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LESSON 1
THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of this lesson the student will be able to:
1. Define psychology and the scope of its activities.
2. Describe the history of psychology as a formal discipline, including the
five early schools of psychological research and identify their founders.
3. Describe the five main perspectives in contemporary psychology.
4. Identify the main subfields of contemporary psychology.
5. Demonstrate an understanding of the research methods used by
psychologists.
6. Discuss the ethical issues involved in conducting psychological research.
FOCUS QUESTIONS
1. How is psychology defined? What kinds of things do psychologists do?
2. Where and by whom did psychology start as a formal discipline? What
were the five schools of psychology and who were their founders?
3. What are five main approaches to psychology taken by psychologists
today?
4. What is the experimental method? What other methods do psychologists
use to study human behavior?
5. What special ethical issues are involved in the study of animals and
humans?
KEY POINTS AND COMMENTARY
Definition: Psychology can be defined as the scientific study of behavior and
mental processes.
Beginning with the earliest Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato
and Aristotle, and continuing up through modern times, certain questions have
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been asked about our nature as human beings. How do we acquire knowledge?
Are humans rational or irrational? What is the relation between the mind and the
body? What makes humans different from other animals? Is our behavior
caused by our biological nature or is it due to experience? Do humans have
“free will” or is our behavior “determined?”
These questions are still being debated by modern psychologists.
Back in the 1800’s, when science was making progress in areas such as
chemistry and physics, some people thought that these ancient philosophical
questions might finally be answered if we were to apply the scientific method to
the study of human beings. Thus psychology was born as a formal discipline by
combining philosophical concerns with the study of physiology. What better
way to answer the question “How do we know?” than to study how the eyes and
ears actually work?
Psychology’s First Laboratory
The first laboratory dedicated to psychology was founded by Wilhelm
Wundt in Leipzig, Germany, in 1879. Researchers in his laboratory studied the
senses, especially vision, but also studied what were considered to be “basic”
psychological processes such as attention, emotion and memory. Wundt
conceived of psychology as “mental chemistry.” His idea was to study the
“elements” or basic sensations, and then someday explain how we put these
elements together into complex perceptions, or “compounds.” The method he
used was called introspection, which refers to observing and recording the
nature of one’s own perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. Examples of
introspections include people’s reports of how heavy they perceive an object to
be and how bright a flash of light seems to be.
Wundt’s laboratory trained a lot of people who then went on to other
places to start psychology departments. However, the early psychologists
couldn’t quite agree on a major issue - what is the best way to go about
studying human behavior? What methods should we use? The differences of
opinion gave rise to what are known as the early five schools of psychology.
The Five Schools of Psychology
Structuralism: The major proponent of this school was the American
psychologist E.B. Titchener, who had studied under Wundt in Germany.
Like Wundt, he conceived psychology as the analysis of mental structures,
and used introspection as his primary methodology.
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Functionalism: There were other psychologists who disagreed that the
mind could be broken down into elements. William James, often
considered to be the father of American psychology, felt that conscious
experience was fluid and constantly adapting to changes in our
surroundings. The “stream of consciousness,” as he called it, served to
guide our activities. These psychologists felt that actual behavior, viewed
as a continual adaptive response to the environment, was to be the focus
of study.
Behaviorism: A bit later, in the 1920’s, J.B. Watson declared that if
psychology wanted to be a science it had to be more “objective.” Watson
said that the idea of “consciousness” was not scientific because it could
not be seen. Psychology had to be based on actual behavior, not on
something hidden like mental processes. Introspection as a method was
not scientific, because no one could verify another’s private experiences.
Based on the work of the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, Watson
viewed all behavior as habits that had been learned. As will be seen later,
this is often called Stimulus–Response (S-R) psychology.
Gestalt Psychology: At about the same time that Behaviorism was
developing in the United States, Gestalt psychology was being developed
in Germany. The word gestalt means “form” or “configuration,” and this
approach was mostly concerned with perception. These psychologists,
most notably Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Kóhler,
claimed that we directly perceive things as wholes in relation to a context.
When you see a person you know, you don’t have to put their face
together from bits and pieces, like the structuralists would hold - you
directly percieve the whole “gestalt” of the face.
