What is psychology?
the scientific study of mind and behaviour
- psychologists study everything about the human experience from basic workings of the human brain to consciousness, memory, language, reasoning, personality and mental health
What does psychology mean?
- psych = soul
- ology = scientific study of
- Psychology = scientific study of mind and behaviour
What is structuralism?
understanding the conscious experience through introspection
What is functionalism?
focused on how mental activities helped an organism adapt to its environment
What is psychoanalytic theory?
focuses on the role of unconscious in affecting conscious behaviour
What is Gestalt psychology?
focuses on humans as a whole rather than individual parts
What is behaviourism?
focuses on observing and controlling behaviour
what is humanism?
emphasizes the potential for good that is innate to all humans
Who is Wilhelm Wundt?
- credited as one of the founders of psychology
- created the first laboratory for psychological research
- emphasises **structuralism **
-> focused on understanding the structure and characteristics of the mind through introspection
What is introspection?
Process by which someone examines their own conscious experience in an attempt to break it into its components
Who is William James?
- the first american psychologist
- druch from the functionality of cognitive processes
- created functionalism(=emphasised how mental activities contributed to basic environmental survival)
Who is Sigmund Freud?
- highly influental in psychology history
- founded psychoanalytical theory -> perspective which dominated clinical psychology for decades
- studied hysteria and neurosis
- theorised that many of his patients’ problems arose from the unconscious mind
- believed that on was the unconscious mind would be accessed through dream analysis
- psychoanalytic theory focuses on the role of a person’s unconscious and early childhood experiences
Who are Kohler, Koffka and Wertheimer?
- German psychologists who immigrated to USA (Nazi Germany)
-** Gestalt Psychology** = based on the idea that although sensory experience can be broken down into individual parts, how those party relate to each other as a whole is often what the individual responds to in perception - Ideas of Gestalt still influence research on sensation and perception
Who is Ivan Pavlov?
-classical conditioning
- discovered classical conditioning
- studied conditioned reflexes in which an animal produced a reflex (unconscious) response to a stimulus and over time was conditioned to produve the response to a different stimulus that the experimenter associated with the original stimulus
Who is John B. Watson?
- father of behaviourism
- believed that objective analysis of the mind was impossible
- focused on the observable behaviour and ways to control behaviour
- today, used in behavioural and cognitive-behavioural therapy
Who is B. F. Skinner?
- concentrated on how behaviour was affected by its consequences
- studied principles pf modifying behaviour through reinforcements and punishment which he saw as major factors in driving behaviour (operant conditioning)
eg when a mouse pushes a button to release food (reinforcement), when pu
Who is Abraham Maslow?
humanism
– proposed a hierarchy of human needs in motivating behaviour
- asserted that so long as basic needs necessary for survival were met, higher level needs would begin to motivate behaviour
- Maslow hierarchy of needs (the pyramid )
5. self actualisation: inner fulfillment
4. esteem : self worth, accomplishment
3. social : family, friendship, intimacy
2. security: safety, employment
1. physiological: food, water, shelter, warmth
Who is Carl Rogers?
humanism
- developed a client-centered therapy method that has been influential in clinical settings
- client-centered therapy involves the patient taking a lead role in therapy
- rogers believed that therapists need:
1. unconditional positive regard
2. genuineness
3. empathy
What is the cognitive revolution?
- by 1950s, new disciplinary perspectives in linguistics, neuroscience and computer science were emerging
- mind became the focus of scientific inquiry
- noam chomsky: very influential in the revolution -> believed that psychology needed to incorporate mental functioning into its focus in order to fully understand human behaviour
Margeret Floy Washburn
- first woman with doctorate in Psychology
- researched on animal behaviour and published an authoritative text on the subject
branches of psychology
- biopsychology and evolutionary psychology
- sensation and perception
- cognitive psychology
- developmental psychology
- personality psychology
- social psychology
- health psychology
- industrial-organizational psychology
- sports and exercise psychology
- clinical psychology
- forensic psychology
Biopsychology
- study how the structure and the function of the nervous system generate behaviour
- research include:
sensory and motor system, sleep, drug use/abuse, ingestive behaviour, reproductive behaviour, neurodevelopment, plasticity of nervous system, biological correlates of psychological disorders
Sensation and perception
- focuses on both physiological aspects of sensory systems and the psychological experience of sensory information
- Sensory = sensory information (sight, etc)
- Perception = experience of the world which is influenced by where we focus our attention, our previous experiences and our cultural backgrounds
Developmental psychology
- studies the physical and mental attributes of aging and maturation
- include various skills that are acquired throughout growth -> moral reasoning, cognitive skills and social skills
- Jean Piaget -> theories regarding changes in cognitive ability that occur as we move from infancy to adulthood
