Chapter 1 - The study of the history of psychology Flashcards
What are some of the difficulties of studying the history of psychology?
- Often difficult to find a place to start (Greeks? Descartes? Wundt?)
- Often limited by a western worldview
What major forms of Indigenous thought have contributed to psychology?
- They have long described the connection between nature and spirituality
1) Interconnectedness - interrelationships between people as well as nature. These views were initially dismissed as ‘pre-scientific’
2) Ancient ecological views match today’s ecopsychology and climate change. They have been discussed for generations
Who was Confucius?
- A philosopher in Ancient China (551-479 BCE)
- Described the notion of harmonious living among family and society (tied to positive psychology)
What were some of the major topics of Confucius?
- Intelligence, problem-solving, flexible thinking, individual differences
- Demonstrated how these ideas weren’t just isolated to the Greeks
Who was Mencius?
- A Confucian scholar (372-289 BCE)
- Topics included goodness of human nature, ethics, wisdom
Who was Nagarjuna?
- A Buddhist living in India (150-250 CE)
- Topics included ethics, sense of self, sensation and perception, personal awareness
What does the term historiography imply?
- The study of history and psychology?
Who was Edwin Boring?
- The most well-known historiographer
- Focus was on the growth of the science of psychology
- Mentioned how historical context is crucial and how world events influence the discipline
What are some of the major difficulties with historiography?
- Psychology can be replicated, however history cannot
- Much data from past psychological experiments is only available in fragments and must be pieced together
- Similar to an archeologist
T/F: Replication is common in today’s psychology.
- False, it should be more common
Who was John B. Watson?
- Destroyed his unpublished documents as he didn’t want anyone analyzing his data
Wha was Herman Ebbinhaus?
- His writings were lost for 75 years
What happened to Rene Descartes letters?
- His letters were stolen in the the 1600s but found in 2010
Who was Lev Vgotsky?
- A highly influential developmental psychologist (1896-1934)
- Originally from the soviet union
- Much of his writing remained unknown for decades until the USSUR disolved
WHat would happen to certain psychological reports and research through time?
- There could be deliberate alteration of written documents
- Biographies could be written by fanboys basically, commonly seen in Freud biographies
What were some of the alterations in psychological concepts caused by?
- Much early psychological work was done in German so errors occurred when work was being translated
What’s the great-person approach to historiography?
- Identify and focus on the contributions of great people in the field
- History then becomes a series of biographies
- Make the assumption that great ideas occur in a vacuum
- Darwin could potentially fall into this category, but not strictly
What’s the zeitgeist approach?
- The intellectual and cultural climate or spirit of the times contributed greatly to new developments
- The time was right for scientific discovery
- Ex. the time of the catholic church made it difficult to spearhead new scientific ideas
What’s the eclectic appraoch?
- Using all of the approaches available to craft the story
- ie., both the person and the cultural climate
- This is the approach of most theorists today
How did the world wars lead to more psychological discoveries?
- Allowed for a lot more economic opportunity where scholarly and real-world careers opened up
- Many scientists fleeing Germany came to the West
- Expansion of testing services and psychotherapy (soldiers suffering from “shell shock”
- Developments in diagnostics
T/F: The APA established the psychology of women in 1973.
- TRUE
- Around 75% of new PhDs are women
How did Jewish people experience discrimination in the field of psychology?
- Occurred before, during, and after WW2
- Abraham Maslow was encouraged to change is name
Who were the Clarks?
- The first African-Americans to earn doctoral degrees in psychology from Columbia
- Kenneth became the first black tenured full professor at the city college of New York and the first black APA president
- Conducted seminal research on racial identity and self-concept
What are the two major components of a science?
1) Empirical observation
2) Theory
How can psychology be considered a science?
Psychologists have demonstrated relationships between stimuli and behaviour
- Have devised evidence-supported theories
- Work closely with other scientific disciplines (ex. medicine)
What’s mind-body dualism?
- Debate over if they’re separate entities or one and the same
- Mind - conscious thinking ‘you’
- Brain - is part of the body where mental events result from biology and chemistry
Objective vs. subjective reality?
- Objective reality - what is really present
- Subjective reality - what we perceive to exist
- Idea developed by Aristotle, do we really know anything?
What’s naive realism?
- What is experienced mentally is actually the same as what is presented physically
- Some disagree, think that our sense receptors and brain don’t capture and transmit all information, therefore there has to be a discrepancy
Rationalism?
- Human behaviour emphasized the importance of logical and systematic thoughts
- Ancient greeks and Descartes were rationalists
- “Wise humans are good humans”
- People will act rationally when they can
Irrationalism?
- Belief that the cause of human behaviour is in the unconscious
- The psychoanalysts (Freud and Jung) were irrationalists
- Emotions were a greater force than rational thoughts
- There has been a tension between intellect and emotions debated throughout history
Nativists vs. Empiricists?
- Nativist - emphasized the role of nature in human attributes
- Empiricists - human attributes due to the environment
- The whole nature vs. nurture debate
What’s epistemology?
- The study of knowledge
- Derived from greek, means “ to know or understand”
- Asks how we can obtain knowledge, what are the limits of knowledge, how much knowledge is innate, what must be learned?
