Psy 100 PRE LIM

• Psychology is the systematic, scientific study of behaviours and mental processes.
• The goals of psychology include describing behavior, explaining the causes of behavior, predicting how an individual will behave in certain situations, and controlling behavior.
• Positive Psychology is a branch of psychology that proponents include Karl Marx and Martin Seligman, who studied happiness.
• Early Psychologists include Plato, Aristotle, René Descartes, and Wilhelm Wundt.
• Plato was a Greek philosopher who argued on the nature side and believed that much knowledge was innate (inborn/natural).
• Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who was more on the nurture side and believed that each child is born as an “empty slate” (in Latin, a tabula rasa) and that knowledge is primarily acquired through learning and experience.
• René Descartes was a French philosopher who believed in the existence of innate natural abilities and addressed the relationship between mind (the mental aspects of life) and the body (the physical aspects of life).
• Wilhelm Wundt was a German psychologist who developed a psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany.
• William James was an American psychologist who founded a psychology laboratory at Harvard University.
• Structuralism, a field begun by Wundt, is a school of psychology whose goal was to identify the basic elements or structures of psychological experience.
• Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener helped create the structuralist school of psychology with the goal of classifying the elements of sensation through introspection.
• Introspection is a method used by structuralists to attempt to create a map of the elements of consciousness.
• Functionalism, founded by William James and the other members of the school of functionalism, examined how people satisfy their needs through their behavior.
• “The whole is different from the sum of its parts,” according to Gestalt, our perception, or understanding, of objects is greater and more meaningful than the individual elements that make up our perceptions.
• Thoughts or feelings that make us feel fearful or guilty, that threaten our self-esteem, or that come from unresolved sexual conflicts are automatically placed deep into our unconscious.
• The psychodynamic approach believes that it is possible to help the patient if the unconscious drives can be remembered, particularly through a deep and thorough exploration of the person's early sexual experiences and current sexual desires.
• Behaviourism, which focuses on observable behavior that can be measured objectively, was influenced by John B. Watson and the other behaviourists who began to use these ideas to explain how events that people and other organisms experienced in their environment could produce specific behaviors.
• Cognitive Perspective, a field of psychology that studies mental processes, including perception, thinking, memory, and judgment, focuses on how people think, understand, and know about the world.
• These explorations are revealed through talk therapy and dream analysis in a process called psychoanalysis.
• B. F. Skinner, a member of the behaviourist school of psychology, argued that free will is an illusion and that all behavior is determined by environmental factors.
• Psychotherapy, designed to help patients recover and confront their “lost” memories, is a part of the psychodynamic approach.
• Humanism, emphasizing that all individuals naturally strive to grow, develop, and be in control of their lives and behavior, was influenced by Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow.
• Psychodynamic, an approach to understanding behavior that focuses on the role of unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories, was influenced by Sigmund Freud’s belief that many of the problems that his patients experience, including anxiety, depression, and sexual dysfunction, were the result of the effects of painful childhood experiences that they could no longer remember.
• James and the other members of the functionalist school were 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.
• John B. Watson, the first behaviourist, was an American psychologist influenced in large part by the work of the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov.
• Gestalt, emphasized by Hermann Ebbinghaus and Max Wertheimer, studies how people consider individual elements together as units or wholes.
• Posterior pituitary regulates water and salt balance and lack of hormones causes a less common form of diabetes.
• Hypothalamus controls much of the endocrine system by regulating the pituitary gland, which is located directly below and outside the brain.
• Synapse is a small space (20–30 billionths of a meter) that exists between an end bulb and its adjacent body organ (heart), muscles (head), or cell body.
• Hormone deficiency during development leads to stunted growth and mental retardation.
• End bulbs or terminal bulbs are tiny bubbles that are located at the extreme ends of the axon’s branches and each end bulb is like a miniature container that stores chemicals called neurotransmitters, which are used to communicate with neighboring cells.
• Endocrine System is made up of numerous glands that are located throughout the body and these glands secrete various chemicals, called hormones, which affect organs, muscles, and other glands in the body.
• Adrenal cortex is responsible for growth of pubic hair, a secondary sexual characteristic.
• Pituitary gland is a component of the endocrine system and regulates water and salt balance.
• Excitatory transmitters open chemical locks in the heart muscle and cause it to beat faster.
• Adrenal cortex, located outside part, secretes hormones that regulate sugar and salt balances and help the body resist stress.
• Dendrites are branchlike extensions that arise from the cell body and receive signals from other neurons, muscles, or sense organs and pass these signals to the cell body.
• Thyroid, located in the neck, regulates metabolism through the secretion of hormones.
• Transmitters are a chemical messenger that carries information between nerves and body organs, such as muscles and heart.
• Over-secretion results in high metabolism, weight loss, and nervousness.