Psychology Roots Big ideas and
Critical Thinking Tools
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Psychology
With hopes of satisfying curiosity, many people
listen to talk-radio counselors and psychics to
learn about others and themselves.
http://www.photovault.com
http://www.nbc.com
Dr. Crane (radio-shrink)
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Psychic (Ball gazing)
Psychology’s Roots
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
http://faculty.washington.edu
Aristotle, a naturalist and philosopher, theorized about
psychology’s concepts. He suggested that the soul and body are not
separate and that knowledge grows from experience.
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Dec 1879 Psychology is born
 Wilhelm Wundt creates a machine that measures the speed people
can tap a telegraph key
 This is psychology’s first experiment
 Psychology has some very early pioneers
 Wundt was both a philosopher and physiologist.
 Charles Darwin was an English Naturalist
 Ivan Pavlov was a Russian Physiologist
 Sigmund Freud was a personality Theorist
 Jean Piaget was a Swiss Biologist
 William James was an American Philosopher
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Psychology Early Pioneers
 May Caulkins worked with William James was denied her
Ph.D. because she was a women. She would later go on to be
the president of APA.
 Margaret Flog Wasburn – 1st Women to receive a P.h.D in
Psychology.
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Psychology developed at any leveles by
many people
 The definition of Psychology has changed over the years.
 1st the science of mental life
 1920’s John B. Watson and later B.F. Skinner stated that
Psychology must be “ The Scientific study of observable
behavior”
 Behaviorists were one of two major forces in psychology well
in the 1960’s
 Humanistic rejected the Definition of Psychology, this was
lead by Carl Rodgers and Abraham Maslow, they also found
that Freudian and Behaviorism was too limiting.
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Psychological Science is Born
Freud (1856-1939)
Sigmund Freud, an Austrian physician, and his followers
emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind and its effects
on human behavior.
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Psychological Science Develops
Rogers (1902-1987)
http://www.carlrogers.dk
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http://facultyweb.cortland.edu
Maslow (1908-1970)
Humanistic Psychology
Maslow and Rogers emphasized current environmental
influences on our growth potential and our need for love and
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acceptance.
Rodgers and Maslow
 Drew attention to ways that a Positive Environment can
enhance our growth and to our needs for love and
acceptance.
 Defining Humanism- emphasized the Growth potential of
healthy people and the individual’s potential for personal
growth.
 The rebellion of the 1960’s is called the COGNITIVE
REVOLUTION which led the field back to the Mental
Processes that humans use.
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TODAY
 We use science to find out how our mind perceives,
processes and remembers information.
 Cognitive Neuroscience has enriched our understanding of
brain activity
 The Current definition of Psychology is the scientific study of
behavior and mental processes.
 Behavior is anything a human or nonhuman animal does. Any
action we can observe and record.
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Today continued
 Mental processes are internal states we infer from behavior:
oThoughts
oBeliefs
oFeelings
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Psychology’s Subfields: Research
Psychologist
Biological
Developmental
Cognitive
Personality
Social
What she does
Explore the links between brain and
mind.
Study changing abilities from womb to
tomb.
Study how we perceive, think, and solve
problems.
Investigate our persistent traits.
Explore how we view and affect one
another.
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Psychology’s Current Perspectives
Perspective
Focus
Sample Questions
Neuroscience
How the body and brain
enables emotions?
How are messages
transmitted in the body? How
is blood chemistry linked with
moods and motives?
Evolutionary
How the natural selection
of traits the promotes the
perpetuation of one’s
genes?
How does evolution influence
behavior tendencies?
Behavior genetics How much our genes and
our environments
influence our individual
differences?
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To what extent are
psychological traits such as
intelligence, personality,
sexual orientation, and
vulnerability to depression
attributable to our genes? To
our environment?
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Psychology’s Current Perspectives
Perspective
Focus
Sample Questions
Psychodynamic
How behavior springs
from unconscious drives
and conflicts?
How can someone’s
personality traits and
disorders be explained in
terms of sexual and
aggressive drives or as
disguised effects of unfulfilled
wishes and childhood
traumas?
Behavioral
How we learn observable
responses?
How do we learn to fear
particular objects or
situations? What is the most
effective way to alter our
behavior, say to lose weight or
quit smoking?
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Four Big Ideas in Psychology
Critical Thinking is Smart Thinking
2. Behavior is a Biopsychosocial Event
3. We Operate with a Two-Track Mind (Dual
Processing)
4. Psychology Explores Human Strengths as
Well as Challenges
1.
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Big Idea #1 Critical Thinking
 Is smart thinking
 Thinking that does not blindly accept arguments and
conclusions
 It examines assumptions, uncovers hidden values, weights
evidence, and assesses conclusions.
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Big Idea #2 Biopsychosocial Approach
An integrated approach that
incorporates different but
complementary views from
biological, psychological , and
social-cultural perspectives.
Nature versus Nurture
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Big Idea #3 Dual Processing
The Principle that information is
often simultaneously processed
on separate conscious and
unconscious tracks in our brains.
