The Story of
Psychology
Prologue
Psychological Science is Born
Wundt (1832-1920)
Wundt (1832-1920)
Titchner (1867-1927)
Wilhelm Wundt and psychology’s first
graduate students studied the “atoms
of the mind” by conducting
experiments at Leipzig, Germany, in
1879. This work is considered the birth
of psychology as we know it today.
Wundt’s student, Edward Titchner,
introduced structuralism at Cornell
University. He wanted to discover the
structural elements of the mind, so he
trained people in introspection
(looking inward) and reporting
elements of their experiences.
Generally speaking, the structuralists
focused on inner sensations, images
and feelings.
Psychological Science is Born
American philosopher William James looked at the
evolved functions of our thoughts and feelings.
James (1842-1910)
Mary Whiton Calkins and
William James
Mary Calkins
Margaret Floy Washburn
James believed that thinking, like smelling and
seeing, developed because it was adaptive. He
studied how mental and behavioral processes
function and enable us to adapt, survive, and
flourish. This approach to psychology is called
functionalism.
James was better known for teaching at Harvard and
for writing Principles of Psychology (1890), the first
psychology textbook, a task that took him 12 years to
complete.
Mary Calkins, James’s student, became the APA’s
first female president.
Margaret Floy Washburn was the first female
psychology Ph.D., the second female APA president,
and a distinguished writer (The Animal Mind)
Psychological Science Develops
Those involved in the birth of
psychology, dubbed “Magellans of
the mind,” developed from more
established fields. Many, like
Wundt, were physiologists.
Freud (1856-1939)
Sigmund Freud, an Austrian
physician, and his followers
emphasized the importance of the
unconscious mind and its effects on
human behavior.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Psychology originated in many
disciplines and countries. It was,
until the 1920s, defined as the
science of mental life.
Psychological Science Develops
Behaviorists
Watson and later Skinner dismissed introspection and redefined
psychology as “the scientific study of observable behavior.”
The behaviorists emphasized the study of overt behavior as the
subject matter of scientific psychology.
John Watson (1878-1958)
B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)
Psychological Science Develops
Humanistic Psychology
The humanists thought behaviorism’s focus on learned behaviors
was too mechanistic and that psychoanalysis focused too much on
the meaning of childhood memories.
http://www.carlrogers.dk
http://facultyweb.cortland.edu
Abraham Maslow
Maslow and Rogers
emphasized current
environmental influences
on our growth potential
and our need for love and
acceptance.
Carl Rogers
(1902-1987)
Thinking
Critically
With
Psychological
Science
Chapter 1
The
Biology of
Mind
Chapter 2
Consciousness
and the Two
Track Mind
Chapter 3
Is Hypnosis an Altered State of
Consciousness?
1. Social Influence Theory: Hypnotic
subjects may simply be
imaginative actors playing a social
role.
2. Divided Consciousness Theory:
Hypnosis is a special state of
dissociated (divided)
consciousness (Hilgard, 1986,
1992).
Hilgard felt that hypnotic dissociation was a
vivid form of everyday mind splits – similar
to doodling while listening to a lecture.
(Hilgard, 1992)
For example, if someone lowered their hand
into an ice bath, the hypnosis dissociated the
sensation of pain from the emotional suffering
that defines their experience of pain…the
water feels cold but not painful.
Nature,
Nurture,
and
Human
Diversity
Chapter 4
Howard Gardner
Howard Gardner (1998)
concludes that parents
and peers are
complementary.
– Parents are more important
when it comes to
education, discipline,
responsibility, orderliness,
charitableness, and ways of
interacting with authority
figures
– Peers are more important
for learning cooperation,
finding the road to
popularity, inventing styles
of interaction among
people the same age
Developing
Through
the Life
Span
Chapter 5
The Competent Newborn – William James
Presumed that newborns
experience a blooming,
buzzing confusion.
Until the 1960s, few people
disagreed.
