AP Psychology
Etowah High School
Coach Burton

 Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
 “Psychology” has its roots in the Greek words of “psyche,” or mind, and “-ology,” or a field of study.”

 Once upon a time on a planet in this neighborhood of the universe, there came to be people. Soon thereafter, these creatures became intensely interest in themselves and in one another. They asked questions like Who are we? What are we doing here? And why is
Gimmballa Gimmballa doing that? Is that normal?
What is this voice in me?

 Psychology is the science of behavior and mental processes. The science of our mental processes that help us to understand our behavior, ideas, and feelings.

 The science of psychology is based on objective, verifiable evidence obtained using the scientific method.
 What is the scientific method?

 Much like scientific method, the empirical approach uses a set of standards to conduct a study which emphasizes careful observation and scientifically based research.
 Why is it important to use the empirical approach?

 Pseudo-psychology is the phony or unscientific psychology which pretends to be the real thing.

 People believe the fake psychology and miss out on real psychological insights which are more helpful and interesting.
 Ex. Confirmation bias: Only paying attention to the events and evidence which confirms our desired beliefs.
 Also, pseudo-psychology can produce a lot of fraud.
 With increased incidents of fraud in the field of psychology, there is diminished public support for legitimate psychological science.

 Another example of pseudo-psychology was an autism treatment called
Facilitated Communication.
 After applying the scientific method to the practice, it proved to be no more accurate than Cleaver Han’s math calculations.

1. Experimental Psychologists:
 These are the psychologists who do the basic research in psychology. Most are faculty members at a college or university.
 This is the smallest group of the three major branches of psychology.

2. Teachers of Psychology:
This group overlaps with the experimental research group because most researchers also teach, but there has been an increase in the hiring of psychology teachers.

3. Applied Psychology:
 This group uses the knowledge developed by experimental psychologists to address human problems such as training, equipment design and psychological treatment.
 For a list of specific applied psychological specialties, see page 7 in your book.

 Psychiatry is a specialty in the medical field, not a part of psychology.
 Psychiatrists hold MDs and have specialized training in the treatment of mental and behavioral problems.
 Psychology is a much broader field which has many different specialties.

 While the Greeks get much of the credit for first identifying ideas about consciousness, other societies were also developing their own ideas.
 Although both Asian and African cultures had ideas about psychology, it was the Greeks and later the Roman Catholic church which had the most influence on western psychology.

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Although the science of psychology started in the late
1800’s, the concept has been around a lot longer.
There was evidence of trephination (cutting holes into a skull to let evil spirits out) back in the stone age.
It was like a bad SAW movie!!!!

 Plato – (427-347)
 Plato was interested in moral philosophy and despised natural philosophy (that is, science) as an inferior and unworthy sort of knowledge.
 Believed we are born with complete knowledge within our soul. (So did his teacher Socrates)
 Learning – a process of inner reflection to discover the knowledge within us.

 Aristole – (384-322)
 Knowledge acquired through experience.
 Four Laws of
Association
 Law of similarity
 Law of Contrast
 Law of Contiguity
 Law of Frequency

 For hundreds of years medieval
Christian churches felt the human mind, like that of God, was an unsolvable mystery.
 Believed like Plato that the mind could live on after death. So if the
“Mind” and “Body are different…how are they connected?
 In the 17 th C. the French philosopher Rene Descartes argued that human sensations and behaviors were based on activity in the nervous system.
Rene Descartes 1596-1650

 John Locke was an English philosopher
 that conscious thinking thing, which is sensible, or conscious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends“
 Came up with the idea “Tabla Rasa”
(Blake Slate)- That experiences shape who we are. Helped form Empiricism

 Despite Descartes arguments and scientific breakthroughs at the time, psychology didn’t become a recognized science until the mid 1800s.

 The science of psychology has gone through about 5 different waves since it started.
 Waves are different ways of thinking over time.

 Modern psychology developed from several conflicting ideas including structuralism, functionalism, Gestalt psychology, behaviorism and psychoanalysis.

• Started with William Wundt’s first psychological laboratory and his concept of introspection
(structuralism).
• Then William James wrote The
Principles of Psychology and discussed functionalism.
• In reality these ideas do not have much impact on how psychologists think today.
Ladies….take it easy…I know they are hot!!!!

