Ch 1 Flashcards
Intro and history
Psychology Definition
scientific study of mental processes and behavior
Behavior vs Mental process
Behavior is externally visible
Genetics play a heavier role in mental processes than in behavior
Mental processes are subconscious (hard to identify and observe them)
4 Goals of Psychology
1) Description - what they observe
2) Explanation - why a mental process or behavior is occurring (why is someone behaving this way? How can I get my parents to let me go out?)
3) Prediction – of the circumstances that lead to a certain behavior or mental process (clinical psychologists who prescribe medicine and diagnose; controlling thoughts and behaviors)
4) Provide advise on how to control behavior and mental processes
Levels of Psychological Analysis
1) The brain - neuronal activity, brain structure, genes
2) The person - ideas, emotions, thoughts
3) The group - Friends, family, culture
What did psych stem out from?
Philosophy
Rene Descartes
First modern philosophers
Johannes Muller
Studied relationship between physical stimuli and psychological effects
Herman von Helmholtz
Measured speed of neural impulses and discovered that neural impulses are not instantaneous
Charles Darwin
Theory of evolution - natural selection
Wilhelm Wundt
Father of experimental psychology
Structuralism
Breaking down mental processes
Edward Titchener
Developed structuralism as an attempt to identify all elements of consciousness
Functionalism
Theory about the nature of mental states
William James
Wrote the first psych textbook and the first psych lab in the US
Gestalt Psychologists
The idea that humans don’t focus on individual components but as a whole
Sigmund Freud
Mainly studied consciousness and psychoanalysis