Then, researchers found
out that newborns know
a lot if you know how to
ask. You must capitalize
on what babies can
do…gaze, suck, turn
their heads
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Typical Age
Range
Description
of Stage
Developmental
Phenomena
Birth to nearly 2 years
Sensorimotor
Experiencing the world through
senses and actions (looking,
touching, mouthing)
•Object permanence
•Stranger anxiety
About 2 to 6 years
Preoperational
Representing things
with words and images
but lacking logical reasoning
•Pretend play
•Egocentrism
•Language development
About 7 to 11 years
Concrete operational
Thinking logically about concrete
events; grasping concrete analogies
and performing arithmetical operations
•Conservation
•Mathematical
transformations
About 12 through
adulthood
Formal operational
Abstract reasoning
•Abstract logic
•Potential for
moral reasoning
Origins of Attachment
For years, researchers reasoned that
infants became attached to those who
satisfied their need for nourishment.
Harlow Primate Laboratory, University of Wisconsin
An accidental finding overturned this
explanation showing that comfort and
safety were highly important.
Monkeys preferred contact with the
comfortable cloth mother, even while
feeding from the nourishing wire
mother.
Harlow (1971) showed that infants
bond with surrogate mothers not
because of nourishment, but because
of bodily contact.
Imprinting is the
process by which
certain animals
form attachments
during a critical
period very early
in life.
Konrad Lorenz and his ducklings (1937)
Attachment Differences
Sensitive responsive mothers,
who noticed what their
babies were doing and
responded appropriately, had
infants who exhibited secure
attachment.
Mary Ainsworth (1979)
Insensitive, unresponsive
mothers who attended to
their babies when they felt
like doing it and ignored
them at other times had
infants who often became
insecurely attached.
Developing
Morality
AP Photo/ Dave Martin
Kohlberg (1981, 1984)
sought to describe the
development of moral
reasoning by posing moral
dilemmas to children and
adolescents, such as
“Should a person steal
medicine to save a loved
one’s life?” He found stages
of moral development.
Kohlberg’s 3 Basic Levels of Moral Thinking
1.
Preconventional Morality:
Before age 9, children show
morality to avoid punishment
or gain reward.
2.
Conventional Morality: By
early adolescence, social rules
and laws are upheld for their
own sake.
3.
Postconventional Morality:
Affirms people’s agreed-upon
rights or follows personally
perceived ethical principles.
Sensation
and
Perception
Chapter 6
Opponent Process Theory
Hering proposed that we process four primary colors
combined in pairs of red-green, blue-yellow, and
black-white.
Cones
Retinal
Ganglion
Cells
Perceptual Interpretation
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
maintained that knowledge comes
from our inborn ways of organizing
sensory experiences.
John Locke (1632-1704) argued that
we learn to perceive the world
through our experiences.
How important is experience in
shaping our perceptual
interpretation?
Learning
Chapter 7
Behaviorism
John B. Watson viewed psychology
as an objective science based on
observable behavior. This new
science was called behaviorism.
Watson also urged colleagues to
discard the reference to inner
thoughts and motives.
John B. Watson (1878 – 1958)
Although there is contemporary
agreement that psychology
should be an objective study,
behaviorism is not universally
accepted by all schools of
thought today.
Classical Conditioning
Ideas of classical conditioning originate from old
philosophical theories. However, it was the Russian
physiologist Ivan Pavlov who elucidated classical
conditioning. His work provided a basis for later
behaviorists like John Watson and B.F. Skinner.
Sovfoto
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
Classical or Pavlovian Conditioning
Ivan Pavlov was a Russian
physician and
neurophysiologist.
He was the first Russian to win
the Nobel Prize (1904).
He studied digestive secretions
and spent the last three
decades of his life running
novel experiments on
learning.
Ivan Pavlov (1849 – 1936)
Like Watson after him, he had a
disdain for “mentalistic
concepts” such as
consciousness.
Biological Predispositions
Garcia showed that the duration between
the CS and the US may be long (hours), but
yet result in conditioning. A biologically
adaptive CS (taste) led to conditioning but
other stimuli (sight or sound) did not.
John Garcia
Operant & Classical Conditioning
1. Classical
conditioning
forms
associations
between stimuli
(CS and US).
Operant
conditioning, on
the other hand,
forms an
association
between
behaviors and
the resulting
events.
