1-History Of Psychology Flashcards
WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY?
Primarily the scientific study of behaviour and their mental processes of living organisms
Roots of psychology?
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roots in philosophy
- what’s the cause of behaviour?!?!?
- Socrates: nature!!
- Aristotle: nurture!!
René Descartes (1596-1650)
believed that the mind and body are different, and was concerned with how the two concepts integrated
how did floaty mind bit integrate with the meaty body bit?
Thomas Hobbs (1588-1679)
believed that the seat of consciousness is in the mind, and that the body is what the body does, the mind just controls the body
Hermann von Helmholtz and protopsychology
- medical model
- how long does it take for pain to register when pinching on different parts of the body?
- it took longer the further it was from the brain
- means that there’s a network of wires
- the brain is the seat of consciousness
- there’s some sort of cognitive processes
- it took longer the further it was from the brain
- he started measuring the phenomenon
- approach was considered empirical
- objective, repeatable, measurable
- he had a research assistant who adopted his approach of measuring reaction times
- Wilhelm Wundt
WILHELM WUNDT
viewed psychology as the scientific study of the conscious experience (1879)
- the father of psychology
- founded the first laboratory at University of Leipzig in 1879
- wrote the first psychology textbook
- 1st to teach psychology
- first person to be referred to as a psychologist
- Germany!
- wrote famous book entitled principles of physiological psychology
FOUNDED STRUCTURALISM
introspection
process by which someone examines their own conscious experience as objectively as possible
- he trained individuals to look in on their conscious experience and then report on what they were feeling
- describe the feeling
- first requirement was the use of “trained” or practiced observers, who could immediately observe and report a reaction.
- The second requirement was the use of repeatable stimuli that always produced the same experience in the subject and allowed the subject to expect and thus be fully attentive to the inner reaction.
what did Wundt measure using introspection
- measured reaction times under different conditions
- “when you hear the beep, press the button”
- “aight, now when you hear AND have cognitively processed the beep, press the button
- had instruments that could measure up to 1/100 of a second
- There was a difference!! led him to believe that some kind of cognitive processing was happening
STRUCTURALISM
what makes up consciousness? What is the structure of consciousness?
- what’s made up of our thoughts?
- what’s made up of our feelings?
- introspect on their conscious experience of emotions
issues with structuralism
- had to train people to introspect—needed very educated people
- sample bias
- couldn’t generalize to the general population
- subjective
- as a result, structuralism fell out of favour with the passing of Wundt’s student, Edward Titchener
FUNCTIONALISM
what (biological) FUNCTION does consciousness serve?
- america!!
- founded by William James
- was inspired by Darwin’s theory of evolution
- what function does it serve in keeping us alive
- was interested the mind as a whole, rather than individual parts
- also believed in introspection…
- but also relied on more objective measures, such as recording devices, examinations of concrete products of mental activities and of anatomy and physiology
GESALT PSYCHOLOGY
Sensory experience can be broken down into individual parts, but what the individual experiences as perception is the WHOLE
- originated in Germany too
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Wertheimer, Koffka, Kohler
- jewish, moved to the US when the behaviorists were taking off
- were buried under the behaviourists
- jewish, moved to the US when the behaviorists were taking off
BRANCHES OF PSYCHOLOGY
Experimental branch
how do we perceive, experience?
- Vol Helmholtz—reaction times
- Wundt—structuralism
- James—Functionalism
- Gestalt—the whole experience
Clinical Branch
Applied branch!
FREUUUUUDDDDDD!!!!
- Hysteria, Depression, therapy
SIGMUND FREUD
Interested in the unconscious mind
- austrian neurologist, interested by patients suffering from hysteria and neurosis
psychoanalytic theory
focuses on the role of a person’s unconscious, as well as early childhood experiences
- wants, desires, behaviours (sexual nature)
-
two forces in our unconscious
- Sexual force
- death, destructive, aggressive force
- the wants and desires want to make it up to the conscious mind, but sometimes they’re so threatening that our brain has to try and keep it unconscious
hysteria
ancient diagnosis for disorders, primarily of women with a wide variety of symptoms none of which had an apparent physical cause