Behaviourism (Cont.)
 As psychoanalysis’ popularity grew, psychologists
weren’t as hardcore about the “science-y” bits
 During the 1950’s B.F Skinner brought the focus back
to observable behaviour
 Skinner didn’t deny the existence of an internal world
of consciousness, but he did claim that there is no
need to study it
B.F Skinner
•All that mattered was input/output
•Good behaviour is rewarded
•Bad behaviour is punished
•Because these environmental
inputs are beyond our control, freewill is an illusion of sorts
•People are controlled by their
environment and not their own
free-will
B.F Skinner
 Organisms tend to repeat responses that lead to
positive outcomes , and they tend not to repeat
responses that lead to negative outcomes
The Humanist Revolt
 Behaviourism and Psychoanalytic theory were very
popular by the 1950’s
 But Behaviourism and Psychoanalytic theory happens
to be very “dehumanising”.
 Both schools of thought entailed that human beings
are slaves to the environment or unconscious forces
and conflicts beyond their control
The Humanist Revolt
 At the beginning of the 1950’s a loose set of ideas, that
sought to oppose the dehumanizing emphasis of
behaviourism and psychoanalytic thought and became
known as Humanism
 Humanism is a theoretical orientation that
emphasises the unique qualities of humans,
especially their freedom and their potential for
personal growth
The Humanist Revolt
 Biggest proponents of this new humanist movement



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was Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow
Carl Rogers argued that human beings have a sense of
self or a self-concept that governs human behaviour
This sense of self involves a dimension of personal
growth
People have an innate drive to better themselves
(animals do not have this)
According to Rogers, psychological disturbances
happen when this uniquely human need is
blocked or thwarted
The Humanist Revolt
 The main difference between behaviourism,
psychoanalytic though and humanism, is the fact that
humanists take a more optimistic view of human
beings
 Humanists conclude that animal research cannot tell
us much about human beings, because animals do
not have this innate drive toward personal growth
 Carl Rogers developed a unique approach to therapy
called person-centred therapy
 Humanists focus on human capacity for freedom,
happiness, and potential for growth
questions
 True or False: Skinner would have trained his dog to
fetch a stick by patting him on the head every time he
brought the stick back
 True or False: Skinner denied the existence of
consciousness
 True or False: According to Skinner children should
never be punished as this will lead to disobedience
 True or False: Rogers believed that research on animals
is critical in understanding the human mind
 Rogers believed that a person’s behaviour is governed
by their _________________?
 True or False: Humanists believe that people are
inherently evil and should be taught through selfactualization to be good
Psychology’s Modern History
 In the early days, the majority of psychologists were
researchers
 World War II (1939-1945) changed the face of
psychology
 Need for trained psychologists to help with selection
of recruits and treat soldiers for psychological trauma.
Thus many researchers became clinical psychologists
 Even after the war, many veterans needed
psychological treatment
Types of Psychologists
 Applied psychologists: concerned with everyday
applied problems (for example, mental testing of
military recruits)
 Clinical psychologists: concerned with diagnosis
and treatment of psychological problems and
disorders (for example, treatment of anxiety)
 After World War II the APA was being dominated by
clinical psychologists. This eventually lead to the
establishment of the Association for Psychological
Science (APS) that sought to represent all areas of
psychology
Psychology return to its roots
 Since 1950’s and 1960’s psychologists have returned to
the idea of studying consciousness or internal
mental events
 Cognition refers to the mental processes involved
in acquiring knowledge
 Behaviourism discouraged the study of consciousness
because it was “un-scientific”
Cognitive psychology
 Possible to study mental events scientifically, albeit in
a different way
 Cognitive psychology stared passing behaviourism as
the dominant perspective in the 1970’s
Biological Perspective
 By 1950’s and 1960’s psychologists started to realise
that there is a complex relationship between mind,
body and behaviour
 This lead to an increase in the study of how biological
or neurobiological factors influence behaviour
Cultural Diversity
•Middle and upper class white
males usually used for research
•Most research done in United
States of America
•Recent decades focused on
cultural determinants of
behaviour as well
Evolutionary Psychology
 Evolutionary Psychology examines behavioural
processes in terms of their adaptive value for
members of a species over the course of many
generations
Positive Psychology
 In the 1990’s Martin Seligman concluded that clinical
psychology focused too much on psychological
problems and the negative side of psychology
 Positive psychology uses theory and research to
better understand the positive, adaptive, creative
and fulfilling aspects of human existence
Focus of research
 Developmental psychology
 Social psychology
 Educational psychology
 Health psychology
 Physiological psychology
 Experimental psychology
 Cognitive psychology
 Psychometrics
 Personality
Seven unifying themes
Theme 1: Psychology is Empirical
 Empiricism means that knowledge should be
acquired from observation
 Without testing theories, psychology is little more
than the speculative philosophy of old
Theme 2: Psychology is Theoretically Diverse
 A theory is a system of interrelated ideas used to
explain a set of observations (the bigger picture)
 Glass half empty or half full?
