What is Psychology? - ✔✔The scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
-- behavior: any action
-- metal processes: perceptions, thoughts, feelings (latent constructs)
-- scientific
Goals of Psychology - ✔✔1. Describe (what is happening?)
2. Explain (why is it happening?)
3. Predict (when will i happen again?)
4. Control (how can it be changed?)
Wilheim Wundt - ✔✔"Father of Psychology"
- Some work involved *objective introspection*
• 1. First attempt to bring objectivity/measurement in
psychology
• 2. Founded the 1st experimental psychology
laboratory.
objective introspection - ✔✔Wundt -- process of objectively examining and measuring one's own
thoughts and mental activities
EX: place object, like rock, in student's hand and have student explain everything he was feeling from
holding the rock -- all sensations by the rock
Edward Titchener - ✔✔• Student of Wundt, translated many of Wundt's works into English
• *Structuralism*
,- Study consciousness by trying to understand its smallest, most basic elements
• Introspection of thoughts as well as physical objects
Structuralism - ✔✔Titchener -- expanded on Wundt's original ideas -- focus of the study was the
structure of the mind
William James - ✔✔• Functionalism:
Fuctionalism - ✔✔William James -- Study the function of consciousness‐how the mind allows people to
work, play, adapt to new circumstances
Max Wertheimer - ✔✔Gestalt Psychology, or how we experience the world
- "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
Gestalt Psychology - ✔✔Wertheimer -- How we experience the world as whole
Sigmund Freud - ✔✔Worked with patients whose complaints had no
identifiable physical cause
• Focused on the role of the unconscious
- Where unwanted urges and desires are pushed
towards
• *Psychoanalysis*: therapy based on Freud's ideas
- Focus on early childhood development; psychosexual
stages
- Dream interpretation: "The interpretation of dreams
is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious
activities of the mind."
, psychoanalysis - ✔✔Freud -- theory based on Freud's ideas that there is an unconscious (unaware) mind
into which we push/repress all threatening urges or desires, which cause nervous disorders [focuses on
early childhood experiences]
John Watson - ✔✔*Behaviorism* or study of the observable behavior
-- performed the "Little Albert" study trying to create a phobia using the classic conditioning, a
technique discovered by Pavlov
Behaviorism - ✔✔Watson -- focused on the study of observable behavior
Pavlov - ✔✔Interested in reflexes
• Discovered that reflexes could be learned/conditioned aka *conditioning*
EX: observing dogs & metronome
- At first, Pavlov turned metronome on, feed dogs, caused saliva (natural response)
- Then, metronome caused saliva before being feed, a learned reflexive response (aka conditioning)
conditioning - ✔✔Pavlov -- the idea that reflexive responses can be learned or "conditioned"
John Watson: Little Albert study - ✔✔Freud: phobias are the result of unconscious conflicts
-- Watson believed he could create a phobia using the conditioning technique discovered by Pavlov
-- Took baby, "Little Albert," and taught him to fear a rat by making loud, scary noises every time a rat
appeared until just seeing the rat made the baby cry/fearful
7 Modern Perspectives of Pyschology - ✔✔• Psychodynamic
• Behavioral
• Humanistic
• Cognitive
• Sociocultural
• Bio-psychological Perspective
• Evolutionary Perspective
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