The Origins of Psychology Flashcards

1
Q

How was psychology born?

A

Many people would argue that psychology grew out of philosophy, and that some of the fundamental questions regarding the human condition and human behaviour, that have interested philosophers for centuries, are also central to psychology.

  • The birth of psychology is often cited as being the establishment of the first psychology research laboratory, at the University of Leipzig in Germany in 1879, by Wilhelm Wundt.
  • At around the same time, William James began to teach the first experimental course in psychology, at Harvard University in the United States.
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2
Q

What is the mind-body problem?

A
  • The mind-body problem essentially the question of ‘how separate the concept of the human mind is from the brain?’
  • Modern approaches to examining the brain, such as neuroimaging, are providing new perspectives, but the question of how separate the mind is from the body is still regarded as one of the earliest philosophical questions.
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3
Q

What are some questions to consider when trying to understand the world around us?

A
  • How do we know what is true and real?
  • Can we trust our senses or is it only our own thoughts that we can reliably believe to be true?
  • Can we determine the ultimate truth within a scientific framework?

Philosophy has grappled with these questions throughout the ages and they still have relevance to psychology today.

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4
Q

What is meant by nature nurture?

A
  • Is our biological inheritance principal in our behaviour, or is it the environment in which we live and grow?
  • Many would argue it’s a combination of both, but with increased recognition of the role of genetics and inheritance in behaviour and psychological disorders on the one side, and a more sophisticated understanding of the importance of environment in early childhood development on the other, the question remains largely unanswered.
  • There is also the question of whether there is something unique and special that separates us as humans from the rest of the animal kingdom.
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5
Q

How did Charles Darwin influence inquiries into animal behaviour?

A
  • Until Charles Darwin conceptualised natural selection and evolution, most people held the position that humans were qualitatively different from animals and other non-human creatures.
  • From the concept of evolution came the idea that we could use animals as models for human behaviour.
  • This opened the door for a whole new range of inquiry into the behaviour of animals as their findings could also be applicable to humans.
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6
Q

What is rationalism?

A

Descartes was the founder of rationalism: the idea that that the only true understanding of the world should come from intellectual and deductive reasoning given that you can’t really trust your senses.

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7
Q

What is empiricism?

A

An opposing view to rationalism arose from what we now call British empiricism.

  • English philosopher John Locke argued that sensory information is all we have to go by.
  • If we are going to understand the world around us, we have to make systematic use of that sensory information.
  • Only through being methodical and strategic in how we evaluate sensory information can we build knowledge.
  • Locke argued that in order to construct our understanding of the world, we work from a blank slate (tabula rasa).
  • The knowledge we build is derived by reflecting on our sensory experiences and we expand upon simple knowledge from sensory processes to comprehend more complex information.
  • Scottish philosopher David Hume took this idea further, arguing that our understanding of the world was fundamentally tied to our observations.
  • From our observations over time, we build assumptions about functionality and causation and subsequently use these assumptions to create laws, such as laws of resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect.

Example: Balls Hitting

  • For example, if we observe one ball about to hit another ball of equal size and weight, we assume that it will cause the second ball to move.
  • But that assumption of causation is simply drawn from our previous experiences of having seen one ball hitting another.
  • We assume that what we have seen in the past will repeat itself in the future.
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8
Q

What is bundle theory?

A
  • One of Hume’s most controversial theories is what we call bundle theory.
  • Hume argued that our world is made up of sensory information that we try to make sense of.
  • Our understanding of what constitutes an apple comprises the appearance, feel, smell and taste of an apple.
  • Hume argued that the apple itself does not exist.
  • Our concept of the apple simply results from our attempt to bring together a range of sensory experiences to make sense of our world.
  • From some perspectives, Hume was almost the opposite of Descartes in that he argued that the only thing that is real is sensory information.
  • We then put this sensory information together and try to make sense of it.
  • The resulting labels that we create (“an apple”) aren’t themselves ‘real’.
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9
Q

Summarise these two polarised approaches to philosophy.