Psychoanalysis: While the four previous schools of psychology were
founded in academic settings, Psychoanalysis came out of the field of
medicine. Sigmund Freud, its founder, was a doctor concerned with
explaining certain psychological disorders. He concluded that the major
portion of our behavior is caused by unconscious motivations, which,
because of their anxiety-provoking character, we cannot admit to
ourselves
Later Influences on 20th Century Psychology
These five schools had different degrees of influence on subsequent
developments in psychology. Some ideas from the Structuralist, Functionalist
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and Gestalt schools have been incorporated in different ways into various areas
of contemporary psychology. The Behaviorist approach was dominant in
American and Russian psychology during at least half of the 20 th century.
Psychoanalysis thrived primarily outside of academic psychology in the context
of mental hospitals and in the clinical (therapeutic) professions.
Other influences on modern psychology are the following:
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The metaphor of the computer for explaining human mental
processes as information processing.
The development of modern linguistics, which provided us with a
model of mental structures.
Advances in neuropsychology, revealing relationships between
mental experiences and activity in the nervous system.
These three developments have led psychology in a full circle, back to
the study of mental processes. We could probably say that the dominant trend
in modern psychology is the study of cognitive, or mental, processes.
Contemporary Perspectives in Psychology
The following perspectives characterize the different approaches in
psychology today:
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The Biological Perspective: Research in this area seeks to specify the
neurobiological processes that underlie behavior and mental processes.
The Behavioral Perspective: This perspective focuses on observable
stimuli and responses and regards nearly all behavior as a result of
conditioning (learning) and reinforcement (reward).
The Cognitive Perspective: This approach is concerned with mental
processes such as perceiving remembering, reasoning, deciding, and
problem solving.
The Psychoanalytic Perspective: From this point of view, behavior
comes from unconscious processes – beliefs, fears, and desires that a
person is unaware of but that nonetheless influence behavior.
The Subjectivist Perspective: This perspective contends that human
behavior is a function of the perceived world, not the objective world. In
other words, if you define something as real, it is real in its
consequences.
What do Psychologists Do? The Major Subfields of Psychology
When you think of a psychologist, what do you think they do? Therapy?
Well, a good number of psychologists in the United States do practice
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therapy, but there are many other activities. About 50% work in universities
teaching, training, and conducting research. The following are some of the
main areas in which psychologists work:
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Biological psychology: Physiological psychologists look for the
relationship between biological processes and behavior.
Experimental psychology: Psychologists who use experimental
methods to study how people react to sensory stimuli, perceive
the world, learn and remember, reason, and respond emotionally.
Developmental psychology: Psychologists who are concerned
with human development and the factors that shape behavior
from birth to old age.
Social and Personality psychology: Social psychologists are
interested in how people perceive and interpret their social world
and how their beliefs, emotions, and behaviors are influenced by
the real or imagined presence of others. Personality psychologists
study the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that define an
individual’s personal style of interacting with the world.
Clinical, Counseling and Health psychology: Clinical
psychologists apply psychological principles to the diagnosis and
treatment of emotional and behavioral problems. Counseling
psychologists do many of the same things, although they often
deal with less serious problems. Health psychologists will often be
found in health settings doing research on lifestyle factors, such
as stress, and its effect on health.
School and Educational psychology: School psychologists
work with children to evaluate learning and emotions problems.
Educational psychologists are specialists in learning and
teaching.
Organizational and Engineering psychology: Organizational or
industrial psychologists usually work for companies and
consulting firms, and are concerned with selecting people who
are most suitable for particular jobs or designing structures that
facilitate collaboration and teamwork. Engineering psychologists
try to improve the relationship between people and machines.
DOING RESEARCH IN PSYCHOLOGY
Psychologists try to understand why we behave the way we do by using
the scientific method. Science is an activity of inquiry that 1) systematically
introduces changes in ongoing events under conditions that we control, 2)
makes our procedures public and therefore available to others to repeat. To say
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that we “control” a situation is to say that we compare one situation with
another. Making comparisons is basic to any form of inquiry. If you want to
study artistic painting, you have to look at paintings, comparing one with
another. If you want to study poetry, you have to read different styles of poetry.
So too in science.
Psychologists use a variety of methods to study human behavior and
mental processes. We do experiments, we use direct observation,
questionnaires or surveys, and written studies of individuals that we call case
histories. We will go into the general characteristics about experiments below,
but your text will give you more details and examples.
THE EXPERIMENTAL METHOD
Conducting a formal, controlled experiment is the best way to determine
cause and effect relationships between variables. A variable is anything that
can occur with different values.
