Chapter 1: Evolution

Question 1

What is psychology?

Answer 1

Greek “psyche” for soul and “logos” for study, the scientific study of the mind and behavior

Question 2

Mind vs. Behavior

Answer 2

Mind- private and subjective events that happen inside a person e.g. thoughts and feelings; Behavior- public events potentially observed by others

Question 3

What are the six philosophical theories about the mind?

Answer 3

Dualism, materialism, realism, idealism, empiricism, nativism

Question 4

Dualism

Answer 4

Mind, incorporeal and can exist alone, and body are fundamentally different (René Descartes)

Question 5

Materialism

Answer 5

The mind is what the brain does. All mental phenomena are reducible to physical phenomena in the brain. (Thomas Hobbes)

Question 6

Dualism or Materialism?

Answer 6

Psychologists embraced materialism while religions embraced dualism

Question 7

Realism

Answer 7

Perceptions of the physical world are produced entirely by information from sensory organs. Eye is like a camera. (John Locke)

Question 8

Idealism

Answer 8

Perceptions are the brain’s interpretation of information from sensory organs, more like a painting. “Perceptions without conceptions (prior knowledge) are blind” (Immanuel Kant)

Question 9

Realism or Idealism?

Answer 9

Psychologists embraced idealism

Question 10

Empiricism

Answer 10

All knowledge is acquired through experience. A newborn baby is a “tabula rasa” or a blank slate. (John Locke)

Question 11

Nativism

Answer 11

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.

Question 12

Empiricism or Nativism?

Answer 12

Modern psychologists mainly embrace nativism and study “nature-versus-nurture” questions

Question 13

What are the approaches to psychology?

Answer 13

Structuralism, Functionalism, Psychoanalysis, Behaviorism, Gestalt psychology, Developmental psychology, Social psychology, Cognitive psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Cognitive/behavioral neuroscience, Cultural psychology

Question 14

Structuralism

Answer 14

Attempt to isolate and analyze the mind’s basic elements

Question 15

Herman von Helmholtz

Answer 15

Studied human reaction time by calculating the speed at which nerves transmit information (reaction time to a stimulus on the thigh compared to toes)

Question 16

Reaction time and stimulus

Answer 16

Amount of time taken to respond to stimulus; sensory input from the environment

Question 17

Wilhelm Wundt

Answer 17

Opened the first psychology laboratory, taught the first psychology course, says that the primary goal of psychology is to understand the facts of consciousness

Question 18

Edward Titchener

Answer 18

Pioneered technique called introspection or “systemic self-observation”, the analysis of subjective experience by trained observers

Question 19

Titchener’s sound cage

Answer 19

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

Question 20

Functionalism

Answer 20

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)

Question 21

Natural selection

Answer 21

Theory that features of an organism that help it survive and reproduce are passed on to subsequent generations

Question 22

William James

Answer 22

First to take scientific approach to psychology, wrote the book “The Principles of Psychology”

Question 23

Psychoananalysis

Answer 23

Therapy that aims to give people insight into the contents of their unconcious minds through describing dreams or through “free association” to heal them

Question 24

Hysteria

Answer 24

Temporary loss of cognitive or motor functions that has no obvious physical origin, usually as a result of emotionally upsetting experience

Question 25

Unconcious mind

Answer 25

Ideas unavailable in awareness that guide behavior and can be expressed through dreams, free association, or slips of the tongue

Question 26

Pschoanalytic theory

Answer 26

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)

Question 27

Behaviorism

Answer 27

Restricts scientific inquiry to observable behavior, meaning what we do rather than what we think or feel

Question 28

Ivan Pavlov

Answer 28

Studied classical conditioning or the relationship between stimulus-response when dogs salivated at the tone of footsteps, before their food arrived

Question 29

John B. Watson

Answer 29

Goal of behaviorism was to predict and control behavior through the study of observable behavior

Question 30

Burrhus Frederick Skinner

Answer 30

Founded operant conditioning (operate and produce) as opposed to classical conditioning; Developed the “Skinner box,” a conditioning chamber, to explain learning behavior

Question 31

Principle of reinforcement

Answer 31

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

Question 32

Gestalt psychology

Answer 32

Emphasizes that we often perceive the whole rather than the sum of the parts, insights into how the mind organizes what we see

Question 33

Max Wertheimer

Answer 33

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)

Question 34

Frederic Bartlett

Answer 34

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

Question 35

Developmental psychology

Answer 35

Studies ways in which psychological phenomena changes over the life span

Question 36

Jean Piaget

Answer 36

Studied perceptual and cognitive errors in children; Found that young children mistakenly believe that changing the shape of an object also changes its mass

Question 37

Barbel Inhelder

Answer 37

Studied quantity conservation development in children

Question 38

Social psychology

Answer 38

Subfield of psychology that studies the causes and consequences of interpersonal behavior

Question 39

Cognitive psychology

Answer 39

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)

Question 40

Evolutionary psychology

Answer 40

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)

Question 41

Neuroscience

Answer 41

The mind is what the brain does; Cognitive- relationship between the brain and mind; Behavioral- relationship between the brain and behavior

Question 42

Paul Broca

Answer 42

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

Question 43

Technologies like fMRI

Answer 43

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)

Question 44

Cultural psychology

Answer 44

Study of how cultures reflect and shape the psychological processes of their members