Operant & Classical Conditioning
2. Classical conditioning involves respondent
behavior that occurs as an automatic
response to a certain stimulus. Operant
conditioning involves operant behavior, a
behavior that operates on the environment,
producing rewarding or punishing stimuli.
3. To distinguish classical from operant
conditioning, we can ask “is the organism
learning associations between events it does
not control (classical conditioning), or is it
learning associations between its behavior
and resulting events (operant
conditioning)?”
Biological Predisposition
Biological constraints
predispose organisms to
learn associations that are
naturally adaptive.
Photo: Bob Bailey
Breland and Breland
(1961) showed that
operantly conditioned
animals drift towards their
biologically predisposed
instinctive behaviors (e.g.
pigs pushing an object
with their nose instead of
picking them up). They
called this instinctive
drift.
Marian Breland Bailey
Courtesy of Albert Bandura, Stanford University
Bandura's Experiments
Bandura's Bobo doll
study (1961) indicated
that individuals
(children) learn
through imitating
others who receive
rewards and
punishments.
Memory
Chapter 8
Rehearsal
Effortful learning
usually requires
rehearsal or conscious
repetition.
http://www.isbn3-540-21358-9.de
Ebbinghaus studied
rehearsal by using
nonsense syllables:
TUV YOF GEK XOZ
Hermann Ebbinghaus
(1850-1909)
Motivated Forgetting
Motivated Forgetting: People
unknowingly revise their memories
(e.g. Myers chocolate chip cookie
example).
Repression: A defense mechanism
that banishes anxiety-arousing
thoughts, feelings, and memories
from consciousness.
Culver Pictures
Repression was central to Freud’s
psychoanalytic theory and has
become widely accepted (9 in 10
university students believe in it
[Brown et al, 1996]); however,
increasing numbers of memory
researchers think repression rarely, if
ever, occurs.
Sigmund Freud
Constructed Memories
Loftus’ research shows that if false memories
(lost at the mall or drowned in a lake) are
implanted in individuals, they construct
(fabricate) their memories.
Don Shrubshell
Thinking
and
Language
Chapter 9
Explaining Language Development
Operant Learning: Skinner
(1957, 1985) believed that
language development
may be explained on the
basis of learning principles
such as association,
imitation, and
reinforcement.
B.F. Skinner
Babies learn to talk in many of
the same ways that
animals learn to peck keys
and press bars (Skinner,
1985).
Explaining Language Development
Inborn Universal
Grammar: Chomsky (1959,
1987) opposed Skinner’s
ideas and suggested that
the rate of language
acquisition is so fast that it
cannot be explained
through learning
principles, and thus most
of it is inborn.
Noam Chomsky
Intelligence
Chapter 10
General Intelligence
Charles Spearman developed
the idea that general
intelligence (g) exists.
General intelligence (g) is the
idea that we have one
intelligence that underlies
specific mental abilities and is
measured by every task on an
intelligence test.
Spearman helped develop
factor analysis, a statistical
procedure that identifies
Athleticism, like intelligence, is many things
clusters of related items.
Charles Spearman (1863 – 1945)
Howard Gardner
Howard Gardner
Gardner proposes
eight types of
intelligences and
speculates about
a ninth one —
existential
intelligence.
Existential
intelligence is the
ability to think
about the
question of life,
death and
existence.
Robert Sternberg
Sternberg (1985, 1999, 2003) also
agrees with Gardner, but
suggests three intelligences (a
triarctic theory of intelligence)
rather than eight.
1.
2.
3.
Robert Sternberg
Analytical Intelligence:
Intelligence that is assessed by
intelligence tests.
Creative Intelligence: Intelligence
that makes us adapt to novel
situations, generating novel ideas.
Practical Intelligence: Intelligence
that is required for everyday tasks
(e.g. street smarts).
Alfred Binet
Alfred Binet and his
colleague Théodore Simon
practiced a more modern
form of intelligence testing
by developing questions
that would predict
children’s future progress
in the Paris school system.
Alfred Binet (1857 – 1911)
The goal became
measuring each child’s
mental age – the level of
performance associated
with a certain
chronological age.
