ORIGINS

 Word comes from Greek psyche (soul, spirit, mind)
and logos (study of)
 Stems from philosophy and physiology
 Not made an independent science until 1879
WILHELM WUNDT

 Founder of Psychology
 Est. 1st formal laboratory for research in psych at
University of Leipzig in 1879
 Est. 1st journal dedicated to publishing research on
psych in 1881
WUNDT

 Believed psych should be modeled after physics and
chemistry
 Believed we should focus on consciousness
(awareness of immediate experience)
 So, psych became the study of conscious experience
 Focused on the mind and mental processes
WUNDT

 Wrote over 54,000 pages of books and articles
 Students of Wundt spread around the world
 USA saw 24 schools of psychology open in 10 years
G. STANLEY HALL

 Student of Wundt
 Est. America’s 1st psych research lab at Johns
Hopkins (1883)
 1887: launched 1st journal in America
 1892: helped start the APA (American Psychological
Assoc.)
The first schools of thought in psych
STRUCTURALISM

 Edward Titchener was leader of this movement
 Idea based on notion that purpose of psych is to
analyze consciousness into its basic parts and
investigate how those parts are related
 Identify and examine fundamental components of
conscious experience (sensations, feelings, and
images)
STRUCTURALISM

 Concerned mostly with sensation and perception in
vision, hearing, and touch
 Used INTROSPECTION: careful, systematic selfobservation of one’s own conscious exp.
 Subject given stimulus and asked to analyze their
exp
FUNCTIONALISM

 Began by William James
 Believed psych should investigate the function or
purpose of consciousness, rather than structure
 James wrote Principles of Psychology (1890), one of the
most influential books in psych
FUNCTIONALISM

 James applied theory of natural selection to
consciousness
 Believed consciousness was a continuous flow of
thoughts
 He called this “stream of consciousness”
FUNCTIONALISM

 Interested in how people adapt behavior to the
world around them
 This led to new subjects in psych
 Mental testing, patterns of development in children,
education practices
 This attracted women to psych
STRUCTURALISM VS.
FUNCTIONALISM

 Structuralism strengthened commitment to lab
research
 Functionalism left a more lasting mark on psych
 It paved the way for new schools of thought that
dominate modern psych: applied psychology and
behaviorism
BEHAVIORISM

 Founded by John B. Watson
 Def: theoretical orientation based on the idea that
scientific psych should study only observable
behavior
 This was a redefinition of what psych should be
about
BEHAVIORISM

 Watson believed the scientific method rested on
verifiability
 Can only be verified with observation
 We can’t observe the human mind so psych must be
a science of behavior
BEHAVIORISM

 BEHAVIOR: any observable response or activity by
an organism
 Watson addressed the issue of nature vs. nurture
 Nature: hereditary
 Nurture: environment and experience
 Watson favored nurture, which gave behaviorism a
strong environmental slant
BEHAVIORISM

 Goal is to relate behaviors (responses) to observable
events in the environment (stimuli)
 STIMULUS: any detectable input from the
environment
 Thus, behaviorism is referred to as stimulus-response
psychology
BEHAVIORISM

 Ivan Pavlov’s experiments made behaviorism more
accepted
 Led to animal research (easier to control)
 Psych now has gone from study of the mind to
observing simple responses made by lab animals
FREUD AND THE
UNCONSCIOUS

 Freud, an Austrian physician, treated people
w/psych problems w/ a procedure called
psychoanalysis
 This led to Freud’s belief in something called the
unconscious
FREUD

 UNCONSCIOUS contains thoughts, memories, and
desires that are well below the surface of conscious
awareness but that nonetheless exert great influence
on behavior
 Believed slips of the tongue represent true feelings
(Freudian slip)
 Believed dreams represented important thoughts
and feelings
FREUD

 PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY: attempts to explain
personality, motivation, and mental disorders by
focusing on unconscious determinants of behavior
FREUD

 Suggests that people are not masters of their minds
 Proposed behavior is greatly influenced by coping
with sexual urges
 Freud was controversial
B.F. SKINNER

 A behaviorist
 Only study observable data
 Emphasized environmental factors in molding
behavior
 Believed we could understand and predict behavior
w/o physiological explanations
SKINNER

 Principle: organisms tend to repeat responses that
lead to positive outcomes and not repeat those that
have negative outcomes
 This has influenced every area of society
SKINNER

 Wrote Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971)
 Said all behavior is governed by external stimuli
 People are controlled by their environment
 “Free will is an illusion”
HUMANISM

