Historical background

Question 1

What did Plato strongly believe in?

Answer 1

Plato believed that everything we know is inborn (nativism), and that learning is simply a process of inner reflection to uncover the knowledge that already exists within.

Question 2

In contrast to Plato’s beliefs, what does Aristotle suggest?

Answer 2

Knowledge is not inborn, it is acquired through experience (empiricism), and that ideas come to be connected or associated with each other via four laws of association.

Question 3

What are Aristotle’s four laws of association?

Answer 3

The Law of Similarity;
The Law of Frequency;
The Law of Contrast;
The Law of Contiguity.

Question 4

What does the Law of Similarity suggest?

Answer 4

According to the Law of Similarity, event that are similar to each other are most easily associated with each other.

Question 5

What does the Law of Contrast suggest?

Answer 5

According to the Law of Contrast, events that are opposite from each other are most easily associated with each other.

Question 6

What does the Law of Contiguity suggest?

Answer 6

According to the Law of Contiguity, the events that occur in close proximity to each other (in time and space) are most easily associated with each other.

Question 7

What does the Law of Frequency suggest?

Answer 7

According to the Law of Frequency, the more frequently two events occur together, the more strongly they are associated.

Question 7

What did Descartes propose?

Answer 7

A dualistic model of human nature.

Question 8

What does Descartes’ dualistic model suggest?

Answer 8

We have a body that functions like a machine and produces involuntary, reflexive behaviors, and a mind that had free-will and produces voluntary behaviors.

Question 9

What do Plato and Descartes have in common?

Answer 9

They both believe that some characteristics of the mind are inborn

Question 10

What do Aristotle and the British Empiricists have in common?

Answer 10

They all believe that almost all knowledge is learned through experience.

Question 11

What famous idea did John Locke propose about newborns’ minds?

Answer 11

That a newborn’s mind is a blank slate (tabula rasa) upon which new experiences are written.

Question 12

What is the British Empiricists’s belief on the mind’s component?

Answer 12

They believe that the mind is composed of a set of basic elements (colours, sounds, smells) that are combined through the principles of association into complex sensations and thought patterns.

Question 13

What deficiencies did Wundt find in the British Empiricists’ approach?

Answer 13

The fact that they did not conduct any experiment, and that they based their conclusions on logical reasoning and the subjective examination of their own conscious experience.

Question 15

What novel idea did Wundt propose?

Answer 15

He proposed using the scientific method to conduct experiments to identify the basic elements that compose the mind.

Question 16

Who was William Wundt’s student?

Answer 16

Edward Titchener.

Question 17

What did Titchener recover from Wundt’s approach?

Answer 17

He promoted the use of the scientific method to experiment on the identification of the basic components of the mind, which then became known as structuralism.

Question 18

What was the structuralists’ most used method of experimentation?

Answer 18

Introspection.

Question 19

What is introspection?

Answer 19

A process in which the subject attempts to accurately describe his conscious thoughts, emotions and sensory experiences.

Question 20

What did William James help establish?

Answer 20

The approach to psychology known as functionalism.

Question 21

What is functionalism?

Answer 21

An approach that assumes that the mind evolved to help us adapt to the world around us.

Question 22

What does functionalism suggest?

Answer 22

That the focus of psychology should be the study of the adaptive processes that help us adapt to our environement.

Question 23

What do functionalists believe?

Answer 23

That characteristics that are highly typical of a species must have some type of adaptive value, and that psychologists should not study the structure of the mind, but its adaptive significance.

Question 24

What is the basis of Structuralism?

Answer 24

Structuralism assumes that it is possible to determine the structure of the mind by identifying the basic elements that compose it.

Question 25

What are the three main components to the principle of natural selection?

Answer 25

Traits vary, both within a species and between species;
Many traits are heritable;
Organisms must compete for limited ressources.

Question 26

What is called a trait that evolves as a result of natural selection?

Answer 26

An evolutionary adaptation.

Question 27

What is special about the ability to learn?

Answer 27

The ability to learn (nurture) is itself inherited (nature).

Question 28

What was one of Watson’s critics on structuralism in his paper entitled “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It”?

Answer 28

That the method of introspection proved to be highly unreliable.

Question 29

What was Watson’s solution to the unreliability of introspection?

Answer 29

To make psychology a purely objective science, based only on the study of directly observable behavior and the environmental events that surround it.

Question 30

What is behaviorism?

Answer 30

A natural science approach to psychology that focuses on the study of environmental influences on observable behavior.

Question 31

What was Watson’s opinion on animal research?

Answer 31

He believed that the principles governing the behavior of nonhuman species might also be relevant to the behavior of humans.

Question 32

What law do behavioral psychology adheres to?

Answer 32

The Law of Parsimony.

Question 33

What is the Law of Parsimony?

Answer 33

A law that proposes that simpler explanations for a phenomenon are generally preferable to more complex explanations.

Question 34

What does Morgan’s Canon argue?

Answer 34

That one should interpret an animal’s behavior in terms of lower, more primitive processes (reflex), rather than higher, more mentalistic processes.

Question 35

What did Watson add ti Morgan’s Canon?

Answer 35

That psychologists should avoid interpreting even human behavior in terms of mentalistic processes.

Question 36

What novel idea did the functionalists bring?

Answer 36

The study of animal behavior.