Lewis Terman
In the US, Lewis Terman adapted Binet’s test
for American school children by adding
some items and extending the upper end of
the test. The new test was named the
Stanford-Binet Test.
Terman promoted widespread use of
intelligence testing even sympathizing with
the ideas of eugenics, the 19th Century idea
that only smart and fit people should
reproduce.
Lewis Terman
The U.S. engaged in the world’s first mass
administration of intelligence tests testing
arriving immigrants and army recruits
(WWI).
Eventually, Terman (and others) came to
realize that test scores reflected not only
innate ability but also education and culture.
William Stern
The formula for Intelligence Quotient
(IQ) was introduced by William Stern.
Average score was 100. The test
worked for children, but not for adults.
William Stern
Most current intelligence tests,
including the Stanford-Binet, no longer
compute IQ, although the term still
lingers in everyday vocabulary as a
shorthand expression for intelligence
test scores.
David Wechsler
Wechsler developed
what is the most widley
used intelligence test, the
Wechsler Adult
Intelligence Scale
(WAIS) and later the
Wechsler Intelligence
Scale for Children
(WISC), an intelligence
test for school-aged
children.
Motivation
and Work
Chapter 11
A Hierarchy of Motives
Abraham Maslow (1970)
suggested that certain
needs have priority over
others. Physiological
needs like breathing,
thirst, and hunger come
before psychological
needs such as
achievement, self-esteem,
and the need for
recognition.
(1908-1970)
Introduction – Ancel Keys
Creator of the Army – K rations.
Did an experiment with 36
conscientious objectors to the
war (people who did not want
to serve but who wanted to do
something to contribute to the
war effort).
Fed them just enough to
maintain their initial weight and
then cut their food level in half
for six months.
Ancel Keys (1904 – 2004)
Emotions,
Stress, and
Health
Chapter 12
James-Lange Theory
William James and Carl
Lange proposed an
idea that was
diametrically opposed
to the common-sense
view. The James-Lange
Theory proposes that
physiological activity
precedes the emotional
experience.
Cannon-Bard Theory
Walter Cannon and Phillip
Bard questioned the JamesLange Theory and
proposed that an emotiontriggering stimulus and the
body's arousal take place
simultaneously.
Physiological response and
experienced emotions are
separate.
Two-Factor Theory
Stanley Schachter and
Jerome Singer proposed
yet another theory
which suggests our
physiology and
cognitions create
emotions. Emotions
have two factors–
physical arousal and
cognitive label.
An emotional
experience requires a
conscious interpretation
of the arousal.
The Schachter Singer Experiment (1962)
•
•
184 University of Minnesota Introduction to Psychology students
were told they were getting a shot of vitamin C to do a test on
vitamin C and eyesight. They were broken down into four groups:
1. An informed group was told it would make their hearts race and
bodies tremble.
2. A misinformed group was told it would make them numb.
3. An uninformed group was not told anything about the shot.
4. A control group which received a a neutral injection (saline
solution). Like the third group, this group was uninformed.
They were then taken to a waiting room with other experimentees
(really members of the experiment’s staff) who behaved in one of
two ways:
1. Behaved euphorically, shooting the paper from a “questionnaire”
at the trashcans, making paper airplanes, etc.
2. Behaved angrily, becoming more and more annoyed at the
“questionnaire.”
Schachter Singer Experiment Continued
•
Results:
1.
2.
•
Subjects who were informed (group 1) or who had received the neutral
shot (group 4) looked on in mild amusement at both the euphoric and
angry actions of others.
Subjects who were misinformed (group 2) or uninformed (group 3)
joined in with the euphoric and angry behavior.
Conclusions:
1. Internal components of emotion affect a person differently
depending on his or her interpretation or perception of the social
situation.
2. When people cannot explain their physical reactions, they take
cues from their physical environment.
3. When people knew that their hearts were beating faster, they did
not feel particularly euphoric or angry.
4. Finally, this shows that internal changes are important (or the
neutral group would have acted same way as those from the
Personality
Chapter 13
Psychoanalytic Perspective
Freud was a brilliant student
who had a great memory and a
drive to study. He attended
medical school at the University
of Vienna and began a private
clinical practice.
