Chapter 1 Flashcards
What is psychology?
Study of mental process and behaviour
What are the Four Goals of Psychologists?
- Description: what they observe
- Explanation: why a mental process or behaviour is occurring
- Prediction: circumstances that lead to certain behaviour or mental process
- Control: Provide advice on how to control behaviour and mental processes
What are the three levels that can be used when studying behaviours and mental processes?
Brain, Person (Individual), Group
What is analyzed of the brain?
How brain structure and brain cell
activity differ from person to person
and situation to situation
What is analyzed of the person/individual?
How the content of the individual’s
mental processes form and
influence behaviour
What is analyzed of the group?
How behaviour is shaped by the social and cultural environment
What did the intellectual history of psychology begin with?
Greek Philosophy
What is philosophy?
Study of knowledge, reality, and the nature of meaning and life
What did philosophers study?
- How the human mind worked
- How the body relates to the mind
- Whether knowledge was inborn or learned from experience
Who is Hippocrates?
Father of Medicine
Who is Plato?
Greek philosopher who believed knowledge was inborn
Who is Aristotle?
philosopher who searched for the basic purpose of all objects and creatures, and concluded humans are closely related to animals
What did early philosophers such as Hippocrates, Plato, and Aristotle propose?
Problems and Solutions (which is core of modern scientific methods)
Who is Rene Descartes?
First of the modern philosophers and an early scientist. He believed the meaning of natural world should be understood through math and science. 1596 - 1650.
Who is Johannes Muller?
Advocate for scientists to study relationship between physical stimuli and their psychological effects
Who is Herman von Helmholtz?
Measured speed of neural impulses and discovered that neural impulses were not instantaneous
Who is Charles Darwin?
Proposed the theory of evolution (all life on Earth comes from one common ancestor)
What two ideas did Darwin propose other than evolution?
Natural Selection and Adaptive Variations
What did Wilhelm Wundt change?
Distinguished psychology from philosophy
Name 5 things Wilhelm Wundt did.
- Father of experimental psychology
- Established first psychology lab in 1879, in Leipzig, Germany
- Studied psychology through empirically-driven experiments
- Focused on the study of consciousness
- Developed psychological paradigm of voluntarism
Who is Edward Titchener?
Developed structuralism as an attempt to try to identify all elements of consciousness
What is introspection?
method of psychological study involving careful evaluation of mental processes and how simple thoughts expand into complex ideas
What was the goal of Structuralism?
To describe observable mental processes rather than to explain, predict, or control
When did modern science begin to thrive?
1600s
What is natural selection?
variations in one’s behaviour are passed down from parents to children
What is adaptive variations?
some variations are more advantageous because they help an organism survive
What is the definition of empirical?
verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic
What is structuralism?
philosophical approach that studies the structure of conscious experience
When structuralism was rejected by psychologists other than Edward, what elements survived?
- psychologists should focus on observable events
- scientific study should focus on simple elements as building blocks of complex experience
Who is William James? When did he exist?
set up the first psychology lab in the United States at Harvard
and wrote the first psychology textbook, “Principles of Psychology” (1890). 1842 - 1910
What is functionalism?
a philosophical approach that considers how mental processes function to adapt to changing environments
What is academic psychology?
a branch of psychology focusing on research and instruction in the various areas or fields of study in psychology
What is applied psychology?
branch of psychology applying psychological principles to practical problems in fields such as education, marketing, or industry
What is clinical and counselling psychology?
study of abnormal psychological behaviour and interventions designed to change that behaviour
What is stimuli?
elements of environment that trigger changes in our internal or external states
What is response?
how one reacts to stimuli
What is behavioural genetics?
subfield of psychology looking at the influence of genes on human behaviour
What is client centred therapy?
approach to therapy founded by CARL ROGERS, based on the notion that the client is an equal and that positive gains are made by mirroring client’s thoughts and feelings in an atmosphere of unconditional positive regard
What is cognitive psychology?
field of psychology studying mental processes as forms of information processing, or the ways in which information is stored and operates internally
What is information processing?
means by which information is stored and operates internally
What is cultural psychology?
study of how cultural practices shape psychological and behavioural tendencies and influence human behaviour
What is cross-cultural psychology?
study of what is generally or universally true about human beings regardless of culture
What is neuroscience?
study of psychological functions by looking at biological foundations of those functions
What is behaviourism?
branch of psychological thought arguing that psychology should study only directly observable behaviours rather than abstract mental processes
What is cognitive neuroscience?
study of mental processes and how they are related to the biological functions of the brain
What is social neuroscience?
study of social functioning and how it is tied to brain activity
Define collectivist
culture whose members focus more on the needs of the group and less on individual desires
Define individualistic
culture that places the wants or desires of the person over the needs of the group
What is consciousness?
personal awareness of ongoing mental processes, behaviours, and environmental events
What is voluntarism?
theory in which will is regarded as the ultimate agency in human behaviour; belief that much of behaviour is motivated and that attention is focused for an explicit purpose
What is cultural universality?
behaviours and practices that occur across all cultures
Define culture
set of shared beliefs and practices that are transmitted across generations
What is evolutionary psychology?
field of study believing that the body and brain are products of evolution and that genetic inheritance plays an important role in shaping the complete range of thoughts and behaviours
What is social neuroscience?
study of social functioning and how it is tied to brain activity
What is gestalt psychology?
field of psychology arguing that we have inborn tendencies to structure what we see in particular ways and to structure our perceptions into broad perceptual units
Define unconscious
hypothesized repository of thoughts, feelings, and sensations outside human awareness, thoughts in some theories to have a strong bearing on human behaviour
What is the psychoanalytic theory?
psychological theory that human mental processes are influenced by the competition between unconscious forces to come into awareness
What is reinforcement?
learning process that increases the likelihood a given response will be repeated
What is punishment?
experience that produces a decrease in a particular behaviour
What is humanistic psychology?
theory of psychology that sought to give greater prominence (importance) to special and unique features of human functioning
Who are sociobiologists?
theorists who believe humans have a genetically innate concept of how social behaviour should be organized
