Psychology
Chapter 1: What is
Psychology?
Section 1: The Science
of Psychology
• Psychologists take as their subjects
the entire spectrum of human beings
as well as animals
–Want to know why people do things
–Want to know how people and
animals solve problems, learn,
remember, perceive, feel, & get
along or don’t get along with others
• Study child rearing, gossiping,
remembering a shopping list,
daydreaming, etc
• What makes people tick
• Definition- the discipline concerned
with behavior & mental processes &
how they are affected by an
organism’s physical & mental state
& external environment
Psychology, Pseudoscience, &
Common Sense
• What Psychology is NOT
–“pop psych”
–Self help books & talk shows
–A pseudoscience promising a quick
fix to life’s problems
• Serious psych is more complex,
more informative & based on
rigorous research & empirical
evidence
–Evidence gathered by careful
observation, experimentation,
and measurement.
• Not handwriting analysis, fortune
telling, numerology, or astrology
• Psychology is not just a fancy
name for common sense
• Psychological research often
produces findings that contradict
popular beliefs
The Birth of Modern Psychology
• Like today’s psychologists they
wanted to describe, predict,
understand, & modify behavior in
order to add to human knowledge &
increase human happiness
–Didn’t rely on empirical evidence
• Hippocrates
–Father of modern medicine
–Observed patients with head injuries
& inferred that the brain must be the
source of our pleasures, joys,
laughter, sorrows, pains, grief, &
tears
Bumpy Logic
• Phrenology “Study of the
mind”
– Popular in the early 1800s
– Argued that different
areas of the brain
accounted for specific
character & personality
traits & could be
determined by the bumps
on the head
• 1879- First psychology lab was
officially established in Leipzig,
Germany by Wilhelm Wundt
–Trained introspection- volunteers
were taught to carefully observe,
analyze, & describe their own
sensations, mental images, &
emotional reactions
• Goal is to break down behavior into
its most basic elements
• Later rejected for being too
subjective
• Still important to making psychology
a science
• Functionalism- emphasized the
function of behavior
–William James
–Looked at the causes &
consequences of behavior
• Psychotherapy
–Sigmund Freud
• Psychoanalysis- emphasized
unconscious motives & conflicts
• Psychology eventually grew into a
complex discipline encompassing
many different specialties,
perspectives, & methods
Psychology’s Present
• Five Major Theoretical Perspectives
–Reflecting the different assumptions
about how the mind works, different
questions that psychologists ask
about human behavior, & different
ways of explaining why people do
what they do
1. Biological Perspective
• Emphasizes bodily events and
changes associated with actions,
feelings, and thoughts
• Study how physical events interact
with events in the external
environment to produce perceptions,
memories, emotions, etc
• Investigate the contribution of genes &
other biological factors to the
development of abilities & personality
traits
• Evolutionary psychology- focuses on
how genetically influenced behavior that
was functional or adaptive during our
evolutionary past may be reflected in our
present behavior, mental processes, &
traits
2. Learning Perspective
• Emphasizes how the environment and
experience affect a person's or animal's
actions
• Behaviorists focus on the environmental
rewards & punishers that maintain or
discourage specific behavior
–Look at what they can observe &
measure directly
• Social Cognitive learning theorists
combine behaviorism with research
on thoughts, values, & intentions
–People learning by adapting their
behavior to the environment & by
imitating others, & by thinking about
the events happening around them
3. Cognitive Perspective
• Emphasizes mental processes in
perception, memory, language,
problem solving, and other areas of
behavior
• What goes on in people’s heads, how
they reason, explain experiences,
acquire moral standards, & form
beliefs
• Infer mental processes from
observed behavior
• Show how our thoughts &
explanations of events affect what
we feel & do
4. Sociocultural Perspective
• Emphasizes social and cultural forces
outside the individual, forces that
shape every aspect of behavior
• Most of us underestimate the impact
of other people, the social context, &
cultural rules on nearly everything we
do
5. Psychodynamic Perspective
• Emphasizes unconscious dynamics
within the individual, such as inner
forces, conflicts, or the movement of
instinctual energy
• Says that psychologists should focus
in what really matter to most peopletheir hopes & aspirations
• “positive psychology”- focuses
on the qualities that enable
people to be happy, optimistic, &
resilient in times of stress