In your Interactive Notebook: Unit.Day 1.2
Psychological Perspectives
Unit 1 ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS: What is (and isn’t) Psychology?
How do psychologists conduct reliable and ethical research?
ON YOUR DESK: 1) reading journal
2) Daily commentary notebook
3) Laptop (at desk but closed)
•
Today’s OBJECTIVE(S) -- WRITE THESE DOWN:
– I can distinguish between
the biological, cognitive,
behavioral, and
sociocultural perspectives
in psychology
• DAILY
COMMENTARY
– What makes you you?
Apply your knowledge
from last nights
reading.
• TURN IN:
– Place Discussion Questions in box
– Signed Parent letters
Today’s Discussion Questions
• Make sure your name is on the questions you
submit, and that your question is unique.
– This will be factored into your grade.
DQ’S, Updates & Reminders
• BIG PICTURE
– Friday Quizzes
• August 30 & September 6
– Projects Due
• Thursday, September 5th
– Experiment Project
– Unit Exam:
• Monday, September 9th
• Tonight’s Homework:
– Reading notes on
“Power of Birth Order”
article
• Posted to class website
• Notify me NOW if you
need a print copy
Psychology’s Roots
Prescientific Psychology
www.bodydharma.org/photo/buddha.jpg
In India, Buddha wondered how sensations and
perceptions combined to form ideas.
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Prescientific Psychology
Plato
http://www.law.umkc.edu
http://www.law.umkc.edu
Socrates
Socrates (469-399 B.C.) and Plato (428-348 B.C.)
Socrates and his student Plato believed the mind
was separate from the body, the mind continued to
exist after death, and ideas were innate.
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Prescientific Psychology
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
http://faculty.washington.edu
Aristotle suggested that the soul is not separable
from the body and that knowledge (ideas) grow
from experience.
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Prescientific Psychology
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
http://ocw.mit.edu
http://www.spacerad.com
Descartes, like Plato, believed in soul (mind)-body
separation, but wondered how the immaterial
mind and physical body communicated.
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Prescientific Psychology
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
http://www.iep.utm.edu
Bacon is one of the founders of modern science,
particularly the experimental method.
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Prescientific Psychology
John Locke (1632-1704)
biografieonline.it/img/bio/John_Locke.jpg
Locke held that the mind was a tabula rasa, or
blank sheet, at birth, and experiences wrote on it.
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Psychological Science is Born
Structuralism (Wundt & Titchener)
Titchner (1867-1927)
Wundt (1832-1920)
focused on trying to break larger mental processes
into component parts to better understand them
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Psychological Science is Born
Functionalism (William James)
Mary Calkins
James (1842-1910)
• Opposed structuralism; tried to offer systemic
explanations of mental processes
• Focused on purposes behind consciousness &
behavior
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Psychology Today
We define psychology today as the scientific
study of behavior (what we do) and mental
processes (inner thoughts and feelings).
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Major Questions in Psychology
• Nature vs. Nurture
– Twin & adoption studies
• Stability vs. Change
Psychological Science is Born
The Unconscious Mind
Freud (1856-1939)
Sigmund Freud and his followers emphasized the
importance of the unconscious mind and its effects
on human behavior.
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Psychological Perspectives
• Different psychologists take different
approaches to explaining human behavior and
mental processes.
– 4 primary schools of thought:
•
•
•
•
Behavioral
Biological
Cognitive
Sociocultural
The Behavioral Perspective
Behaviorism
Skinner (1904-1990)
Watson (1878-1958)
•
Studying behavior is the best way to understand
the brain
o
o
Watson & Skinner are key behaviorists
They applied the scientific method to understand
what causes humans to act in specific ways
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Behaviorism
Behaviorism
• By the 1950s, Psychoanalysis seemed very
unscientific.
• Behaviorists will bring science back into
psychology, even if they overdo it a little.
• Behaviorism is NOT interested in the
unconscious mind since it cannot be observed
in a laboratory.
Very telling quote!!
• Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed,
and my own specified world to bring them up
in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at
random and train him to become any type of
specialist I might select -- doctor, lawyer,
artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents,
penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations,
and race of his ancestors.
--John Watson, Behaviorism, 1930
Evolutionary Psychology
• Evolutionary psychology examines
psychological traits — such as memory,
perception, or language
• It seeks to identify which human psychological
traits are evolved adaptations.
