe how the concepts of absolutism and relativism relate to the field of cultural psychology.

Cultural psychology - more of a nurture based theory, the cultural experience that you have reflects and shapes the psychological processes of its members. Defining "culture" - Language, beliefs, values, norms, and behaviors shared by one group The friendships we have, the family we belong too... Absolutism - cultural universality. Culture makes no difference in thoughts feelings and behaviors. Relativism - For some thoughts, feelings, and behaviors there is a difference among different cultures.

Criticisms and Lasting Contributions of Psychodynamic Theory

Criticisms: - The guiding principles rest on subjective interpretations of what patients say and do- so it's not based upon scientific observation. - Psychodynamic theory became so intricate and complicated that it could be used to explain any observation or research result, making it impossible to test- not scientifically verifiable. Lasting Contributions: - The idea of psychodynamic theory—that behavior is driven by a collection of mental processes—has proven invaluable. - The idea that some processes are outside awareness but still affect us is widely accepted- the existence of the unconscious mind has now been proven scientifically. - The influence of early interactions with caregivers on later life has become an intensive area of research . Psychodynamic theories led to new approaches in treating psychological problems that did not previously exist. Freud's psychoanalysis- in which a therapist listens to their patients and attempts to help them understand the unconscious bases of their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors- was the first form of "talk therapy."

Describe Evolutionary psychology as discussed in lecture. What are the basic premises of this theory? How does it relate to Darwin's natural selection (see also concept #11 above)? How is this theory tested? Define cultural universality as it relates to this theory.

Evolutionary psychology: - Evolutionarily successful cognitive strategies and goals survived - These strategies remain today because they served an adaptive function. - Study of how behaviors are shaped by their contribution to survival and reproduction. - Cultural universality and primate studies - Certain behaviors and cognitive abilities have developed to serve and adapt to a purpose; Gender differences, cultural behaviors, and humans vs. non-human animals between thought, feeling, and behavior. - Chimpanzees and gorillas are starting to develop and use their own tools. Mental abilities are starting to evolve in similar ways to ours. - The best evidence supporting evolutionary psychology is cultural universality. Instances of the same behavior or mental practice occurring in all cultures around the world. Evidence supporting a biological process. Emotion, sexual behavior, and aggressive there are very massive differences between men and women in the ways that they deal with these things. - Humans are the only species that use deception. High degree of intelligence is needed to pull this off. Lying successfully, actually makes you more successful. Have better advantages over those who do not lie.Lying separates us cognitively from every other species on earth. -Early researches established that are measurable differences in either behaviors and mental processes.First study, was the study of sexual differences between men and women.

Nature and nurture interact in ways that constantly affect functioning.

Mental processes and behaviors are affected by nature and nurture, and an interaction constantly occurs between each of these forces in ways which constantly change these mental processes and behaviors

No one theory explains it all (behavior and mental processes always have multiple causes).

No one theory in psychology will ever fully explain all mental and behavioral processes. Each theory instead contributes something unique to the field (different way of looking at the same thing). Mental processes and behavior ALWAYS have multiple causes.

Nativism

Plato (428 BC - 347 BC) argues for nativism which is the innate knowledge, or inborn knowledge and abilities.

Psychology

The science of the mind (mental processes) and behavior. "Logos" means to study and "psyche" means the soul. (The study of the soul) Psychologists do NOT just study humans; it is an evolutionary science.

Influences in Psychodynamic Theory

Unconscious - most important, influences the way that you think, feel, and behave Early childhood experiences - up until age 5, have a profound influence... more important than any year after that. Family members and teachers in children's lives treat them. Issues with sexuality and aggression - Aggression and sexual behavior are basic biological evidence. Same part of your brain as survival instincts. Children are taught to repress and control their sex and aggression.