 HUMANISM: emphasizes unique qualities of
humans, especially their freedom and potential for
personal growth
 Very optimistic view of human behavior
HUMANISM

 Believe research on lab animals holds no bearing on
human behavior
 Most prominent members: Carl Rogers and
Abraham Maslow
HUMANISM

 Carl Rogers argued we are governed by our sense of
self---”self-concept”
 Maslow and Rogers argue that humans have a desire
to evolve
 Psychological disturbances come from that need
being thwarted
PSYCHOLOGY AS A
PROFESSION

 APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY: branch concerned with
everyday, practical problems
 World War I made this a prominent field
PSYCHOLOGY AS A
PROFESSION

 CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY: branch concerned
w/diagnosis and treatment of psychological
problems and disorders
 Need to treat trauma was higher
 World War II made this prominent
REFOCUS ON
COGNITION

 COGNITION: the mental processes involved in
acquiring knowledge (consciousness)
 There has been a resurgence of the study of cognition
thanks to Piaget, Chomsky, and Simon
COGNITION

 Cognitive Perspective states that manipulation of
mental images influences behavior
 This stimulated an increase in the study of
physiological bases for behavior
PHYSIOLOGY

 Biological Perspective states that much of behavior
can be explained in bodily structures and
biochemical processes
INCREASED INTEREST
IN CULTURAL

DIVERSITY
 Early psych was based on middle and upper-class
white people
 Reasons:
 It was more cost effective
 Original interest was in the individual, not the group
 Concern of creating stereotypes
 ETHNOCENTRISM: belief that one’s own group is
superior to others and to view that group as the
standard for judging the worth of foreign ways
CULTURAL
DIVERSITY

 Political and social upheaval of the 1960s and 70s
changed psych
 Movements for women’s rights, gay rights, and civil
rights paved the way
CULTURAL
DIVERSITY

 2 recent trends that led to more human diversity
studies:
 1) increased global interdependence through
advances in communication
 2) ethnic makeup of Western world is more diverse
EVOLUTIONARY
PSYCH

 Def: examines behavioral processes in terms of their
adaptive value for members of a species over the
course of many generations
 Natural selection favors traits that increase
reproduction
EVOLUTIONARY
PSYCH

 Led by David Buss in the mid 1990s
 First real theoretical perspective since cognitive
revolution of 60s and 70s
 Critics say it is untestable
PSYCHOLOGY

 Def: the science that studies behavior and the
psychological and cognitive processes that underlie
it, and it is the profession that applies the
accumulated knowledge of this science to practical
problems
PSYCHOLOGY

 Growth of psych has been remarkable
 Increase in membership of the APA is proof
 Second-most popular undergraduate major
 10% of all doctoral degrees in sciences and
humanities
 Over 1100 technical journals worldwide
SPECIALTIES IN
PSYCHOLOGY

 4 areas:
 1) Clinical psych
 2) Counseling psych
 3) Educational and school psych
 4) Industrial and organizational psych
CLINICAL VS.
PSYCHIATRY

CLINICAL
PSYCHOLOGIST
 Undergraduate school
 Earn a Ph.D., Ed.D., or
Psy.D.
PSYCHIATRIST
 Go to medical school
for postgraduate
 Earn a M.D. as well as a
Ph.D., Ed.D., or Psy.D.
 Residency at a hospital
 Branch of medicine
concerned with
diagnosis and
treatment of psych
problems
SEVEN KEY THEMES

 1: Psychology is empirical
 EMPIRICISM: knowledge should be acquired
through observation
 Base ideas on data obtained through research
SEVEN KEY THEMES

 2: Psychology is theoretically diverse
 THEORY: system of interrelated ideas used to
explain a set of observations
 No single theory can explain everything
 Different ways of seeing things
SEVEN KEY THEMES

 3: Psychology evolves in a sociohistorical context
 Trends, issues, and values affect psych and vice
versa
 Psych evolves both historically and socially
SEVEN KEY THEMES

 4: Behavior is determined by multiple causes
 Multifactorial causation of behavior
 Behavior is complex and is governed by interacting
factors
SEVEN KEY THEMES

 5: Behavior is shaped by cultural heritage
 CULTURE: widely shared customs, beliefs, values,
norms, institutions, and other products of a
community that are transmitted socially across
generations
SEVEN KEY THEMES

 6: Heredity and Environment jointly influence
behavior
 Nature vs. Nurture argument
SEVEN KEY THEMES

 7: People’s experience of the world is highly
subjective
 We all have our own biases, expectations, and
motivations