In his clinical practice, Freud
encountered patients suffering
from nervous disorders. Their
complaints could not be
explained in terms of purely
physical causes.
Culver Pictures
Freud’s clinical experience led
him to develop the first
comprehensive theory of
personality, which included the
unconscious mind, psychosexual
stages, and defense
mechanisms.
Sigmund Freud
(1856-1939)
The Neo-Freudians
Like Freud, Adler
believed in childhood
tensions. However, these
tensions were social in
nature and not sexual.
National Library of Medicine
Adler, who overcame
childhood illnesses and
accidents, believed that a
child struggles with an
inferiority complex
during growth and
strives for superiority
and power.
Alfred Adler (1870-1937)
The Neo-Freudians
The Bettmann Archive/ Corbis
Like Adler, Horney
believed in the social
aspects of childhood
growth and development.
She believed childhood
anxiety, caused by the
dependent child’s sense of
helplessness, triggers our
desire for love and
security.
Karen Horney (HORN-eye) (1885-1952)
She countered Freud’s
assumption that women
have weak superegos and
suffer from “penis envy.”
She also attempted to
balance the bias she
detected in the masculine
view of psychology.
The Neo-Freudians
Archive of the History of American Psychology/ University of Akron
Jung believed in the
collective unconscious,
which contained a
common reservoir of
images derived from our
species’ past. This is why
many cultures share
certain myths and images
such as the mother being
a symbol of nurturance.
Carl Jung (Yoong) (1875-1961)
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Developed by Henry Murray, the TAT is a projective test in which
people express their inner feelings and interests through the
stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.
http://www.minddisorders.com/Py-Z/Thematic-Apperception-Test.html
Lew Merrim/ Photo Researcher, Inc.
The story includes the event shown in the picture, preceding events, emotions and
thoughts of those portrayed, and the outcome of the event shown. The story content
and structure are thought to reveal the subject's attitudes, inner conflicts, and views.
Rorschach Inkblot Test
The most widely used projective test uses a set of 10
inkblots and was designed by Hermann Rorschach. It
seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing
their interpretations of the blots.
Lew Merrim/ Photo Researcher, Inc.
Humanistic Perspective
By the 1960s, psychologists became discontent with Freud’s
negativity and the mechanistic psychology of the behaviorists.
http://www.ship.edu
Abraham Maslow
(1908-1970)
Carl Rogers
(1902-1987)
The Trait Perspective
Examples of Traits
Honest
Dependable
Moody
Impulsive
Gordon Allport (1897 –1967)
A trait is an individual’s unique
constellation of durable dispositions
and consistent ways of behaving.
Each person is uniquely made up of
traits.
After meeting with Freud, Gordon
Allport came to define personality in
terms of identifiable behavior
patterns and was concerned less with
explaining individual traits than with
describing them.
Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother
Kathleen Briggs attempted to sort
people according to Jung’s
personality types using 126 questions.
This is called the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator (MBTI).
Exploring Traits
Each personality is
uniquely made up of
multiple traits.
Allport & Odbert (1936),
identified almost 18,000
words representing traits.
One way to condense the
immense list of personality
traits is through factor
analysis, a statistical
approach used to describe
and relate personality
traits.
Raymond Cattell
(1905-1998)
Cattell used this approach
to develop a 16 Personality
Factor (16PF) inventory.
Social-Cognitive Perspective
Bandura (1986, 2001, 2005)
proposed the social-cognitive
perspective. This personality
theory emphasizes that
personality is the result of an
interaction that takes place
between a person and their social
context.
We learn many of our behaviors
either through conditioning or by
observing others and modeling
our behaviors after theirs (the
social part).
Albert Bandura
They also emphasize the
importance of mental
processes…what we think about
our situations affects our
behavior (the cognitive part).
Positive Psychology and
Humanistic Psychology
Courtesy of Martin E.P. Seligman, PhD Director,
Positive Psychology Center/ University of Pennsylvania
Positive psychology, such as humanistic psychology, attempts to
foster human fulfillment.