An example will help us understand how we design experiments. A
number of years ago a psychologist by the name of Albert Bandura wanted to
find out if watching violent T.V. programs caused children to be more
aggressive. He suspected that it does, so he set up an experiment to test his
hypothesis: “Children will show more aggressive behavior after having seen a
violent T.V. program.” A hypothesis is a statement of a proposed relationship
between two variables. The variables in this case are 1) the degree of violence
on T.V. and 2) the amount of aggression shown by children.
Bandura set up an experimental situation in which children were taken by
a teacher, one-by-one, into a room where they watched a video. Half of the
children watched a travel video. The other group saw a video in which there
was a playroom with toys and a large “Bobo Doll” in the center. A Bobo Doll is
one of those plastic inflatable dolls with a clown face that has sand in the
bottom, so that when someone hits the doll it will fall over and then bounce back
up. In the video, an adult walked into the room, looked around at the toys, and
then went over to the Bobo Doll and started attacking it while making all kinds of
noises – “pow!” “bang!”, “take that!”, etc. After hitting the doll for a while the
adult went over to a table, found a toy wooden hammer, and came back to the
doll, knocked it over and sat on it, all the while hitting it with the hammer!
After the children saw one of the two movies, they were taken down the
hall to a playroom and found themselves in the same room that was in the
video. They were left alone, and the investigators watched the children through
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a one-way mirror and observed what they did. The prediction was that the
children who saw the violent video would be more aggressive with the Bobo
doll. Aggression was measured by the number of times the child hit the doll.
What do you think happened? The children who watched the violent
video were, on average, much more aggressive towards the Bobo doll than
those children who saw the non-violent film.
We can draw the experiment in this way:
Independent
variable
Experimental
Group
Violent
Film
Dependent
variable
# of attacks
on doll
Hypothesis
Compare
Control
Group
Non-violent
Film
# of attacks
on doll
The selection of subjects for our experiment is important. Bandura was
assuming that the results of his study would apply to all children. Therefore his
subjects must be “typical” children. The best way to assure this is to select
subjects at random from the population of interest. In addition, we want to be
sure the two groups of children are equivalent in terms of their characteristics.
Otherwise we couldn’t be sure that the amount of aggression at the end was
due to watching the violent film. It wouldn’t do to have all girls in one group and
all boys in another, or one group consisting of more children with aggressive
personalities. In order to avoid this, we randomly assign the children we will
use for our study to the experimental and control groups.
Definitions of key terms:
Subjects are randomly selected from the population of interest, so that
our sample is representative of the population.
Subjects are randomly assigned to treatment groups, so that both groups
will contain equal characteristics.
hypothesis - a statement of relationship between two variables.
experimental group - the group receiving the special treatment.
control group - the group that does not receive the special treatment.
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independent variable - the factor which can be varied independently of
other factors.
dependent variable - the behavior that we measure. The value of this
variable should change depending on the value of the independent
variable.
operational definition – a definition of our variables in such a way that
they can be measured. In the above example, the operational
definition of aggression was “number of times the child hit the Bobo
doll.”
Conducting a controlled experiment is the only way we can make
inferences about possible causal relationships between variables. This may be
contrasted with studies that discover correlations between variables. A
correlation is a statement of relationship between two variables. For example,
“Children who are obese watch more television.” In this case we cannot say
which variable causes which, or if there is a third factor that causes both. Do
obese children like sedentary activities and therefore watch more T.V.? Or does
watching a lot of T.V. mean that children do not get enough exercise and
become obese? Correlational studies are often done when we use a test, for
example a personality or aptitude test, and correlate scores on the test with
some behavior.
The Ethics of Psychological Research
In conducting psychological research we must be concerned that the
risks anticipated in the research are not greater than those ordinarily
encountered in daily life. Therefore we have established some ethical guidelines
for conducting research, which may be summarized as the following:
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Informed consent – subjects (people participating in the research) must
be told ahead of time about any aspects of the research that might
influence their willingness to participate. They must participate in the
research voluntarily and be given the choice of stopping their
participation at any time.
Debriefing – if for any reason it was necessary to withhold information
about the real purpose of the research (deception) so as not to influence
their behavior while participating, the subjects must be debriefed after
their participation. They must be told about the real purpose of the
research so that their dignity is maintained and their appreciation for the
research enhanced.
Confidentiality – any information collected from or about the person
during the research process must be kept confidential.