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Psychology-Approaches
Origins of Psychology
Key terms:
Psychology-The scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those functions affecting
behaviour in a given context.
Science-A means of acquiring knowledge through systematic and objective investigation. The aim is to
discover general laws.
Introspection-The first systematic experimental attempt to study the mind by breaking up conscious
awareness into basic structures of thoughts, images and sensations.
Psychology is a science with lots of theories and few facts.
It is the scientific study of the mind and behaviour
A lot of psychology seems common sensical, but it’s a science, so everything has to be theorised and then
scientifically tested. It is difficult to prove things in psychology so there are lots of disagreements and theories. The
different schools of thought about the reasons for our actions are known as approaches.
A timeline of the approaches and their emergence:
17th Century-19th Century: psychology is understood to be an experimental philosophy.
1879: Wilhelm Wundt opens the first experimental psychology lab in Germany.
1900s: Sigmund Freud publishes The interpretation of dreams and the psychodynamic approach is
established.
1913: John B. Watson writes Psychology as the Behaviourist views it and BF Skinner establishes the
behaviourist approach, this would be a dominant approach for the next fifty years.
1950s: Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow and the humanistic approach is established which rejected the
views of the favoured approaches of behaviourism and the psychodynamic approach.
1960s: The cognitive revolution came with the introduction of the digital computer. This gave the
psychologists a metaphor for the operations of the human mind. The cognitive approach reintroduces the
mental processes into psychology but in a much more scientific way than Wundt.
1960s: Albert Bandura proposes the social learning theory providing a bridge between the new cognitive
approach and classical behaviourism in the form of observational learning.
1980s onwards: The biological approach begins to establish itself as the dominant approach in psychology.
Eve of the 21st Century: cognitive neuroscience begins to emerge, combining biological approach and the
existing cognitive approach.
Psychology’s philosophical roots
Rene Descartes-Cartesian dualism, ‘I think therefore I am’. The mind and body are separate.
John Locke- empiricism, all experience obtained through the senses.
Charles Darwin- Darwin's Theory of Evolution.
,Wundt and Introspection
In 1879 Wilhelm Wundt opened an institute for experimental psychology in Leipzig, Germany. He separated
psychology from philosophy and focused on studying the mind in much more detail in a structured and scientific
way.
Wundt used methods such as introspection to try and uncover what people were thinking and experiencing.
Introspection is a psychological method which consists of self-analysis of your internal thoughts and feelings.
In the 1800s brain scans, obviously did not exist so Wundt used introspection to study sensations and perceptions.
Participants were presented with a set of stimuli and were asked to describe their experiences and often their
reaction times were recorded.
What made Wundt's work significant was that all introspections were recorded under strict controlled conditions
using the same stimulus every time (such as a ticking metronome.). The same standardised instructions were issued
to all participants, and this allowed procedures to be replicated every single time. Thus, Wundt’s work was
significant in that it marked the separation of the modern scientific psychology from its boarder philosophical roots.
Reductionism= The idea things can be broken and simplified down to a simple cause and effect process. They can be
broken down into smaller, measurable pieces.
Structuralism= breaks down human thoughts and experiences to basic components.
Problems of introspection
It doesn’t explain how the mind works, it relies on people describing their thoughts and feelings, which isn't
usually objective, it is subjective.
Because people are reporting on experiences it is difficult to obtain reliable data.
Whilst Wundt’s introspection wasn’t perfectly objective, it was the base of other theories.
So is psychology REALLY a science? (See research methods)
YES:
Psychology has the same aims as science; to predict, to understand and to control.
Further demonstrated in the other approaches.
Paradigm
NO:
Other psychology approaches don’t use objective methods
Use of unreliable methods
Hard to get a representative sample that can be reliably generalised
Open to extraneous variables and demand characteristics
, The Learning Approach: Behaviourism
Key Terms:
Behaviourist approach-A way of explaining behaviour in terms of what is observable in terms of learning.
Classical conditioning-Learning by association. Occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired together- an
unconditioned (unlearned) stimulus (UCS) and a new ‘neutral’ stimulus. The neutral stimulus eventually
produces the same response that was first produced by the unlearned stimulus alone.
Operant conditioning-A form of learning in which behaviour shaped and maintained its consequences.
Possible consequences of behaviour include positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and
punishment.
Reinforcement-A consequence of behaviour that increases the likelihood of that behaviour being repeated.
Can be positive or negative.
Assumptions
Nearly all behaviour is learnt
Animals and humans learn in the same ways
The mind is irrelevant
The behaviourist approach is only interested in studying behaviour that can be observed and measured. It is not
concerned with investigating mental processes of the mind. Early behaviourists such as John B. Warson (1913)
rejected introspection as it involved too many concepts that were vague and difficult to measure. As a result,
behaviourists tried to maintain more control and objectivity within their research and relied on lab experiments as
the best way to achieve this. Following Darwin, behaviourists suggested that the basic processes that govern
learning are the same in all species. This meant that in behaviourist research, animals could replace humans as
experimental subjects. Behaviourists identified two important forms of learning: classical and operant conditioning
Classical conditioning
Classical conditioning is learning through association. It was first demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov revealed that
dogs could be conditioned to salivate to the sound of a bell if that sound was repeatedly presented at the same time
as they were given food. Gradually, Pavlov's dogs learned to associate the sound of a bell (a stimulus) with the food
(another stimulus) and would produce the salivation response every time they heard the sound. Thus, Pavlov was
able to show how a neutral stimulus, in this case a bell, can come to elicit a new learned response (conditioned
response) through association. It is best demonstrated by this:
UCS --->UCR ///Food>triggers>Salivation
UCS+CS --->UCR///Food+bell>triggers>salivation
CS --->CR///Bell>triggers>salivation
The theory of classical conditioning can be applied to human life too, such as a baby’s comfort around its mother.
There are several principles to classical conditioning:
Generalisation-a similar stimulus such as, for the example, a higher pitched bell, can produce the same
response.
Discrimination-when a similar stimulus does not produce the same response.
Extinction-When the response is not produced from the CS which comes as a result of the CS being
presented without the UCS following.
Spontaneous Recovery-CS is produced after a long period of time generating the same response as prior.
Higher order conditioning-a new CS (NCS) is introduced, by presenting the NCS before the older CS that was
used.
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