– functional products of natural selection or sexual
selection
– Attractiveness
Biological Perspective
• Most respected right now.
• They focus on our brain,
nervous system,
neurotransmitters and
hormones to explain our
behaviors.
Biological Perspective
• “I don’t know why you are depressed or
anxious. But here is some medicine!”
Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive Perspective
• It is the study of how people perceive,
remember, think, speak, and solve problems.
• Cognitive therapy is about changing the
maladaptive thoughts of a person.
Cognitive perspective on depression
• We are depressed because we are irrational.
Our expectations are too high and misplaced.
We want everyone to love us and accept us.
We want every thing to go our way. We stay
angry about stuff that happened a long time
ago.
– WE MUST CHANGE THE WAY WE THINK TO BE
HAPPY AND SUCCESSFUL.
Cognitive Therapy
• Cognitive therapy is about changing the
maladaptive (bad) thoughts.
• Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck and William
Glasser are famous for reality therapy.
– They challenged his patients to ask, “Are my
thoughts realistic or rational?”
– Cognitive therapy also “educates” the client,
teaches him/her proper behaviors/thoughts
Social-Cultural Perspective
• Says that much of your
behavior and your feelings
are dictated by the culture
you live in.
• Some cultures kiss each other
when greeting, some just
bow.
• Does your culture place value
on individual or the group?
Humanistic
• In the 1960s in reaction to
psychoanalysis and behaviorism.
• Focused on each individual’s potential
and stressed the importance of growth
and self-actualization.
• The fundamental belief of humanistic
psychology was that people are
innately good.
• We are not rats in a cage! We are not
id-driven animals! We are humans with
free will.
Psychological Science Develops
Rogers (1902-1987)
http://www.carlrogers.dk
http://facultyweb.cortland.edu
Maslow (1908-1970)
Humanistic Psychology
Maslow and Rogers emphasized current
environmental influences on our growth potential
and our need for love and acceptance.
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Psychology’s Three Main Levels of Analysis
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Perspectives Activity
1. Log into edmodo and complete the
assignment posted for today.
– You may work with a partner
• While online, please also complete the
Student information sheet. This is found at
www.mrggpsychology.weebly.com
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Partner Activity
• How might each scenario be interpreted
according to the four major perspectives
(biological, sociocultural, cognitive, and
behavioral)
– A repeat drunk driver
– A student who is intelligent but does not apply
themself in school
– The decision by people to play football despite the
serious threats of brain injury
DQ’S, Updates & Reminders
• BIG PICTURE
– Friday Quizzes
• August 30 & September 6
– Projects Due
• Thursday, September 5th
– Experiment Project
– Unit Exam:
• Monday, September 9th
• Tonight’s Homework:
– Reading notes on
“Power of Birth Order”
article
• Posted to class website
• Notify me NOW if you
need a print copy
Psychology’s Current Perspectives
Perspective
Focus
Sample Questions
Neuroscience
How the body and brain
enables emotions?
How are messages
transmitted in the body? How
is blood chemistry linked with
moods and motives?
Evolutionary
How the natural selection
of traits the promotes the
perpetuation of one’s
genes?
How does evolution influence
behavior tendencies?
Behavior genetics How much our genes and
our environments
influence our individual
differences?
To what extent are
psychological traits such as
intelligence, personality,
sexual orientation, and
vulnerability to depression
attributable to our genes? To
our environment?
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Psychology’s Current Perspectives
Perspective
Focus
Sample Questions
Psychodynamic
How behavior springs
from unconscious drives
and conflicts?
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?
How we learn observable
responses?
How do we learn to fear
particular objects or
situations? What is the most
effective way to alter our
behavior, say to lose weight or
quit smoking?
(Freud)
Behavioral
(Pavlov, Watson,
Skinner)
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Psychology’s Current Perspectives
Perspective
Focus
Sample Questions
Cognitive
How we encode, process,
store and retrieve
information?
How do we use information
in remembering? Reasoning?
Problem solving?
Social-cultural
How behavior and
thinking vary across
situations and cultures?
How are we — as Africans,
Asians, Australians or North
Americans – alike as members
of human family? As products
of different environmental
contexts, how do we differ?
(Rogers, Maslow,
Bandura)
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