Chapter 2: Introduction to Psychology Flashcards
What does psychology have its roots in?
Philosophy
What is the mind-body debate?
Questions whether the mind is a super are entity to the physical body (dualism) or part of the same system (monism).
What is the nature vs nurture debate?
Questions which of the two had greater influence on a persons mental processes and behaviour: heredity and genetics, or environmental influences.
What three processes is psychology based on?
Gathering factual info
Forming theories to explain this info
Testing these theories
What has Wilhem Wundt often been called? Why?
Psychology was not considered a separate scientific discipline until 1879, when the first psychological laboratories to study humans were established.
He has been called ‘the father of experimental psychological’ as he was the first to establish such a laboratory.
Who was William James? What’d he do?
An American philosopher and psychologist, was more interested in the function and purpose of consciousness (functional approach.) he viewed consciousness as a continuous stream of thought, rather than individual elements to be examined separately.
What was John B Watson responsible for?
Founding the behavioural approach/ behaviourism.
This perspective focused on the ‘nurture’ aspect of human development and placed greater importance on how environmental influences shaped a person rather than their genetics or ‘nature’.
What is classical conditioning?
(Pavlov)
A learning process where an animal or organism can passively learn to show a naturally occurring reflex action in response to any stimulus that does not usually elicit that response. Eg, salivating.
What is operant conditioning?
(Skinner)
An active learning process where an animal/organisms voluntary response is controlled by its consequences.
What is a pseudoscience?
Systems or methods that try to explain human behaviour in non-scientific ways. They are often called false or fake sciences.
What is the cognitive perspective?
Greatly influenced by the development of IT, this perspective used the computer as a metaphor for the workings of the mind.
This helped explain how memories and thoughts are ‘encoded’ when the mind receives ‘input’ from the environment. They are in turn changed into a form that can be ‘stored’, then effectively ‘retreived’ as required.
What did Charles Darwin do?
Developed the theory of evolution.
What did Rene descartes assert?
People could exercise ‘free will’.
What is the humanistic perspective?
Deliberately less scientific in its approach, it explores a persons growth and unique personal qualities, focusing on their ‘individual’ conscious experience.
What is the biological approach?
This approach draws its processes and knowledge from medicine and physiology, with a focus on genetics. It takes the side of nature, placing great importance on explaining thoughts, feelings and behaviour in the terms of neural processes and a persons ‘programming’ at birth.
