Name: _____________________________
Date: _____________________________
Introduction to Psychology
Mr. LaBrache
Current Perspectives in Psychology:
The End of the Slideshow
IV.
Psychology’s Current Perspectives
A. Neuroscience (brain)
1. Focuses on how the body and the brain enable emotions
2. They will ask questions like…
a. How are messages transmitted in the body?
b. How is brain chemistry linked with moods and motives?
B. Behavior genetics
1. They focus on how much our genes and our environments
influence our individual differences
2. They seek to find out…
a. To what extent are psychological traits such as intelligence,
personality, sexual orientation, and depression attributable to
our genes?
b. Are any of these things more linked to our environment?
C. Humanistic
1. Their primary focus is on reaching one’s full potential by meeting a
hierarchy (tiered level) of needs
2. They wonder how…
a. …Self worth, realizing one’s full potential and self esteem
affect our behavior?
D. Psychodynamic
1. This perspective studies how behavior springs from unconscious
drives and conflict
2. They will ask things like…
a. “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?”
E. Behavioral / Learning
1. They focus on how people learn observable responses.
2. They are curious to answer…
a. “How we learn to fear particular objects or situations?
b. What is the most effective way to alter our behavior, say to
lose weight or quit smoking?
F. Cognitive
1. They focus on how we encode, process, store and retrieve
information
2. They will seek to find out…
a. How do we use information in remembering? Reasoning?
Problem solving?
G. Social-Cultural
1. They pay attention to how behavior and thinking vary across
situations and cultures
2. They will ask something like…
a. How are we – as Africans, Asians, Australians or North
Americans – alike as members of human family?
b. As products of different environmental contexts, how do we
differ?
H. Evolutionary
1. Their primary focus is how does natural selection and evolution
influence behavior and personality
2. They might ask something like…
a. Why are facial emotions inherited?
Key Terms:
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Psychology
Structuralism
Introspection
Functionalism
Longitudinal research
Gestalt
Psychodynamic perspective
Cognitive perspective
Humanistic perspective
Neuroscience perspective
Social-cultural perspective
Evolutionary perspective
Sigmund Freud
B.F. Skinner
Abraham Maslow