Approaches to
PSY-CHO-LO-GY
– Past & Present
Unit 1.2
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
1. Know the SCIENTIFIC ORIGINS of Psychology:
 Understand the importance of Wundt and James in the
development of psychology
 Appreciate Freud’s influence on psychology
 Understand the basic tenets of Gestalt psychology
2. Know the major approaches in CONTEMPORARY
psychology:
 Appreciate the important role of behaviorism in
psychology’s history
 Understand basic tenets of humanism
 Understand how the cognitive revolution shifted
psychology’s focus back to the mind
2
Warm Up
What would others fail to understand about
you if they did not know your history?
Historical Approaches to Psychology
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Structuralism (Wundt)
Functionalism. (James)
Inheritable traits (Galton)
Gestalt psychology.
Interesting Beginnings
 7,000 years ago, people assumed that psychological problems
were caused by evil spirits. Ancient healers chipped a hole in a
patient’s skull to allow spirits to leave a person’s body.
 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes proposed that
“animal spirits” flowed through our nerves like water flows through
a pipe. Eg. When a person put a finger too close to a fire, heat was
transmitted to the brain through the nerves/tubes.
 18th-century physician, Franz Josef Gall, argued that intelligence,
moral character, and other basic personality characteristics could
be determined from the shape and number of bumps on a person’s
skull.
Scientific Beginnings:
EMPIRICISM
Discuss with your partner
1. Can we trust our senses?
2. What are the ways of ‘knowing’? Should we rely more on logic and rational
thought (rationalism) or sensory and perceptual data (empiricism) in order to
acquire knowledge?
Q. 1: Aims to Illustrate the virtues and limits of sensory observation;
especially in light of the fact that observation forms the basis of scientific inquiry.
Q.2: Again, students may disagree in their answers: There are many “ways of
knowing” including faith, reason and empiricism. Traditionally, philosophers
relied on logic and argumentation to present internally coherent theories. Logic
and rational thought are limited, however, as they are poor tools for
understanding counter-intuitive phenomena.
Scientific Beginnings:
EMPIRICISM
John Locke (1632-1704) and
Thomas Reid (1710-1796)
emphasized empiricism, or
the primacy of the senses in
acquiring knowledge.
Studying the Brain and Mind
1. Hold out your right hand and extend
your right index fingers.
2. Touch your brain.
3. With the same finger, touch your mind.
The brain is a three-pound organ that is
tangible while the mind is something
intangible.
Imagine the challenge that psychologists
like Wundt had in being the first persons to
study the mind as a science.
Scientific Beginnings:
STRUCTURALISM
In 1879 in Leipzig, Germany, Wilhelm Wundt (1832–
1920) started his Laboratory of Psychology. Wundt is
acknowledged as establishing modern psychology as
a scientific discipline. WHY?
Because he pursued the study of human behavior in
a systematic and scientific manner.
Scientific Beginnings:
STRUCTURALISM
• Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)
• “Father of Psychology”
• Wundt studied the basic elements (the
structure) of consciousness, thinking,
and other kinds of mental states and
activities.
• He also developed the method of
introspection to identify elements of
consciousness scientifically.
• The research of Wundt and his
students showed that consciousness
could be studied in a scientific fashion.
Scientific Beginnings:
STRUCTURALISM
structuralist: a psychologist who studied
the basic elements that make up conscious
mental experiences
introspection: a method of looking inward
at one’s thoughts and feelings ;
participants report their thoughts and
feelings.
Scientific Beginnings:
STRUCTURALISM
Read the handout on Structuralism.
Discuss the questions with your partner.
Scientific Beginnings:
FUNCTIONALISM
Early 1900’S: Functionalism replaced structuralism.
 It did not focus on the mind’s structure
 Functionalism concentrated on what the mind does and
how behavior functions.
 Functionalists asked what role behavior plays in
allowing people to adapt to their environments.
Scientific Beginnings:
FUNCTIONALISM
William James (1842–1910)
 taught the first class in psychology at Harvard
University in 1875.
 is called the “father of psychology” in the United
States.
 wrote the first textbook of psychology, The
Principles of Psychology (1890).
 speculated that thinking, feeling, learning, and
remembering—all activities of the mind— serve
one major function: to help us survive as a
species.
Scientific Beginnings:
FUNCTIONALISM
functionalist: a psychologist who
studied the function (rather than the
structure) of the mind and
consciousness.
Scientific Beginnings:
FUNCTIONALISM
Read the handout on Functionalism.
Discuss the questions with your partner.
Scientific Beginnings:
INHERITABLE TRAITS
Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911),
 English mathematician and scientist
 studied how heredity influences a person’s
abilities, character, and behavior.
 (Heredity includes all the traits and properties
that are passed along biologically from parent
to child.)
 traced the ancestry of various wealthy people
and found that greatness runs in families and
concluded that genius is a hereditary trait.
 Forerunner of eurogenics.
Scientific Beginnings:
INHERITABLE TRAITS
Galton assumed that the wealthiest people were also
the most intelligent.
What factors did Galton fail to consider in his
studies?
Scientific Beginnings:
INHERITABLE TRAITS
What factors did Galton fail to consider in his
studies?
Galton did not consider the possibility that the tendency
of genius to run in wealthy families might be a result of
their exceptional environments and socioeconomic
advantages.
