TextBook Ch. 1 - Yesterday & Today

Question 1

Textbook Definition of Psychology

Answer 1

The study of mental processes and behaviours.

Question 2

Aristotle’s key Contributions To the Foundations of Psychology

Answer 2

Aristotle’s writings represent some of the first important theories. Such as sensations, dreams, sleep, and learning
(Engelsted, 2017).

Aristotle was one of the first to promote empirical, or testable,
investigations of the natural world.

In his studies, he formed ideas about how living things are hierarchically categorized, concluding that humans are closely related to animals.

Question 3

Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

Answer 3

He is widely regarded as the creator of empiricism: the view that all knowledge originates in experience.

He established and popularized the
scientific method, gathering data, analyzing data, and performing experiments.

Question 4

Gustav Fechner (1801–1887):

Answer 4

a German philosopher and physicist who is considered
to be one of the founders of experimental psychology.

He published a book called Elements of Psychophysics. In the book, Fechner (1860) lays out many of the methods and study techniques that would come to be used in the emerging
field of psychology. His evidence of the relationship between physical and mental events demonstrated that psychology had the potential to become a quantified science.

Question 5

Charles Darwin (1809–1882)

Answer 5

In his book “On the Origin of Species” (1859, 1872), proposed the theory of evolution, making the
radical suggestion that all life on Earth was related and that human beings were just one outcome of many variations from a common ancestral point.

Darwin also suggested natural
selection as the mechanism through which some variations survive over the years while other variations fall out of existence.

Natural selection proposes that chance variations are passed down from parent to offspring, and that some of these variations are adaptive—better suited to an organism’s environment.

Adaptive variations = help organism live

Less-Adaptive variations = reduce organisms ability to survive

Question 6

Evolutionary Psychology

Answer 6

A field of study believing that the body and brain are products of evolution and that genetic inheritance plays an important role in shaping the complete range of thoughts and behaviours.

Question 7

Shared Values In Psychology

Answer 7

• Psychology Is Theory-Driven
• Psychology Is Empirical
• Psychology Is Multi-Level
• Psychology Is Contextual

Question 8

Positive Psychology

Answer 8

Studies Human Strengths, Fulfillment, and Creativity