Unit 1: Psychology’s History and Approaches Flashcards
Buddha
pondered how sensations and perceptions combine to form ideas
Confucius
stressed the power of ideas and of an educated mind
Hebrew scholars
anticipated today’s psychology by linking mind and emotion to the body
Socrates
concluded that the mind is separable from body and continues after the body dies. Knowledge is innate - born within us
Plato
a student of Socrates
they derived principles by logic
Aristotle
a student of Plato; had a love of data and derived principles from careful observations. He said knowledge is not preexisting; it grows from the experiences stored in our memory
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Renes Descartes
agreed with Socrates and Plato. He concluded that the fluid in the brain cavities contained animal spirits and flowed (nerves) to muscles provoking movement. Memories formed as experiences opened pores in the brain into which animal spirits flowed.
Francis Bacon
focused on experiment, experience and common sense judgement. He became one of the founders of modern science. He believed that human understanding looks for order and equality (Novum Organum). He saw that we observe events which are fulfilled, but neglect and pass over their failure.
John Locke
famously argued that the mind at birth is a blank slate (tabula rasa) on which experience write.
Empiricism
the view that knowledge originates in experience and that science should, therefore rely on observation and experimentation
WIlhelm Wundt’s experiment
a machine measured the time lag between people’s hearing a ball hit a platform and their pressing a telegraph key.
Structuralism
an early school of psychology that used introspection to explore the structural elements of the human mind
Functionalism
a school of psychology that focused on how our mental and behavioural processes function - how they enable us to adopt, survive, flourish
Behaviourism
the view that psychology (1) should be an objective science that (2) studies behavior without reference to mental processes. Most current researchers agree with (1) but not (2)
Edward Titchener
one of WIlhelm Wundt’s students who engaged people in introspection
Introspection
engaging people in self reflection and training them to report elements of their experience as they look, listen, smell, taste, Images? Feelings? Relations?
WIlliam James
a philosopher and functionalist who studied the evolved functions of our thoughts and feelings. He encouraged down to earth emotions, memories, will power, habits, and moment-to-moment streams of consciousness.
Charles Darwin’s influence
thinking like smelling developed because it was adaptive - it contributed to our ancestors’ survival.
Mary Calkins
tutored by William James. She outscored all male students on a qualifying exam. Also became the first female president of the American Psychological Association in 1905.
Ivan Pavlov
a Russian Psychologist who pioneered the study of learning
SIgmund Freud
an Austrian physician who developed the influential psychoanalytic theory of personality
Jean Piaget
a Swiss biologist who was last century’s most influential observer of children
John B. Watson
an American who championed Psychology as the science of behavior and demonstrated conditional responses in a baby who became famous as “Little Albert”.
B.F. Skinner
also an American who rejected introspection and studied how consequences shape behavior.
