General Material Flashcards
Gustav Fechner
Did first scientific experiments about perception (psychophysics) (1860)
Hermann von Helmholtz
Visual and auditory perception (1852, 1863)
Wilhelm Wundt (what philosophy in psych? where and when first lab?)
Objective introspection (examining one’s own thoughts and mental activities)
Leipzig, Germany (1879). First attempt to bring science in psychology.
Edward Titchener (significance, philosophy)
Wundt’s student. Took ideas to America (Cornell).
Structuralism: structure of the mind
Margaret F. Washburn
Titchener’s student, first woman to get PhD in Psychology.
Published ‘The Animal Mind’
Structuralism
Wundt and Titchener; broke down mental processes to small parts (like with introspection)
like breaking down water into hydrogen + oxygen
William James (dates, location, textbook)
1870s in Harvard (first Psych courses); “Principles of Psychology” (1890)
William James philosophy and interest
Consciousness and functionalism (how people function with mind)
Mary Whiton Calkins
William James’ student. Finished PhD requirements (Harvard) but was denied.
First female president of American Psychological Association
Francis Cecil Sumner
First African-American PhD (Clark Uni, 1920)
Father of African-American Psychology
Max Wertheimer (philosophy, date, modern significance)
Gestalt Psychology (whole is greater than sum of parts, like smartphone and parts) (1912). Looks at whole broad picture
Part of Cognitive psychology
Sigmund Freud (philosophy)
Psychoanalysis (unconscious, repression, childhood, etc.) (Late 19th Century)
Ivan Pavlov (background, philosophy)
Russian physiologist; Conditioning
John B Watson (philosophy, influenced by, date)
Behaviorism (book in 1924). Wanted to bring focus back to scientific inquiry (observable behavior, influenced by Pavlov)
ignores consciousness
Freud vs. Watson in ideas of origins of behavior
Freud thought all behavior is unconscious motivation;
Watson thought all behavior is learned
“Little Albert”
John Watson taught a baby to be afraid of a white rat (and developed phobia to many fuzzy things) to show that phobias are learned
Mary Cover Jones
counterconditioning (exposure/behavior therapy)
“Little Peter”
Psychodynamic Perspective compared to Freud
Freud’s ideas, but modern version.
Focus on unconscious mind and childhood, less focus on sexual motivations
B.F. Skinner (after who? philosophy and discovery)
After John Watson (Behavioral perspective)
Operant Conditioning
Humanistic Perspective in Psychology (people, main concepts, current modern use)
Free will, self-actualization
Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers
now used as a form of psychotherapy and self-improvement
Cognitive Perspective in Psychology (dates, main ideas, inspired by)
Focus on processes of thinking, remembering, using information (stimulated by development of computers) (1960s)
Eclectic perspective
Using parts of different perspectives to form a conclusion of a whole situation
Observer Effect
People being watched won’t behave normally due to their knowledge of being watched
Participant Observation
Researchers become a participant in the group (to hide themself)
Pros of case studies
For rare cases (eg. Phineas Gage, DID, etc.)
Courtesy bias
People answer more socially appropriate/diserable option rather than true opinion
Phrenology (literal Greek meaning, dates popular, main ideas)
“study of the mind”
popular early 1800s
Looked at bumps of skull to tell character and personality
What did students of Wundt have to do in order to participate in a ‘trained introspection’ study?
Do 10,000 practice observations.
Difficulties with structuralism
Conflicting reports from a same prompt
Functionalism
Focus on purpose/function of behavior. (the causes and consequences of behavior)
Mind Cure Movement (dates, main ideas)
1830-1900; start of therapies; correct ideas that made people anxious/depressed
Content Validity vs. Criterion Validity
Content Validity: do items on a test reflect the trait?
Criterion Validity: do test results predict outcomes related to the trait?
Define significance tests and confidence interval
significant test: shows how likely a study would turn out the way it did if there weren’t actually a relationship between the variables (the chances of finding the result given that the null is true.)
confidence interval: shows a range of values the true mean is likely to lie given a specified probability.
Bayesian statistics
Statistics that use a formula for calculating likelihood of a hypothesis to be true and meaningful, given relevant prior knowledge.