Positive psychology seeks positive emotions which include
satisfaction with the past, present, and optimism for the future.
Positive character, focuses on exploring and enhancing
creativity, courage, compassion,
integrity, self-control, leadership,
wisdom and spirituality,
Finally, positive social groups
including healthy families,
communal neighborhoods,
effective schools, socially
responsible media, and civil
dialogue.
Martin Seligman
Psychological
Disorders
Chapter 14
Therapy
Chapter
15
Psychoanalysis: Methods
Dissatisfied with hypnosis, Freud developed the method of free
association to unravel the unconscious mind and its conflicts.
The patient lies on a couch and speaks about whatever comes to
his or her mind while the psychoanalyst sits out of the patient’s
line of vision. Their job is to not interrupt, listen, and remain
objective. Here’s an example of psychoanalysis in the 1940s.
http://www.english.upenn.edu
Psychodynamic Therapy
Influenced by Freud, in a face-to-face setting (counter Freud),
psychodynamic therapists understand symptoms and themes
across important relationships in a patient’s life.
Interpersonal psychotherapy, a variation of psychodynamic
therapy, is effective in treating depression. It focuses on symptom
relief here and now, not an overall personality change.
Client-Centered Therapy
Developed by Carl Rogers, client-centered therapy is a form of
humanistic therapy.
The therapist listens to the needs of the patient in an accepting
and non-judgmental way, addressing problems in a productive
way and building his or her self-esteem.
The therapist engages in active listening and echoes, restates, and
clarifies the patient’s thinking, acknowledging expressed feelings.
Michael Rougier/ Life Magazine © Time Warner, Inc.
A clip of Rogers
describing his
therapy:
Beck’s Therapy for Depression
Aaron Beck (1979) suggests that
depressed patients believe that they can
never be happy (thinking) and thus
associate minor failings (e.g. failing a
test [event]) in life as major causes for
their depression.
We often think in words. Consequently,
getting people to change what they say
to themselves is an effective way to
change their thinking.
Donald Meichenbaum (1977, 1985)
introduced stress inoculation training
which trained people to restructure
their thinking in stressful situations.
Example:
“Relax, the exam may be hard, but it
will be hard for everyone else too. I
studied harder than most people.
Besides, I don’t need a perfect score to
get a good grade.”
Social
Psychology
Chapter 16
Attributing Behavior to Persons or
to Situations
Attribution Theory: Fritz Heider
(1958) suggested that we have a
tendency to give causal explanations
for someone’s behavior, often by
crediting either the situation or the
person’s disposition.
http://www.stedwards.edu
Fritz Heider
A teacher may wonder if a child’s
hostility reflects an aggressive
personality (a dispositional
attribution) or a reaction to stress or
abuse (a situational attribution).
Dispositions are enduring personality
traits. So, if Joe is a quiet, shy, and
introverted child, he is likely to be
like that in a number of situations.
Role Playing Affects Attitudes
Phillip G. Zimbardo, Inc.
Originally published in the New Yorker
When people adopt a new role (e.g.
college student, new job, marriage),
they strive to follow the social
prescriptions.
Zimbardo (1972) assigned the roles
of guards and prisoners to random
students and found that guards and
prisoners developed roleappropriate attitudes. So disturbing
were the findings that he had to
discontinue a two week experiment
after six days (10:17).
Similar situations have played out in
the real world (e.g. Abu Ghraib
Prison); however, it’s important to
note that some people succumb to
the situation and others do not.
Group Pressure & Conformity
Suggestibility is a subtle type of conformity, adjusting our
behavior or thinking toward some group standard.
To study conformity, Solomon Asch (1955) performed a test using
lines and five cohorts to see if someone would conform with the
group and join them in giving the wrong answer.
This experiment was done with
thousands of college students and more
than one third of them answered
incorrectly to go along with the group
(1:57).
Obedience
People comply to social pressures. How would
they respond to outright command?
Stanley Milgram
(1933-1984)
(15:07)
Courtesy of CUNY Graduate School and University Center
Stanley Milgram designed a study that
investigates the effects of authority on
obedience.