2: Introduction to Psychology

Question 1

Where does the term “Psychology” come from?

Answer 1

The Greek work “psyche” means soul and the root “ology” means the study of, hence, psychology refers to the study of the mind, or more broadly, the scientific study of mind and behavior.

Question 2

What did psychology start off as, and when did it change?

Answer 2

Psychology started as a branch of philosophy, but in the late 1800s, psychology started branching into medicine and later into its own discipline.

Question 3

What kind of science is psychology related to and why?

Answer 3

Psychology is a social science, as it’s connected to natural science like biology.

Question 4

Who is Hermann von Helmholtz? What was his approach? Who was his research assistant?

Answer 4

He started measuring phenomenon (ex/ pinching in foot and hand experiment). His approach was considered empirical (research through observation). His research assistant was Wilhelm Wundt.

Question 5

Who is the founder of psychology / who established psychology as a science?

Answer 5

Wilhelm Wundt.

Question 6

Who is Wilhelm Wundt? What was his approach? What method did he use to study psychology?

Answer 6

Wilhelm Wundt is one of the founders of Psychology. He was a person in structuralism and he utilized introspection to study psychology.

Question 7

What is introspection?

Answer 7

Introspection refers to examining your own conscious as objectively as possible. It was a method used to research psychology.

Question 8

What is structuralism?

Answer 8

Structuralism is a theory of psychology where people (structuralists) wanted to find out if there was a soft of structure to conscious experience.

Question 9

What were the issues of structuralism?

Answer 9

the issue with structuralism was that it needed very educated people to act as the sample bias. It’s also very subjective by nature.

Question 10

How was functionalism started?

Answer 10

Functionalism was started when William James took some ideas from Wundt and brought them back to America to form his own ideology.

Question 11

Who is William James? What was his approach to psychology? What methods did he use?

Answer 11

William James is looked upon as one of the founders of psychology. He started the functionalism approach and he also believed in introspection.

Question 12

What is functionalism?

Answer 12

Functionalism was started by William James and it was influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Functionalism isn’t interested in the structure, but function of the brain.
- What biological function does consciousness serve?
they were interested in the mind as a whole rather than it’s individual parts.

Question 13

Who are Wetheimer, Koffka, and Ho(:)hler?

Answer 13

They were German psychologists who fled Germany and brough ideas of Gestalt psychology to America.

Question 14

What is Gestalt Psychology?

Answer 14

Gestalt psychology is a ideology that claims that sensory experiences can be broken down into individual parts, but how those parts relate to each other (the “Whole”) is often what individuals respond to as perception.

Ex/ Words are nothing more than black dots against a white background that your brain makes sense of.

Question 15

Why wasn’t Gestalt psychology as popular in America as it was in Germany?

Answer 15

Gestalt psychology have way to behaviorism, the main ideology at the time.

Question 16

Who is categorized in the experimental branch of psychology?

Answer 16

Von Helmholtz, Wundt, William James, and Gestalt psychology

Question 17

Who is categorized in the clinical branch of psychology?

Answer 17

Freud

Question 18

Who is Freud? What did he believe you had and what did he believe was important? How did he try to analyze his findings? What did get other people to start talking about?

Answer 18

Psychoanalytic psychology IS FREUD’S THING!

Freud believed that you had an unconscious mind, where all your deepest darkest wants, desires, and traumas lied.

Freud also belied that early childhood experiences were important.

Freud believed that he could access the unconscious mind through dream analysis, free association, and Freudian slips. He believed that it was your consciousness suppressing your covered desires.

Freud was the first to really talk about unconscious vs. conscious and he also stated that motivations can cause psychological conflict.

Question 19

What were the issues with Freud’s theories?

Answer 19

• His theories could not be proven false (therefore being scientifically uninteresting)
• Unfalsifiable
• Placed to much emphasis on sex

Question 20

Where do “Behaviorists” lie on the experimental and clinical branch chart?

Answer 20

The middle

Question 21

Define what the Behaviorists believed in.

Answer 21

They believed that you were nothing more than a complex computer.
- primary mechanism: learning
- the study of consciousness = flawed
- started classical conditioning (where you take a stimulus that doesn’t elicit a response, pairs it with a stimulus that does elicit the desired response, pairs them together enough time, and eventually, the first stimulus will elicit the desired response.

Question 22

Who is B.F. Skinner, what is he known for, and what did he study/discover?

Answer 22

He was a behavioral psychologist and he’s known for his studies with behavior and obedience (think skinner cage, a rat cage that can reward and punish rats).
Discovered:
- behaviors that result in a pleasant consequence will be repeated
- behaviors that result in an unpleasant consequence will be stopped

Question 23

Who are the Humanists?

Answer 23

They believed that we are inherently good and they spoke on personal control and intentionality.

Question 24

Describe Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.

Answer 24

• Self-actualization
• self-esteem
• belonging-love
• safety
• physiological (food, water, shelter)

Your lower needs will always trump your higher needs.

Question 25

Who is Carl Rogers?

Answer 25

He was a Humanist who used client-centered therapy.

He would emphasize unconditional positive regard, be genuine, show empathy. This was the way client-centered therapy worked.
He acted as a mirror for you to look at.

Question 26

What is the cognitive revolution?

Answer 26

When behaviorism was the dominant perspective for several decades, the cognitive revolution occurred and placed the emphasis back on mental processes.

They looked at linguistics, neuroscience, and more collaboration across disciplines.

Question 27

What is Feminist Psychology?

Answer 27

This type of psychology seeks to free psychology of all gender biases, acknowledge the difference between genders, and study those differences.

Also re-evaluated the contributions of women (Anna Freud, Karen Horney).

Question 28

What is Multicultural psychology?

Answer 28

Explanations for different events depend on cultural upbringing

Precedents of eating disorders differ by culture

Culture influences the types of hallucinations that people have

Ex/ Western children vs jungle tribe children in walking

Question 29

What is Biopsychology?

Answer 29

focuses on the brain and nervous system
- spans many different sub-disciplines (sleep, sensation and perception, psychological disorders, developmental)

Question 30

What is Evolutionary Psychology?

Answer 30

focuses on long-term (ultimate) causes of behaviors

If a behavior is determined by genetics, it will be shaped by its surroundings

common behaviors across human cultures = common genetic causes (ex/ expression of emotions/smiling)

Ex/ the reason we enjoy having friends is because hanging out in groups was a good survival mechanic. This is evolutionary psychology.

Question 31

Elaborate on the Sensation and Perception domain of biopsychology.

Answer 31

People in this domain are interested in sights, sounds, touch sensations, smells, etc.

Ex/ how you perceive optical illusions and auditory illusions.

Question 32

What is Developmental psychology?

Answer 32

Focuses on developmental trajectories
cognitive, social, emotional, physical, moral: all those trajectories

Ex/ we find periods of neural blooming during childhood and puberty. We find neural decline as we get older, but we also find that as we get older, we use our brain more efficiently.

Question 33

What is personality psychology?

Answer 33

This branch looks at patterns of thoughts and behaviors that are unique to a person.

Early theories (Freud) looked at resolution of sexual desires while more modern theories look at identifying traits:

OCEAN
Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism

Question 34

What is Social Psychology?

Answer 34

“How the (perceived) presence of people influences us.
Ex/ the bystander effect, your behavior now, mask mandates vs crossing the street, etc.

Question 35

What is Clinical Psychology?

Answer 35

Look at identification, diagnosis, treatment of mental disorders and other problematic behaviors

Applied discipline (as apposed to research)

Question 36

What is Psychology? Define it.

Answer 36

Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and their mental processes of living organisms.