C1 - Study of Mental Processes Flashcards
What are the boundaries and borders of psychology?
Biopsychology - examines the physical basis of psychological phenomena such as motivation, emotion, and stress
Cross-cultural psychology - tries to distinguish universal psychological processes from those that are specific to particular cultures
Difference between free-will and determinism
Free-will: we are able to freely choose our actions
Determinism: our actions are determined by things outside of our control
Who is Sigmund Freud?
He is a Viennese physician, who developed a theory of mental life and behavior and an approach to treating psychological disorder known as psychoanalysis
Who is Wilhem Wundt?
A German scientist who used the method of introspection to uncover the basic of consciousness
Who is William James?
An American psychologist who proposed functionalism. He emphasized the role or function of psychological processes in helping individuals adapt to their environment
What is Functionalism?
Functionalism argued that consciousness is functional and serves a purpose
Who is Edward Titchener?
He initiated the school of thought known as structuralism
What is Structuralism?
It suggests that the goal of psychology is to study the structure of the mind and consciousness,
What are the 5 Different Perspectives in Psychology? (School of Thoughts)
- Psychodynamic perspectives
- Behaviorist perspectives
- Humanistic perspectives
- Cognitive perspectives
- Evolutionary perspectives
Explain Psychodynamic Perspectives
Our thoughts and behaviour are driven by conscious forces, unconscious forces, and the interaction between conscious and unconscious forces.
Some mental events are unconscious
What are the 3 structures that determine what we do? Describe each of them.
ID: reflects your instincts “This is what I want now”
Ego: realistic - mediate between the desires of the ID and the constraints imposed by the super-ego
Super-ego: reflects your moral conscience - receives information about societal norms, law, etc. to form an understanding of what you can or cannot do
What are the strengths of Psychodynamic Theory?
- Freud ‘rehumanised’ the distressed, making their sufferings more comprehensible to the rest of the society
- Many people with psychological disturbances do recollect childhood traumas
What are the weaknesses of Psychodynamic Theory?
- It is criticized by non-empirical approach, violation of falsifiability criteria and use of unreliable measures
- Psychoanalysis depends on the therapist’s subjective interpretation
- falsifiability: the capacity for a statement, theory, or hypothesis to be contradicted by evidence
What is Behaviorist Perspective?
The behaviorist view is that environmental stimuli control behavior through learning.
Individuals will be conditioned to a certain behaviors without the need to understand the reason behind it
Describe Classical Conditioning
A type of learning in which one learns to link two/more stimuli and anticipate event
Describe Operant Conditioning
A type of learning in which behaviour is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher
What are the different type of stimulus? List and describe.
- Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): a stimulus that elicits a reflexive response in an organism
- Unconditioned Response (UCR): a natural (unlearned) reaction to a given stimulus
- Neutral Stimulus (NS): a stimulus that does not naturally elicit a response
- Conditioned Stimulus (CS): a stimulus that elicits a response after repeatedly being paired with UCS
- Conditioned Response (CR): the behavior cause by the CS
What is Humanistic Perspective?
It focus on the uniqueness of the individual and that people are motivated to reach their full potential (self-actualization)
What is Cognitive Perspective?
It focus on how people process, store, and retrieve information
What is Evolutionary Perspective?
Human behaviors evolved they helped our ancestors survive and reproduce. Some behaviors are biologically determined
Describe Sociobiology
Explores the possible evolutionary and biological bases of human social behavior
Describe Ethology
It studies the animal behavior from a biological and evolutionary perspective
Who is B.F Skinner?
He developed one of the most systematic behaviorist approach,
Skinner observed that the behavior of organisms can be controlled by environmental consequences that either increase or decrease their likelihood of occurring
Who is Charles Darwin?
Darwin did not invent the concept of evolution, but he was the first to propose a mechanism that could explain it – natural selection
Explain what is Reproductive success
It refers to the capacity to survive and produce offspring
Explain what is Inclusive fitness
It refers not only to and individual’s own reproductive success but also their influences on the reproductive success of genetically related individuals.
According to this theory, natural selection favors animals whose concern for kin is proportional to their degree of biological relatedness.
