PSYCH 104 Midterm 1 Flashcards
What does psychology mean in greek?
Psych - Spirit or soul
ology - the study of something
Psychology (Definition)
The scientific study of the mind and behavior
Mind (Definition)
Refers to the internal states and processes, such as thoughts and feelings that cannot be seen (observed) directly and that must be inferred from observable, measurable, responses
The four goals of psychology (What are they?)
The four goals of psychology:
1. To describe how people and other animals behave
2. To explain and understand the causes of these behaviors
3. To predict how people and animals will behave under certain conditions
4. To control behaviors through knowledge of its causes to enhance human and animal welfare
The Theory of Humourism
The theory of humourism (four categories)
- Black bile (melancholic)
○ Sad, independent, introverted, perfectionist, prudent
- Blood (sanguine)
○ Cheerful, impulsive, charismatic, optimistic, affectionate
- Yellow bile (choleric)
○ Angry, ambitious, energetic, aggressive, jealous, envious
- Phlegm (phlegmatic)
○ Sluggish, relaxed, content, lethargic, sensitive, sentimental
Rene Descartes (Who was he?)
Rene Descartes:
- Philosopher and mathematician
- Argued for a substance dualism
○ Minds and bodies are distinct substances that interact
§ Minds are immaterial
§ Bodies are material
Steven Bankart (Who was he?)
Steven Bankart (1650-1704)
- Essentially wrote a book that defined multiple psychological terms
Wilhelm Wundt (Who was he?)
Wilhelm Wundt
- Established “psychology” as a distinct discipline that was separate from physiology and philosophy
- Opened the first psychological laboratory in 1879
- Believed that psychology should be modeled after physics and chemistry
- Psychology was the study of consciousness
○ Relied on introspection
§ Introspection: the looking into our own minds and reporting what we there discover
Introspection (Definition)
Introspection: the looking into our own minds and reporting what we there discover
Structuralism (definition)
- A school of thought believing that the goal was to analyze basic elements of consciousness and examine how they are related
- Relied heavily on introspection
- Pioneered by:
- Wilhelm Wundt
- Edward Titchener (Wilhelm’s student)
Functionalism
- A school of thought believing that the goal of psychology was to analyze the function of consciousness, not its structure
- Pioneered by:
- William James
○ Inspired by natural selection
○ Consciousness should not be seen as discrete but rather continuous flow
§ Coined term: stream of conciousness
- William James
Psychoanalytics (What is it?)
Psychoanalytics: Pioneered by Sigmund Freud - early 1900s
- Developed a treatment known as psychoanalysis
○ Attempted to explain personality motivation and mental disorders by focusing on unconscious determinants of behavior
§ Unconscious: thoughts memories and desires that are below the surface of awareness and exert influence over behavior
□ Cannot be perceived
□ Cannot be observed objectively or subjectively
Occam’s razor
Occam’s razor:
- A principle that states that when we are confronted with two explanations that explain everything equally well the most parsimonious is the one we choose correct
○ The one we choose is the one that makes the least amount of new instructions
○ Example: a door slammed and one of you thinks it’s a ghost the other thinks it’s the wind
§ The ghost is the less parsimonious answer
§ The wind is more parsimonious (we choose this)
The Behavioralist Perspective (What is it?)
The behavioral perspective: john B Watsons - mid 1900s
- He worked with animals
- Psychology as the behaviorist views it as purely objective experimental branch of natural science
- He believed that most perspectives of the time were incoherent or wrong
- The theoretical goal is prediction and control of behavior
Behaviorism (What is it about?)
Behaviorism: theorhetical orientation that science should study for its own sake, it is also a philosophy however.
- There are three types of behaviorism
○ Methodological (Watsons)
§ Often called SR psychology
§ Relied heavily on Pavlovian conditioning
○ Radical behaviorism
○ Teleological behaviorism
- Its growth in popularity was greatly influenced by Ivan Pavlov’s work on condition reflexes
- Animal research was greatly beneficial to behavioral research
○ This is because we could exert massive experimental control
B.F. Skinner (What did he do?)
B.F. Skinner: further enhanced behaviorisms prominent role in psychology
- Discovered operant conditioning
- Created new experimental methods
- Made philosophical contributions to behaviorism as a philosophy of science
- (He never viewed himself as a psychologist)
The humanistic prespective (What was it?)
The humanistic prespective: the other way of believing at the time
- Pioneered by, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow
○ Essentially highlights that humans are greater than the sum of their parts and we are often driven by their own meaning (not just a biological product like behaviorism saw)
○ Emphasizes
§ Conscious thought
§ Freedom
§ Choice
§ Self-actualization
§ Reaching ones individual potential
The cognitive perspective (What was it?)
The cognitive perspective
- Cognitive psychology
○ An approach to scientific psychology that encourages psychologists to infer unobservable constructs on the basis of observable phenomena
○ Cognition is derived from the Latin verb “Cognito” which means “to think”
The biological perspective (What is it?)
The biological perspective
- Focuses on how brain processes and other bodily functions regulate behavior
○ Example:
§ Do certain brain regions have certain specialized functions?
§ What is the tole of genetics in determining behavior
- Has many subdomains
○ Neuroscience
○ Behavioral neuroscience
○ Cognitive neuroscience
○ Behavioral genetics
○ Brain chemistry
Sociostructural psychology (What is it?)
- Sociostructural psychology:
○ An area of research that focuses on how social and cultural aspects of the environment influence behavior
○ Cultural determinants of behavior had not been rigorously studied in the past
§ Recruited university student populations out of convenience
□ Culturally, intellectually, and economically homogenous
§ Also refered to as social psychology
What are the two biggest fields of psychology research?
Research area in psychology:
- Developmental psychology
○ Focuses on understanding human development across the lifespan
○ Primarily concerned with childhood development but also examines adolescence, adulthood, and old age
- Psychometrics
○ Concerned with the development of psychological tests to allow for assessment of aspects of a persons psychology
Naïve realism (Definition)
Naïve realism: the belief that we see the world precisely as it is
- It is flawed as if we believed this we would still believe the world was in fact flat
The scientific method (Definition)
The scientific method: a method to gather knowledge
- Science: from Latin Scientia “knowledge, a knowledge, expertness”