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Summary Psychological Science - Introduction to psychology (PSBE1-01)
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Summary of H1,6,8,10,11,12,14 en 15 of the book psychological science.
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Summary psychological ScienceChapter 1
1.1
Through our social interactions, we form impressions of others. These impressions are used to
categorize others and to make predictions about their intentions and actions.
Psychological science: is the study of mind, brain and behaviour.
Mind refers to mental activity. Behaviour describes a wide variety of observable actions.
The goals of psychology are to understand mental activity, social interactions and how people
acquire behaviours.
Not all in psychology is common sense, for example, many people at least initially reject the
idea that some of their thoughts, feelings, and actions may be determined by unconscious
influences.
Psychological science teaches also critical thinking. This is systematically evaluating
information to reach reasonable conclusions.
1.2
Psychology originated in philosophy, and in the nineteenth-century psychology developed into a
discipline. That discipline spread throughout the world and developed into a vital field of science
and different ways of thinking, these are called schools of thought. The major themes and
schools of thought in history of psychology are:
● Nature/Nurture debate: the arguments concerning whether psychological
characteristics are biologically innate (nurture) or acquired through education,
experience and culture (nature).
Culture: are the beliefs, values, rules and customs that exist within a group of people
who share a common language and environment and that are transmitted through
learning from one generation to the next.
● Mind/body problem: Fundamental psychological issue: are the mind an body separate
and distinct, or is the mind simply the physical brain’s subjective experience?
Leonardo da Vinci arrived at one location in the brain, that he called sensus communis,
and he believed it to be the home of thought and judgement.
Philosopher Rene Descartes promoted the first influential theory of dualism, the idea that
the mind and the body are separate yet intertwined.
● Introspection: a systematic examination of subjective mental experiences that requires
people to inspect and report on the content of their thoughts
, ● Structuralism: An approach to psychology based on the idea that conscious experience
can be broken down into its basic underlying components.
You can analyse a stimulus in: quality, intensity, duration, and clarity. People involved: Tichener,
Wundt
● Functionalism: An approach to psychology concerned with the adaptive purpose, or
function, of mind and behaviour.
People involved: Dewey and James.
● Stream of consciousness: a phrase coined by William James to describe each
person’s continuous series of ever-changing thoughts.
● Evolutionary theory: a theory presented by the naturalist Charles Darwin; it views the
history of a species in terms of the inherited, adaptive value of physical characteristics,
of mental activity, and of behaviour.
● Natural selection: in evolutionary theory, the idea that those who inherit characteristics
that help them adapt to their particular environments have a selective advantage over
those who do not. (survival of the fittest)
● Adaptions: changes passed along
● Gestalt theory: a theory based on the idea that the whole of a personal experience is
different from simply the sum of its consistent elements. (Opposite of structuralism).
This perspective has influenced many areas of psychology, including the study of vision and our
understanding of human personality.
People involved: Kohler, Wertheimer
Important women in the psychological field are also present. One of them is Mary Whiton
Calkins, she was the first women to set up a psychology laboratory, and was in 1905 elected the
first woman president of the American Psychological Association.
Another important woman was Margaret Floy Washburn; she was the first woman to be officially
granted a Ph.D. in psychology. She became the second woman president of the American
Psychological Association.
Throughout the history of psychology, women have contributed to the field even as they
struggled against sexism. Barriers sometimes remain to career success for women in
psychology, but women generally participate fully – and increasingly – as researchers and
research participants.
Freud deduced that much of human behaviour is determined by mental processes operating
below the level of conscious awareness, at the level of the unconscious. He believed that
these unconscious mental forces, often sexual and in conflict, produced psychological
discomfort and in some cases even apparent psychological disorders. He developed
,psychoanalysis; a method that attempts to bring the contents of the unconscious into
conscious awareness so that conflicts can be revealed.
Psychologist John B. Watson believed that if psychology was to be a science, it had to stop
trying to study mental events that could not be observed directly. He developed behaviourism, a
psychological approach that emphasizes the role of environmental forces in producing
behaviour.
People involved: Skinner, Watson
Also Skinner became famous for taking up the mantle of behaviourism, he denied the existence
of mental states.
Behaviourism dominated psychological research well into the early 1960s. In many ways, these
times were extremely productive for psychologist.
In 1957, however, George A. Miller launched the cognitive revolution in psychology. Cognitive
psychology is the study of how people think, learn and remember. The brain took in information
as a code, processed it, stored relevant sections, and retrieved stores information as required.
People involved: Kohler, Miller, Tolman
These information-processing theories of cognition, viewed the brain as running the mind, or
mental processes. In other words: they saw the brain as the hardware, and the mental
processes as the software.
During the next decade, cognitive neuroscience emerged. This is the study of the neural
mechanisms (mechanisms involving the brain, nerves and nervous tissue) that underlie thought,
learning and memory.
Social psychology came in the 1950s, and is the study how people are influenced by their
interactions with others.
People involved: Lewin
In the 1950s also Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow pioneered a humanistic approach to the
treatment of psychological disorders. This approach emphasized how people can come to know
and accept themselves in order to reach their unique potentials.
1.3
Psychologist have mad tremendous progress in understanding brain chemistry, in fact hundreds
of substance splay critical roles in mental activity and behaviour.
Also in the 1980s researchers have been able to study the working brain as it performs its vital
psychological functions. We now know that there is some localization of function in the bran, but
many regions work together to produce behaviour and mental activity.
, Besides a enormous progress is made in understanding the influence of genetic processes on
life. Genetic researchers have mapped the human genome: the basic genetic code, or blue print
of the human body.
Also the scientific study of genetic influences has made clear that very few single genes cause
specific behaviours. Almost all biological an psychological activity is affected by the actions of
multiple genes.
The brain adapts biologically, the content of the mind adapt to cultural influences. In this way,
the mind helps us overcome our particular challenges, but it also provides a strong framework
for or share social understandings of how the world works.
Human cultural evolution has occurred much faster than human biological evolution. The most
dramatic cultural changes have come in the last few thousand time, they have changed
profoundly in regard to how they live together. In the last period globalization is upcoming. The
culture in which we live shapes many aspects of daily life. Culture rules are learned as norms,
which specify how people ought to behave in different context.
Cultural neuroscience studies the ways that cultural variables affect the brand, the mind, the
genes and behaviour.
Four broadly defined levels of analysis reflect the most common research methods for studying
mind and behaviour:
1. Biological level of analysis: deals with how the physical body, including the brand,
contributes to mind and behaviour.
2. Individual level of analysis: focus on individual differences in personality and in the
mental processes that affect how people perceive and know the world.
3. Social level of analysis: how group context affect how people interact and influence each
other
4. Cultural level of analysis: explores how people’s thoughts, feelings and actions are
similar or different across cultures.
Different types of psychologist:
● Neuroscience/biological psychologists
● Cognitive psychologists
● Experimental psychologists
● Developmental psychologists
● Personality psychologists
● Social psychologists
● Cultural psychologists
● Clinical psychologists
● Counselling psychologists
● School psychologists
● Industrial and organizational psychologists
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