Unit 1 - Flashcards
socrates and plato
Ancient Greek Philosopher Socrates and his student Plato
concluded that the mind and body are separate entities.
They believed that the mind continues after death and that
knowledge individuals are born with knowledge.
aristotle
Plato’s student Aristotle believed that knowledge is
developed through experience stored in our memories. Lover of data. Derived psychological principles from careful observation
Rene Descartes
French scientist and
philosopher. Agreed with Plato and Socrates about how individuals are
born with knowledge, the mind and body are separate, and how the mind continues after death. Dissected animals and concluded that the cerebrospinal fluid
in the brain’s cavities contained animal spirits.
Francis Bacon
British. One of the founders of modern science whose influence remains present in today’s psychological experiments. Fascinated by the human mind. Wrote about the human mind’s ability to perceive patterns in
random events. Explored our ability to notice and remember events that
confirm our beliefs
John Locke
British political philosopher. Took 20 years and hundreds of pages to complete of history’s greatest late papers An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding in which he famously argued the mind at birth is a tabula rasa a “blank slate” on which experience writes. His ideas helped form modern empiricism
Wilhelm Wundt
Studied introspection. Professor at a university in Leipzig Germany. Difference between physical sensation and cognitive perception
Edward Titchener
Joined the Cornell University faculty and introduced
structuralism. As physicists and chemists discerned the structure of matter, so Titchener aimed to discover the structural elements of
mind. Titchener’s method was to engage people in self-
reflective introspection (looking inward) training them to report elements of their experience as they look at a rose, listened to a metronome, smelled a scent, or tasted a substance
William James
Father of functionalism. Professor at Harvard. Working in parallel with Wundt. Wrote the first textbook for psychology called Principles of
Psychology (12 vol set of books)
Mary Whiton Calkins
William James admitted Mary Whiton Calkins into his
graduate seminar, when she joined all other students (all
men) dropped out, so he tutored her alone.
o Later she finished all the requirements for a Harvard Ph.D., outsourcing all the male students on the qualifying exams. Harvard denied her the degree she had earned, offering her
instead a degree from Radcliff college, its undergraduate sister school for women, Calkins resisted the unequal treatment and refused the degree. She was posthumously awarded the Ph.D. she earned more
than a century later. She went on to be a distinguished memory researcher and the
APA’s first female president in 1905
Margaret Floy Washburn
The honor of first female psychology Ph.D. later fell to
Margaret Floy Washburn who later wrote the influential
book, The Animal Mind, and became the second female APA president in 1921. Although Washburn’s thesis was was the first foreign study Wundt published in his journal, her gender meant she was barred from joining the organization of experimental psychologists (who explore behavior and thinking with experiments), despite being founded by Titchener, her own
graduate adviser.
John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner
Until the 1920s, psychology was defined as “the science of mental life.” John B. Watson, and later the equally provocative B. F.
Skinner, dismissed introspection and redefined psychology as
“the scientific study of observable behavior.” Many agreed, and the behaviorists were one of two major forces in psychology well into the 1960s. Behaviorists. Said that science is rooted in observation. You cannot observe a sensation, a feeling, or a thought, but you can observe and record people’s behavior as they respond to different situations. Suggested that our behavior is influenced by learned associations through a process called conditioning
Sigmund Freud
o Emphasized the ways emotions responses to childhood
experiences and our unconscious thought processes affect our
behavior.
o Freudian Psychology which emphasized the ways our
unconscious thought processes and our emotional responses
to childhood experiences affect our behavior.
Theory of personality
Views on unconscious sexual conflicts
Minds defenses against its own wishes and impulses
Psychodynamic approach
Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow
As the behaviorists had done in the early 1900s, two other
groups rejected the definition of psychology that was current
in the 1960s. The first, the humanistic psychologists, led by
Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, found both Freudian
psychology and behaviorism too limiting.
o Rather than focusing on the meaning of early childhood
memories or the learning of conditioned responses, the
humanistic psychologists drew attention to ways that current
environmental influences can nurture or limit our growth
potential, and to the importance of having our needs for love
and acceptance satisfied.
o Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
structuralism
early school of thought promoted by Wundt
and Titchener, used introspection to reveal the structure of
the human mind.
functionalism
early school of thought promoted by James
and influenced by Darwin; explored how mental and
behavioral processes function–how they enable they enable
the organism to adapt, survive, and flourish
behaviorism
the view that psychology (1) should be an
objective science that (2) studies behavior without reference
to mental processes. Most research psychologists today agree
with (1) but not with (2)
experimental psychology
the study of behavior and
thinking using the experimental method
cognitive psychology
scientifically explores the ways we
perceive, process, and remember information.
psychology
as the science of behavior and mental processes
The key word in psychology’s definition is science.
Psychology is less a set of findings than a way of
asking and answering questions.