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Big Idea #4 Explaining human Strength
 Martin Seligman- Positive Psychology-
the Study of Positive Emotions, positive
characters traits, and enabling
institutions.
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Why do Psychology?
Is psychology intuition?
Hunches are good!
Critical Thinking means checking
assumptions, weighing evidence,
inviting criticism and testing
conclusions.
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Two common flaws in Intuitive thinking
 1 Hindsight bias- tendency to believe after learning an
outcome that one would have fore seen it.
 Overconfidence
A point to remember : Hindsight bias and overconfidence often
lead us to over estimate our intuition.
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The Scientific Attitude
3 Basic attitudes toward the
scientific Attitude
Curiosity
Skepticism
Humility
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The Scientific Method
 In science a Theory explains behaviors or events by offering
ideas that organize what we have observed .
 Hypothesis- a testable prediction
 Research and observation
 The case study
 The Survey
 Wording Effects
 Random Sampling
 Naturalistic Observation
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Research Process
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Correlation
When one trait or behavior accompanies another, we
say the two correlate.
Indicates strength
of relationship
(0.00 to 1.00)
Correlation
coefficient
Correlation Coefficient is a
statistical measure of the
relationship between two variables.
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r = + 0.37
Indicates direction
of relationship
(positive or negative)
Correlation and Causation
Correlation does not mean causation!
or
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Positive Correlation
 Between 0 and +1.00 indicates a direct relationship
 Increase or decrease together
 i.e. height correlates positively with weight in growing children
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Negative Correlation
An inverse relationship 0 between -
1.00
As one increases the other
decreases.
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Correlations
Help us predict
Correlations indicates the possibilities
of a cause and effect relationship, but it
does not prove causation.
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Illusory Correlation
The perception of a relationship where no relationship
actually exists. Parents conceive children after adoption.
Adopt
Confirming
evidence
Disconfirming
evidence
Do not
adopt
Disconfirming
evidence
Confirming
evidence
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Michael Newman Jr./ Photo Edit
Conceive
Do not
conceive
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A fact to remember
 When we notice random
coincidences we may forget
that they are random
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Experimentation
Exploring Cause and Effect
Like other sciences, experimentation is the
backbone of psychological research. Experiments
isolate causes and their effects.
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Exploring Cause & Effect
Many factors influence our behavior. Experiments
(1) manipulate factors that interest us, while other
factors are kept under (2) control.
Effects generated by manipulated factors isolate
cause and effect relationships.
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Evaluating Therapies
Double-blind Procedure
In evaluating drug therapies, patients and
experimenter’s assistants should remain
unaware of which patients had the real
treatment and which patients had the placebo
treatment.
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Evaluating Therapies
Random Assignment
Assigning participants to experimental (breastfed) and control (formula-fed) conditions by
random assignment minimizes pre-existing
differences between the two groups.
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Independent Variable
An independent variable is a factor manipulated
by the experimenter. The effect of the independent
variable is the focus of the study.
For example, when examining the effects of breast
feeding upon intelligence, breast feeding is the
independent variable.
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Dependent Variable
A dependent variable is a factor that may change
in response to an independent variable. In
psychology, it is usually a behavior or a mental
process.
For example, in our study on the effect of breast
feeding upon intelligence, intelligence is the
dependent variable.
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Experimentation
A summary of steps during experimentation.
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Comparison
Below is a comparison of different research methods.
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Frequently Asked Questions About
Psychology
Q1. Can laboratory experiments illuminate
everyday life?
Ans: Artificial laboratory conditions are created to
study behavior in simplistic terms. The goal is to
find underlying principles that govern behavior.
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FAQ
Q2. Does behavior depend on one’s culture and gender?
Ans: Even when specific attitudes and behaviors vary across
cultures, as they often do, the underlying processes are much the
same. Biology determines our sex, and culture further bends the
genders. However, in many ways woman and man are similarly
human.
Ami Vitale/ Getty Images
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FAQ
Q3. Why do psychologists study animals, and is it ethical
to experiment on animals?
Ans: Studying animals gives us the understanding of many
behaviors that may have common biology across animals
and humans. From animal studies, we have gained insights
to devastating and fatal diseases. All researchers who deal
with animal research are required to follow ethical
guidelines in caring for these animals.
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D. Shapiro,
© Wildlife
Conservation Society
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FAQ
Q4. Is it ethical to experiment on people?
Ans: Yes. Experiments that do not involve any
kind of physical or psychological harm beyond
normal levels encountered in daily life may be
carried out.
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FAQ
Q5. Is psychology free of value judgments?
Ans: No. Psychology emerges from people who
subscribe to a set of values and judgments.
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© Roger Shepard
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FAQ
Q6. Is psychology potentially dangerous?
Ans: It can be, but is not when practiced
responsibly. The purpose of psychology is to
help humanity with problems such as war,
hunger, prejudice, crime, family dysfunction,
etc.
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