Chapter 1: Evolution Flashcards
What is psychology?
Greek “psyche” for soul and “logos” for study, the scientific study of the mind and behavior
Mind vs. Behavior
Mind- private and subjective events that happen inside a person e.g. thoughts and feelings; Behavior- public events potentially observed by others
What are the six philosophical theories about the mind?
Dualism, materialism, realism, idealism, empiricism, nativism
Dualism
Mind, incorporeal and can exist alone, and body are fundamentally different (René Descartes)
Materialism
The mind is what the brain does. All mental phenomena are reducible to physical phenomena in the brain. (Thomas Hobbes)
Dualism or Materialism?
Psychologists embraced materialism while religions embraced dualism
Realism
Perceptions of the physical world are produced entirely by information from sensory organs. Eye is like a camera. (John Locke)
Idealism
Perceptions are the brain’s interpretation of information from sensory organs, more like a painting. “Perceptions without conceptions (prior knowledge) are blind” (Immanuel Kant)
Realism or Idealism?
Psychologists embraced idealism
Empiricism
All knowledge is acquired through experience. A newborn baby is a “tabula rasa” or a blank slate. (John Locke)
Nativism
Some knowledge is innate rather than acquired. Humans are born with bits of basic knowledge of the world (e.g. space, time, causality, number) that allow us to acquire additional knowledge.
Empiricism or Nativism?
Modern psychologists mainly embrace nativism and study “nature-versus-nurture” questions
What are the approaches to psychology?
Structuralism, Functionalism, Psychoanalysis, Behaviorism, Gestalt psychology, Developmental psychology, Social psychology, Cognitive psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Cognitive/behavioral neuroscience, Cultural psychology
Structuralism
Attempt to isolate and analyze the mind’s basic elements
Herman von Helmholtz
Studied human reaction time by calculating the speed at which nerves transmit information (reaction time to a stimulus on the thigh compared to toes)
Reaction time and stimulus
Amount of time taken to respond to stimulus; sensory input from the environment
Wilhelm Wundt
Opened the first psychology laboratory, taught the first psychology course, says that the primary goal of psychology is to understand the facts of consciousness
Edward Titchener
Pioneered technique called introspection or “systemic self-observation”, the analysis of subjective experience by trained observers
Titchener’s sound cage
Trained observers were presented with various stimuli like patches of colors and musical tones, and were asked to describe what was happpening in their minds
Functionalism
Study of the purpose mental processes serve in enabling people to adapt to their environment, inspired by Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection (William James)
Natural selection
Theory that features of an organism that help it survive and reproduce are passed on to subsequent generations
William James
First to take scientific approach to psychology, wrote the book “The Principles of Psychology”
Psychoananalysis
Therapy that aims to give people insight into the contents of their unconcious minds through describing dreams or through “free association” to heal them
Hysteria
Temporary loss of cognitive or motor functions that has no obvious physical origin, usually as a result of emotionally upsetting experience
Unconcious mind
Ideas unavailable in awareness that guide behavior and can be expressed through dreams, free association, or slips of the tongue
Pschoanalytic theory
Emphasizes the influence of the unconcious on feelings, thoughts, and behaviors; the mind as a set of processes largely hidden from our view (Sigmund Freud)
Behaviorism
Restricts scientific inquiry to observable behavior, meaning what we do rather than what we think or feel
Ivan Pavlov
Studied classical conditioning or the relationship between stimulus-response when dogs salivated at the tone of footsteps, before their food arrived
John B. Watson
Goal of behaviorism was to predict and control behavior through the study of observable behavior
Burrhus Frederick Skinner
Founded operant conditioning (operate and produce) as opposed to classical conditioning; Developed the “Skinner box,” a conditioning chamber, to explain learning behavior
Principle of reinforcement
Any behavior that is rewarded will be repeated and any behavior that isn’t won’t e.g. an accidental lever press by rats in a skinner box led to repeated action when food pellets appeared
Gestalt psychology
Emphasizes that we often perceive the whole rather than the sum of the parts, insights into how the mind organizes what we see
Max Wertheimer
Conducted an experiment on physical stimuli (two lights flashing in a sequence with differing time gaps) which resulted in an illusory motion or induced-motion phenomena (movement of light)
Frederic Bartlett
Studied “mentalistic” phenomena such as memory; Participants in his study could recall a Native American story’s main idea but changed the details according to their own British culture, were more likely to remember what they expected to read rather than what they actually read
Developmental psychology
Studies ways in which psychological phenomena changes over the life span
Jean Piaget
Studied perceptual and cognitive errors in children; Found that young children mistakenly believe that changing the shape of an object also changes its mass
Barbel Inhelder
Studied quantity conservation development in children
Social psychology
Subfield of psychology that studies the causes and consequences of interpersonal behavior
Cognitive psychology
Scientific study of mental processes like perception, thought, memory, and reasoning, information processing in a brain (hardware=brain, software=mind) like that of a computer (ENIAC, first general-purpose computer)
Evolutionary psychology
Studies the ways in which the human brain has been shaped natural selection; Explains mind and behavior in terms of the adaptive values of abilities that are preserved over time (inspired by functionalism)
Neuroscience
The mind is what the brain does; Cognitive- relationship between the brain and mind; Behavioral- relationship between the brain and behavior
Paul Broca
Found that the ability to speak depended on a particular region in the brain (Broca’s area) from an autopsy of a man who could understand but couldn’t produce words; Damage to a specific part impairs a specific function
Technologies like fMRI
Functional magnetic resonance imaging, that produce brain scans, allows cognitive neuroscientists to study undamaged brains and determine which areas of the brain are most and least active when people perform various mental tasks (amount of blood flow)
Cultural psychology
Study of how cultures reflect and shape the psychological processes of their members
