Chapter 1 Flashcards
What is psychology
Psychology refers to the scientific study of the mind and behavior.
What is the scientific method?
- A researcher with a question about how or why something happens will propose a tentative explanation, called a hypothesis, to explain the phenomenon.
(A hypothesis should fit into the context of a scientific theory, which is a broad explanation or group of explanations for some aspect of the natural world that is consistently supported by evidence over time.) - The researcher then makes observations or carries out an experiment to test the validity of the hypothesis.
- Those results are then published or presented at research conferences so that others can replicate or build on the results.
Scientists test that which is ___ and ___ ?
perceivable and measurable
What is the empirical method?
An empirical method for acquiring knowledge is one based on observation, including experimentation, rather than a method based only on forms of logical argument or previous authorities.
Before the 1800s, what were the workings of the mind considered? Under which subject?
Philosophy
Why is psychology considered a social science
No biological organism exists in isolation, and our behavior is influenced by our interactions with others.
What is critical thinking?
Critical thinking is the active application of a set of skills to information for the understanding and evaluation of that information. Critical thinking involves maintaining an attitude of skepticism, recognizing internal biases, making use of logical thinking, asking appropriate questions, and making observations.
Which two individuals are considered to be the founders of psychology?
Two 19th century scholars, Wilhelm Wundt and William James, are generally credited as being the founders of psychology as a science and academic discipline that was distinct from philosophy.
Wundt ‘s views
Wundt viewed psychology as a scientific study of conscious experience, and he believed that the goal of psychology was to identify components of consciousness and how those components combined to result in our conscious experience.
Introspection
Wundt used introspection, which is a process by which someone examines their own conscious experience as objectively as possible, making the human mind like any other aspect of nature that a scientist observed.
Voluntarism
Wundt believed in the notion of voluntarism—that people have free will and should know the intentions of a psychological experiment if they were participating
Volkerpsychologie
Book written by Wundt in 1904 in which he suggested that psychology should include the study of culture, as it involves the study of people.
Edward Titchener and his ideas
One of Wundt’s students who went on to develop structuralism, its focus was on the contents of mental processes rather than their function
Who helped establish functional psychology?
William James, John Dewey, and Charles Sanders Peirce
How did James, Dewey, and Peirce view Darwin’s theory?
-They accepted Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection and viewed this theory as an explanation of an organism’s characteristics. -Key to that theory is the idea that natural selection leads to organisms that are adapted to their environment, including their behavior.
What is functionalism? Who’s perspective is it based off of?
-how mental activities helped an organism fit into its environment.
-more interested in the operation of the whole mind rather than of its individual parts, which were the focus of structuralism.
-James saw that psychology’s purpose was to study the function of behavior in the world.
Who is Sigmund Freud?
Freud, one of the most influential and well-known figures in psychology history, was an Austrian neurologist who was fascinated by patients suffering from “hysteria” and neurosis.
Explain Frued’s views
-Freud theorized that many of his patients’ problems (Hysteria) arose from the unconscious mind.
-In Freud’s view, the unconscious mind was a repository of feelings and urges of which we have no awareness. Gaining access to the unconscious, then, was crucial to the successful resolution of the patient’s problems.
According to Freud, how could the unconscious mind be accessed?
The unconscious mind could be accessed through dream analysis, by examinations of the first words that came to people’s minds, and through seemingly innocent slips of the tongue.
What is psychoanalytic theory?
Psychoanalytic theory focuses on the role of a person’s unconscious, as well as early childhood experiences, and this particular perspective dominated clinical psychology for several decades
What are some successful broad ideas Freud introduced or developed?
the importance of childhood experiences in adult motivations
the role of unconscious versus conscious motivations in driving our behavior
the fact that motivations can cause conflicts that affect behavior
the effects of mental representations of ourselves and others in guiding our interactions
the development of personality over time
Who are Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Köhler?
Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Köhler were three German psychologists who immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century to escape Nazi Germany. These scholars are credited with introducing psychologists in the United States to various Gestalt principles.
What is Gestalt psychology?
Gestalt roughly translates to “whole;” a major emphasis of Gestalt psychology deals with the fact that although a sensory experience can be broken down into individual parts, how those parts relate to each other as a whole is often what the individual responds to in perception.
What is the difference between structuralism and Gestalt’s psychology?
Structuralism states that the structure of the mind is defined by the interaction of basic parts of the mind. In other words, all of your accumulated experiences create your consciousness. This approach is opposed by Gestalt psychology, which states that the mind is an entire whole, independent of the parts.
Who is Pavlov and what did he study?
Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist who did early work in the field of behavior.
Pavlov studied a form of learning behavior called a conditioned reflex, in which an animal or human produced a reflex (unconscious) response to a stimulus and, over time, was conditioned to produce the response to a different stimulus that the experimenter associated with the original stimulus.
Describe Pavlov’s classic conditioning experiment
The reflex Pavlov worked with was salivation in response to the presence of food. The salivation reflex could be elicited using a second stimulus, such as a specific sound, that was presented in association with the initial food stimulus several times. Once the response to the second stimulus was “learned,” the food stimulus could be omitted.