Formal Beginnings:
GESTALT
 Developed by German psychologists, Max Wertheimer (1880–1943),
Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967), and Kurt Koffka (1886–1941),
 Disagreed with the principles of structuralism and behaviorism.
 Gestalt psychology says the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
The mind processes multiple stimuli simultaneously as opposed to doing
so sequentially.
 For example, when people look at a chair, they recognize the chair as a
whole rather than noticing its legs, its seat, and its other components.
 This approach is the forerunner for cognitive approaches to the study of
psychology.
GESTALT Psychology:
the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
How does this picture embody that
statement?
Scientific Beginnings:
Gestalt Psychology
Gestalt psychology
emphasizes the idea that the whole is greater
than the sum of its parts.
Origins of Psychology:
Application
Wundt described psychology as the study of conscious
experience, a perspective he called ________
structuralism
The statement “In order to study human behavior, we
must consider the whole of perception rather than its
component parts” might be made by a person
subscribing to which perspective of psychology?
Gestalt
TODAY:
Five Perspectives of Psychology
From the Past
To the Present
 Founders of psychology shared a
common goal: to explain and
understand behavior using scientific
methods.
 Today, the field of psychology includes
five major perspectives.
 The five approaches to contemporary
psychology are important because they
provide a foundation for every topic
covered in this course.
Five Perspectives of Psychology
Five Perspectives of
Psychology
1. The neuroscience perspective
focuses on the biological components of the behavior of people and
animals.
1.Comparative method: different species of animals can be studied and
then compared to each other. This helps us better understand human
behavior.
2.Physiology: the study of how the nervous system and hormones work,
how the brain functions, and affect our behavior.
3.Investigation of inheritance: the study of what we inherit from our
parents (through genetics). E.g., whether high intelligence is inherited
from one generation to the next.
Five Perspectives of
Psychology
Neuroscience psychology
The study of the brain and nervous system
and its impact on behavior and cognitive
functions, or how people think.
Five Perspectives of
Psychology
2. The psychodynamic
perspective
suggests that powerful,
unconscious inner forces,
over which people have little control
or awareness,
are the primary determinants of
behavior. Also called
psychoanalysis.
Pioneered by Sigmund Freud.
Five Perspectives of
Psychology
Scientific Beginnings:
Psychoanalytic Theory
Psychoanalytic theory
focuses on the role of a person’s unconscious
mind, as well as early childhood experiences as
determinants of behaviour.
Scientific Beginnings:
Psychoanalytic Theory
Read the handout on Psychoanalysis.
Discuss the questions with your partner.
Five Perspectives of
Psychology
3. The behavioral perspective
• De-emphasizes internal processes and
free will.
• concentrates on observable, measurable
behavior;
• all behaviors are learned and based on
our past experiences.
• Pioneered by Ivan Pavlov.
• Learning and behavior could be studied
without the mind or consciousness
B.F. Skinner is the most famous of the
Behaviorists.
Five Perspectives of
Psychology
The behavioral perspective
Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own
specified world to bring them upin and I’ll guarantee to take any
one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I
might select -- doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even
beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants,
tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.
--John Watson, Behaviorism, 1930
Five Perspectives of
Psychology
Behaviorism
The study of behavior.
Five Perspectives
of Psychology
4. The humanistic perspective
This approach focuses on:
1.The idea that we all have free
will.
2.That we are motivated to selfactualize, grow, and thrive.
3.That our experiences are what
drive us.
Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of
Needs. =======>>>>>>>>>>>
Five Perspectives of
Psychology
Humanistic psychology
emphasizes looking at the whole individual
and stresses concepts such as free will,
self-efficacy, and self-actualization.
People strive to fulfill their potential and
maximize their well-being.
Five Perspectives
of Psychology
 5. Cognitive approaches to behavior
 Emphasizes that mental processes such
as language, memory, and problem
solving are determinants of human
behavior.
 Focuses on how our brains react to the
environment around us and
 They consider how people know,
understand, and think about the world.
Five Perspectives of
Psychology
Cognitive psychology
The study of mental processes.
Five Perspectives of Psychology:
Application
Jeanne’s therapist asks her to recount a violent dream
she recently experienced in order to gain insight into the
unconscious forces affecting her behavior. Jeanne’s
therapist is working from a ______________
perspective.
psychodynamic
Five Perspectives of Psychology:
Application
My therapist is wonderful! He always points out my
positive traits. He dwells on my uniqueness and strength
as an individual. I feel much more confident about
myself—am really growing and reaching my potential.”
The therapist being described most likely follows a
____________ perspective.
humanistic
Five Perspectives of Psychology:
Application
“It is behavior that can be observed that should be
studied, not the suspected inner workings of the mind.”
This statement was most likely made by someone with
which perspective?
A.
B.
C.
D.
cognitive perspective
neuroscience perspective
humanistic perspective
behavioral perspective
Some Vocabulary
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Behaviorism
The study of behavior.
Cognitive psychology
The study of mental processes.
Consciousness
Awareness of ourselves and our
environment.
Empiricism
The belief that knowledge comes from
experience.
Eugenics
The practice of selective breeding to
promote desired traits.
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Functionalism
A school of American psychology that
focused on the utility of consciousness.
Gestalt psychology
An attempt to study the unity of
experience.
Introspection
A method of focusing on internal
processes.
Structuralism
A school of American psychology that
sought to describe the elements of
conscious experience.
CAT: The Muddiest Point
 What was the muddiest point about today’s
class?
 Write down what concept you are still
struggling to understand.