 Wilhelm Wundt (Voont) was the first to declare himself a psychologist.
 He believed in structuralism.
Wilhelm Wundt 1832-1929

 Structuralism: devoted to uncovering the basic structures that make up mind and thoughtlooking for the elements of conscious experience.
 Structuralism relies on introspection, or the process of reporting one’s own conscious mental experiences.
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What would be the strengths/weaknesses of introspection?
GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE OF SOMETHING STRUCTURALISM
WOULD HAVE UNCOVERED?

 Like most new theories, people began to dispute and refute structuralism.
 William James (the first U.S. psychologist) believed that psychology should look at function and not just structure.
William James 1842-1910

 Functionalism- A theory that emphasized the functions of consciousness and the ways consciousness helps people adapt to their environment.
 James thought that psychology should explain how people adapted-or failed to adapt-to everyday life outside the laboratory.
The parts of the functionalist view of psychology

 James’ criticism of Wundt’s structuralism was that it was boring and inaccurate because it was only done in the laboratory.
 James wanted to see how people functioned in everyday life, not just in contrived situations.
 Also he believed that mental process were not static. He described them as a
“stream of consciousness.”

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Led by Max Wertheimer, these guys focused not on how we feel, but on how we experience the world.
The whole of an experience can be more than the sum of its parts.
This may seem like one picture, but it can be perceived as 2 different faces. Can you find them?
Think for a moment of all the reasons that you love your mom.
If you add all those reasons up, do they equal your love for your mom?
Hopefully not!!!

 Gestalt psychology was the opposite of structuralism. Instead of looking at the individual parts, it wanted to examine the whole.
 Gestalt psychology looked at how the brain works by studying perception and perceptual thinking.
 Ex. Recognizing a person’s face.

 This wave of thinking started with Sigmund Freud (in the early 1900’s).
 In a nutshell, during this time period people believed that most of your feelings come from a hidden place in your mind called the unconscious.
 We protect ourselves from our real feeling by using defense mechanisms.

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Psychoanalysis is the brainchild of Sigmund Freud and his followers.
 Psychoanalysis said that mental disorders resulted from conflicts of the unconscious mind.
 Freud thought that behavior came from unconscious drives, conflicts and experience that we may not even have a memory of.
Sigmund Freud 1856-1939

• During this time period (early to mid 1900s), people started to ignore how you feel inside.
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• All that mattered was how you acted.
If you they could change your behavior, who cares how you feel.
Very popular during the conservative 1950’s when social appearance mattered more than self expression.

 John B. Watson argued that a true and objective science of psychology should only deal with observable events: stimuli from the environment and the organism’s response to that stimuli.
 These psychologists thought of the mind as a black box which could not be opened or understood. Since we could not understand it, we should not try to guess what role it has in our actions.

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We are now in wave five….which is about variety.
• Psychologists pick and choose what theories to use depending on the situation and the client.

 Psychology today arises from 7 main perspectives:
 Biological
 Developmental
 Cognitive
 Psychodynamic
 Behavioral
 Sociocultural
 Evolutionary

 All of your feelings and behaviors have an organic root.
 In other words, they come from your brain, body chemistry, neurotransmitters, etc…
Let us imagine for a second that your dog died
(of course this wont happen to you….your dog is going to live forever….like frigin Hancock… but it will actually happen
). You become depressed. You stop eating and sleeping. What would a psychologist from this school say is going on and how might they help you?

 The biological view looks at how our physical make up and the operation of our brains influence our personality, preferences, behavior patterns, and abilities.
 According to biological view, our behavior is a result of heredity, the nervous system and the endocrine system and environmental impacts (insults) such as disease.

 Within the biological view is the theory of evolutionary psychology. This theory arises from the ideas of Charles Darwin.
 Like Darwin, evolutionary psychologists see behavior and mental processes in terms of their genetic adaptations for survival and reproduction…survival of the fittest.

 The developmental view emphasizes changes that occur across our lifespan.
 This is the question of nature vs. nurture. What has a bigger impact on us, heredity or environment?

 According to the cognitive view, our actions are a direct result of the way we process information from our environment.
 Cognitions are thoughts, expectations, perceptions, memories and states of consciousness.