A
  • Rationalists such as Descartes contended that knowledge is gained through reason and thought.
  • The mind actively transforms sensory information, but essentially, true knowledge can only be obtained through reasoning.
  • Empiricists, on the other hand, argued that all knowledge is gained through experience.
  • Only through observation and systematic investigation of sensory information can we extend our knowledge through a framework of assumed patterns of behaviour.

-Both approaches remain fundamental aspects of the scientist practitioner model that we use in modern psychology today: we try to formulate theoretical ideas (rationalism), test them through observable experiments (empiricism), and interpret the results in terms of our theoretical concepts.

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10
Q

What is phrenology?

A

The study of phrenology by Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828) was a particularly popular early idea on the relationship between mental characteristics and the brain.

  • The underlying assumption of phrenology was that indentations and bumps on the outer surface of the skull reflected differences in brain volume that were associated with particular mental functions or personality traits.
  • For example, a bump in one region might suggest the individual was prone to combativeness, while an indentation at another point on the skull might suggest a decreased capacity for conscientiousness or individuality.

While this idea did not stand up to rigorous scientific testing, the notion that certain parts of the brain are responsible for different mental abilities or traits was highly influential in stimulating further research.

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11
Q

How did the work of Broca and Wernicke contribute to the localisation of function hypothesis?

A

Developments in medicine that gave further credibility to the localisation of function hypothesis came from the work of Paul Broca (1824–1880) from France and, later, Carl Wernicke (1848–1905) in Germany.

  • These physicians were looking at patients with brain damage to see how damage in particular regions of the brain related to different mental impairments.
  • Broca found that individuals with damage to the left frontal region of the brain could understand language, but were unable to produce speech of their own.
  • In contrast, Wernicke found that if the damage was towards the rear (posterior) region of the left side of the brain, patients could speak fluently but had difficulties comprehending language so their sentences were nonsensical.
  • These findings provided more solid scientific evidence for the notion that mental functions, in this case language, could be broken down into distinct elements and localised to specific areas of the brain.
  • This stimulated a vast array of subsequent investigations to further map the functions of the brain.
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12
Q

How did the findings of Broca and Wernicke contribute to the localisation of function hypothesis?

A

Developments in medicine that gave further credibility to the localisation of function hypothesis came from the work of Paul Broca (1824–1880) from France and, later, Carl Wernicke (1848–1905) in Germany.

  • These physicians were looking at patients with brain damage to see how damage in particular regions of the brain related to different mental impairments.
  • Broca found that individuals with damage to the left frontal region of the brain could understand language, but were unable to produce speech of their own.
  • In contrast, Wernicke found that if the damage was towards the rear (posterior) region of the left side of the brain, patients could speak fluently but had difficulties comprehending language so their sentences were nonsensical.
  • These findings provided more solid scientific evidence for the notion that mental functions, in this case language, could be broken down into distinct elements and localised to specific areas of the brain.
  • This stimulated a vast array of subsequent investigations to further map the functions of the brain.
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13
Q

What is psychophysics?

A
  • Psychophysics is the process of systematically investigating the relationships between physical stimuli and psychological perceptions.
  • The psychophysics approach to quantifying sensory perception was fundamental to establishing the scientific method of inquiry into psychological phenomena.
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14
Q

How did Weber contribute to our understanding of the psychophysics of perception?

A
  • Alongside their counterparts in medicine, physiologists around this time were beginning to take interest in different aspects of sensory perception.
  • Researchers such as Ernst Weber (1795–1878) were looking at two-point discrimination.
  • This was the investigation of how people perceive somatosensory, or touch, information in different regions of the body.
  • Weber showed that our discrimination of two distinct points varied widely depending on how much we relied on touch information for that particular body part.
  • The tongue was among the most accurate or most sensitive regions of the body, where people could discriminate between two points about a millimetre apart, and the tips of the fingers were very much at that acuity as well.
  • Other places in the body, like the middle of the back or the middle of the thigh, had very poor acuity.
  • Therefore, you could have two points separated by as much as five centimetres in the middle of the back, and a person would perceive that as a single point.
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15
Q

What is Fechner’s Law?

