General Psychology, 1: Overview and History Flashcards
What is psychology?
Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and the cognitive, emotional, physiological, and social processes that drive it.
What differentiates genuine psychological science from psuedoscience?
An honest and open application of the scientific method. In practice, this is often not clear-cut.
Who established the first known psychologal laboratory?
Wilhelm Wundt, of Leipzig, Germany, in the year 1879.
Who is famously associated with the idea that psychology should only study variables that are directly observable?
B.F. Skinner, or John Watson, who both advocated a behaviorism that eschewed mental/emotional language in explanations, esp. the unconscious.
Which historical psychologist is most associated with seeking explanations for behavior in the unconscious?
Sigmund Freud
How is a psychologist different from a psychiatrist?
A psychologist studies for a Ph.D. whereas a psychiatry is a medical specialty studied in a medical school. Psychiatry tends to be more associated with severe mental illnesses, and the authority to prescribe medication and/or patient restraint.
What is psychoanalysis?
Sigmund Freud’s ‘school’ of psychology, with a unique emphasis on the unconscious origins of most behavior, particularly inexplicable ‘mental illnesses’. Offshoots of this school are termed ‘psychodynamic.’
What is structuralism (in psychology)?
Wundt and others established structuralism as a way to uncover the ‘elements’ of conscious mental life. Their main tool was rigorous introspection.
How does the US Dept of Labor foresee the market for psychology graduates changing to 2018?
The DOL predicts the market for psychology graduates will grow 10-15%.
Where have various societies believed the ‘mind’ to reside in the body?
The heart, and later the brain. Some even thought it was in the liver.
What is dualism?
A philosophy, most associated with Rene Descartes, which claims the mind and body are separate entities, which interact in some obscure way.
Who first suggested psychology should be an empirical science?
John Stuart Mill
What is functionalism?
An early school of psychology, associated with William James. Its explanations focused on the adaptive purposes of behavior.
What does ‘survival of the fittest’ mean in natural selection?
It means that organisms whose traits are best suited to the environment are most likely to survive, and perhaps reproduce, passing on those traits.
What is Gestalt psychology?
A school of psychology often associated with Wolfgang Kohler, that emphasized that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. i.e., the mind cannot be understood solely by examining the cells of the brain; new phenomena emerge at each level.