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Focuses on how we think
(or encode information)
How do we see the world?
How did we learn to act to sad or happy events?
Cognitive Therapist attempt to change the way you think.
You meet a girl…
Hopes are high!!!
She rejects you…don’t even get digits.
How do you react to the rejection?
Some learned get back on Some learned to give up the horse
And try again.
and live a lonely life of solitude.

 Cognitive psychologists are a combination of the best of structuralists, functionalists and gestalt traditions and ideas.
 Modern cognitive psychologists have also barrowed theories from linguists and believe that our most basic language skills are prewired into our brains from birth.
 L.A.D

 The term psychodynamic comes from the thought that the mind
(psyche) is a reservoir of energy
(dynamics).
 Psychodynamic psychology suggests we are motivated by the energy of irrational desires generated in our unconscious minds.

 The best known psychodynamic psychologist is
Sigmund Freud who said the mind is like a mental boiler which holds the rising pressure of unconscious sexual and destructive desires, along with memories of traumatic events.

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Focuses on the unconscious mind.
We repress many of our true feelings and are not aware of them.
In order to get better, we must bring forward the true feelings we have in our unconscious.
If a man has intimacy issues and cannot form relationships with others.
What do you think someone from this school may think?
Perhaps they may delve into the man’s unconscious and discover that he was bullied when he were younger. The bullying may have caused fear in getting close to others.

 A viewpoint which emphasizes human ability, growth, potential and free will.
 Much like the psychoanalytic perspective, it emphasizes our mental thoughts and process as the root of our behavior.
 It, however, emphasizes the positive side of human nature. It has received a lot of criticism because it is not the most “scientific.”

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Peaked in the late 1960’s and 70’s….so it focused on spirituality and free will.
We have to strive to be the best we can be “selfactualization”.
Happiness is defined by the distance between our “self-concept” and
“ideal self”.

 A viewpoint which finds the source of our actions in the environmental stimuli, rather than in inner mental processes.
 B.F. Skinner….rats.
 Can you prove that you have a mind?
 “The crucial age-old mistake is the belief that…what we feel as behave is the cause of our behaving.”
~B.F. Skinner

Pretend that you fail psychology class. You become depressed. In turn, you begin to binge and gain weight.
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What do you think a behaviorist may do?
They would probably ignore
• the fact that you are depressed and just focus on your overeating.
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Focuses on observable behaviors while putting feelings to the side.
We behave in ways because we have been conditioned to do so.
To change behaviors, we have to recondition the client.
Maybe make you run a mile every time you eat over 2000 calories.

 This view emphasizes the importance of social interaction, social learning and a cultural perspective.
 Culture: a complex blend of beliefs, customs, values and traditions developed by a group of people and shared with others in the same environment.

• 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.
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This is my culture!!!
(this is the point when my wife rolls here eyes).
Does your culture place value on individual or the group?

 For many years, psychology was blind to the influence of culture on people’s behavior. Why might this be?
 One possible explanation is that as recently as 30 years ago, 90% of psychologists were Caucasians from the U.S. and European university systems… groups with strikingly similar cultures.

 This view of psychology looks at individuals’ behaviors through the lens of natural selection.
 Behavior is adaptive and hereditary and cultural!
 In this theory, genetics are not used a way to show how people are different, but rather the ways in which we have evolved.

 Evolutionary psychology is based on the arguments of
Charles Darwin and his theories of evolution.
 We will discuss Darwin in much more detail later on
 Natural selection is the idea that characteristics of a species evolve in the direction of characteristics that give the fittest organisms a competitive advantage.
 Controversial, but valid: While evolutionary psychology is valid, strict evolutionists are controversial saying that even the most destructive behaviors grow out of genetic tendencies.

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Focuses on Darwinism.
We behave the way we do because we inherited those behaviors.
Thus, those behaviors must have helped ensure our ancestors survival.
How could this behavior ensured
Homer’s ancestors survival?

 A psychological perspective that views behavior and personality as the products of enduring psychological characteristics.
 Accordingly, the view says that behavior results from each person’s unique combination of traits.
 Ex. Introversion or extroversion vs. mood swings

 In recent years, biological, cognitive and developmental perspectives have been gaining supporters.
 In that time, behaviorism, and psychoanalysts
(Freudians) have been losing supporters

The table on page 19 (Table 1.1) has all 9 modern perspectives along with an explanation and definition.
The best way to study the 9 perspectives is to make note cards.