A

One of Weber’s students, Gustav Fechner (1801–1887), took the study of human response to physical stimuli further by investigating the ability to discriminate between other physical stimuli, such as two objects of different weights, or two lights with different levels of brightness.

  • One of the results of his observations, now known as Fechner’s Law, predicts that our ability to discriminate between two different stimuli decreases as the magnitude of the stimuli increases.
  • For example, if you have two very bright lights, the difference in brightness between them will need to be large for you to detect the difference, whereas for two dim lights, the difference in brightness only needs to be minimal for the difference to be detected.
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16
Q

How did Structuralism come about?

A
  • Wundt was instrumental in establishing psychology as a science in its own right.
  • He was also the father of the first school of psychological thought, Structuralism.

Wundt wanted to understand consciousness and believed it could be broken down into its fundamental elements, much the same as the periodic table in chemistry lists the fundamental elements of the physical world.

17
Q

What is experimental introspection?

A
  • Rather than use random sample subjects like we commonly do in modern psychological experiments, Wundt’s methodology involved training people within his laboratory to methodically report their experiences and internal perceptions with the least amount of subjective bias.
  • Wundt believed that the events of mental life could only be understood through a process of controlled introspection, and he used his laboratory to try to record this process in a scientific manner.
  • Wundt conducted a range of sensory experiments, such as exposing his participants to different combinations of light and sound stimuli and measuring patterns of attention and reaction times.
  • Wundt then asked participants to reflect upon their experience.
18
Q

How was Edward B. Titchener involved in the development of Structuralism?

A
  • Edward B. Titchener was a student of Wundt who was born in England but later taught at Cornell University in the United States.
  • Titchener built upon Wundt’s idea of understanding the structure of the mind through analysing elementary conscious experience, and coined the term Structuralism.
  • Wundt and Titchener made important contributions to modern psychology, especially around the concepts of sensation and perception, and attention switching which can occur when we engage in a secondary activity or experience whilst simultaneously directing our attention at a particular stimulus.
  • The calculations of reaction time that they derived were very accurate, and still align with modern approaches to measuring reaction time.
19
Q

What is wrong with the Structuralist approach to studying psychology?

A
  • However, the fundamental flaw of the Structuralist approach to the study of psychology was the subjectivity of introspection.
  • Wundt and Titchener’s experiments relied upon the participants’ self-reports, an approach that was criticised for a lack of scientific rigour.
20
Q

How did Functionalism come about?

A
  • William James studied medicine at Harvard, and began his academic career there in 1872, teaching physiology.
  • However, in 1876 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Psychology – the start of a 30-year Harvard career that embraced his two academic passions and would see him become a professor of philosophy and chair of psychology.
  • In 1878, James was commissioned to write a textbook on psychology.
  • After 12 years of work, his Principles of Psychology was finally published in two volumes in 1890, and has become his lasting legacy and contribution to the discipline.

Perhaps reflecting his interest in philosophy, James emphasised an approach to psychology that focused on the connection between thinking and behaviour, rather than the Structuralist focus on identifying the elements of a psychological experience.

21
Q

How did Darwin’s theory of natural selection influence Functionalism?

A
  • James was influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which proposed that the physical characteristics of animals and humans evolved because they were useful, or functional.
  • The functionalists believed that Darwin’s theory applied to psychological characteristics too.
  • Just as some animals have developed strong muscles to allow them to run fast, the human brain, so functionalists thought, must have adapted to serve a particular function in human experience.

Although Functionalism has not survived as a school of thought in modern psychology, in its focus on the causes of human behaviour, it has influenced the later work of Skinner and the development of Behaviourism.