 More than one way of looking at things
Theme 3: Psychology Evolves in a Socio historical
Context
 Psychology’s growth attributed to fascination with
science, especially physics
 Freud’s ideas formed as reaction to suppression of
sexuality. Reaction to conservative attitude towards sex
 Impact of World War II on development of clinical
psychology
Theme 4: Behaviour is Determined by Multiple
Causes
 As time went by, psychologists started to appreciate
the complexity of behaviour
 Multifactorial causation of behaviour: Multiple factors
cause behaviour (genetics, physical environment,
social environment etc.)
Theme 5: Behaviour is Shaped by Cultural Heritage
 Culture refers to the widely shared customs, beliefs,
values, norms, institutions, and other products of a
community that are transmitted socially across
generations
 Culture influences the way we see the world and
behave in it
Theme 6: Heredity and Environment Jointly
Influence Behaviour
 Genes and environment form very complex
interactions to give rise to our behaviour
 Some aspects determined by heredity, some by
environment, and some aspects are influenced by both
at the same time
Theme 7:People’s Experience of the World is Highly
Subjective
 Our perceptions are very subjective
 We often see what we “want” or “expect” to see
 Our motives and intentions colour our perception of
the world
Test Preparation
Types of questions
1.Applied: can you apply knowledge to a real world
situation?
2.Conceptual: How well do you understand the
concepts?
3.Factual: How well do you know the work?
How to answer multiple choice
1.If you know the right answer, it’s obviously easy
2.If you are not entirely sure…go with your first instinct
3…..unless you know for a fact that your instinct is wrong
4.Read the question carefully anyway
If the answer is not apparent…
1.DON’T PANIC!
2.Use the process of elimination
3.Sometimes the answer to one question can be found in
a previous or subsequent question
4.Often certain options are highly implausible
5.Try the “True or False” approach
6.If you seriously don’t know…just guess
Factual
Who was the father of psychoanalysis:
 A. Carl Rogers
 B. Sigmund Freud
 C.BF Skinner
 D. Harry Hairyman
Factual
Psychology’s intellectual parents are:
 A. Physiology and Chemistry
 B. Genetics and Psychophysics
 C. Physiology and Philology
 D. Physiology and Philosophy
Factual
Who established America's first psychological
research laboratory:
 A. John Watson.
 B. William James.
 C.G. Stanley Hall.
 D. Edward Titchener.
Factual
The “birth of psychology” is considered to have
happened in:
 A. 1897
 B. 1879
 C. 1869
 D. 1997
Conceptual
Which of the following early psychologists would be
MOST likely to endorse evolutionary psychology?
 A. Carl Rogers
 B. William James
 C. G. Stanley Hall
 D. Wilhelm Wundt
Conceptual
The idea that psychology is empirical suggests that:
 A. Reason and logic are integral parts of psychology
 B. Research should be rigorous
 C. Theories should be testable
 D. All of the above
Conceptual
A clinical psychologist would probably be MOST
interested in:
 A. Studying animal behaviour
 B. Studying consciousness
 C. Treating depression with person-centred therapy
 D. Treating anxiety exclusively from a biological point
of view
Conceptual
Which one of the following approaches in
psychology is most similar to structuralism:
 A. Behaviorism.
 B. Humanism
 C. Cognitive psychology
 D. Positive psychology
Conceptual
Which one of the following would be considered
empirically-based knowledge:
 A. Introspection
 B. Logic
 C. Observation
 D. Psychoanalytic analysis
Applied
Jacob is a functionalist. Which one of the following
will you MOST likely see in his laboratory:
 A. Someone describing the contents of his/her
consciousness
 B. Introspection
 C. Mental testing
 D. Researchers training mice to press a button
Applied
Which of the following is MOST likely to be studied
by a cognitive psychologist?
 A. Strategies used by children to solve puzzles
 B. How punishment affects conformity
 C. Whether or not men eat more than women
 D. Factors that determine group cohesiveness
The idea that psychology should use theory and
research to understand under which conditions
human beings flourish is:
 A. Biological psychology.
 B. Clinical psychology
 C. Positive psychology
 D. Applied psychology.
A multifactorial approach to explaining why a
person has aggression problems will consider:
 A. Personal factors more than situational factors
 B. Situational factors more than personal factors
 C. Both personal and situational factors
 D. The conflict in the unconscious mind
Which of the following would be MOST likely to
generalize from studies of animal subjects to
human behavior?
 A. a psychoanalyst
 B. a behaviorist
 C. a humanist
 D. a cognitive psychologist
Which of the following takes the most positive view
of human nature?
 A. behaviorism.
 B. functionalism.
 C. humanism.
 D. psychoanalysis.
According to Wilhelm Wundt, the focus of
psychology was the scientific study of:
 A. intentions
 B. conscious experience.
 C. unconscious motivation.
 D. All of the above
When we say that people often see what they either
"want to see" or "expect to see“, we are saying that:
 A. People don’t have access to their conscious
experience
 B. Behavior is shaped by cultural factors
 C. People's experience of the world is objective
 D. People's experience of the world is subjective
The fact that Freud's ideas were based, in part, on
prevailing values during his lifetime implies that
psychology's development is influenced by:
 A. social context.
 B. subjective context.
 C. historical context.
 D. socio historical context.
Thank you very much
You’ve been a great class
Good luck with test !