UNIT 1: What is Psychology?
(Updated 2011 notes; for pages referred to in class see study guide, textbook and Test
PowerPoint review.)
Psychology’s roots page 2
Psychology: scientific study of behavior and mental processes
Socrates/Plato: mind is separate from body and continues after death; knowledge is innate
Aristotle: mind dies with body; knowledge comes from experience
Aristotle: the external environment creates the mind
Plato: character, intelligence, ideas are inherited
John Locke: the mind is a tabula rasa, or blank slate; helped to develop empiricism: knowledge
originates in experience, based on observation and experimentation
Rene Descartes: Agreed with Socrates and Plato; promoted a concept called dualism: mind and
body separate
Francis Bacon: one of the founders of modern science; Bacon and Locke approaches led to
empiricism: knowledge comes from experience/science should rely on observation and
experimentation
When and how did modern psychological science begin? page 4
First psych lab: 1879, Wilhelm Wundt, Germany, University of Leipzig
Edward Titchener, structuralism: used introspection to explore the elementary structure of the
mind.
Functionalism and William James: how mental and behavioral processes function
James wrote the first important psych book, The Principles of Psychology, 1890
Structure v. function analogy: for housing, structure would look at the building materials;
function looks at how each room is used
Mary Calkins, his student, became first female president of the American Psychological
Association; the first president of the APA was G. Stanley Hall, the first American to have a
psych lab. (Harvard denied Calkins her Ph.D. since it discriminated against women.)
How did psychology continue to develop from the 1920s through today? page 6
Early psychologist drew on philosophy and physiology
Pavlov studied learning
Freud was a physician who studied personality using psychoanalysis
James looked at stream of consciousness and emotion
Wundt and Titchener looked at inner sensations, images and feelings
From the 20s to the 60s the study of behavior dominated psychology: Watson and Skinner
rooted their studies in observations of behavior
Humanistic psychology dominated starting the in 1960s with Rogers and Maslow looking a
growth potential and meeting of needs for love and acceptance
The cognitive revolution of the 1950s moved the focus away from behavior to how the mind
processes information
Cognitive neuroscience: brain and mental activity connections
Contemporary psych: What is psychology’s historic big issue? page 8
The big debate: nature v. nurture
Plato: inherited; Aristotle: the environment
Locke: environmental; Descartes: inherited
Darwin’s natural selection: nature selects those variations that best enable the organism to
survive and reproduce in a particular environment
How nature and nurture interact: Nurture works on what nature endows.
What are psychology’s three levels of analysis? page 10
The biopsychosocial approach: the influence of biology, psychology and socio cultural factors
on our behavior
See text page 10 for above
What are the current perspectives? page 11
Biological/Neuroscience: how the body and brain enable emotions, memories, and senses
Evolutionary: how the natural selection of traits promotes the perpetuation of genes
Behavior genetics: how much our genes and our environment influence differences
Psychodynamic: how behavior springs from unconscious drives and conflicts
Behavioral: how we learn from observable responses
Cognitive: how we encode, process, store, and retrieve information
Humanistic: how we meet our needs for love and acceptance and achieve self-fulfillment
Socio-cultural: how behavior and thinking vary across situations and cultures
What are psychology’s main subfields? page 12
Psychometrics: the scientific study of human measurements
Basic research: building the knowledge base
Biological: explore links between brain and mind
Developmental: our abilities from womb to tomb are studied
Cognitive: experiment with how we think, perceive and solve problems
Personality: study our traits
Social: how we view and affect others
Applied research: look at practical problems
Industrial/organizational: workplace issues
Counseling: help people cope
Clinical: assessing and treating mental disorders
Psychiatrist: psychotherapist; usually has medical degree to prescribe drugs
KNOW: the key terms listed on page 16
ACTIVE PROCESSING: the practice questions on page 17