Chapter 1

• Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior
• The earliest schools of psychology are structuralism and functionalism.
• Structuralism is focused on understanding the conscious experience through introspection.
• The historically important person of structuralism is William Wundt
• Functionalism emphasizes how mental activities helped an organism adapt to its environment.
• The historically important person of functionalism is William James.
• Freud and the psychoanalytic theory:

  • late 1800s, early 1900s
  • focus on the unconscious and on childhood experiences
  • theory of personality: interaction between id, ego, and superego
  • theory of development: oral, anal, phallic, latency, gential stages
  • today, controversial but still influential
• Gestalt theory: Wertheimer, Koffka, Kohler

  • early 1900s
  • examined perception
  • explores the idea that although a sensory experience can be broken down to individual parts, how those parts relate to each other as a whole is often what the individual responds to in perception
• Behaviorism: Pavlov, Watson, Skinner

  • early to mid-1900s
  • focus on observing and controlling behavior: conditioning; reinforcement and punishment
  • modified versions of the operant conditioning chamber, or Skinner box, are still widely used in research settings today
• Humanism: Maslow and Rogers

  • 1950s
  • focuses on the potential for good that is innate to all humans
  • Emphasizes the whole person and views people as able to take the lead in their own therapy
• Cognitive psychology:

  • 1920s
  • accepts the use of the scientific method and generally rejects introspection as a valid method of investigation
  • acknowledges the existence of internal mental states, unlike behaviorist psychology
  • major area of research include perception, memory, categorization, knowledge representation, numerical cognition, language, and thinking
• The five pillars of psychology are:

  1. biological: biopsychology/neuroscience, sensation, consciousness
  2. cognitive: perception, thinking, intelligence, memory
  3. developmental: learning, lifespan development
  4. social and personality: social, personality, emotion, motivation
  5. mental and physical health: abnormal, therapies, stress, lifestyle, and health
• The biological pillar:

  1. biopsychology: explores how our biology influences behavior. The fields of behavioral neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and neuropsychology are all subfields of biological psychology
  2. evolutionary psychology: explores how human behavior evolved
  3. sensation and perception: research is interdisciplinary, but there is a focus on the physiological aspects of sensory systems, as well as in the psychological experience of sensory information
• The cognitive pillar: focuses on thoughts, and their relationship to experiences and actions; studies language, cognition, memory, intelligence, and more
• The developmental pillar:

  • includes behavioral psychology and learning/conditioning (classical and operant conditioning)
  • developmental psychology is the scientific study of development across a lifespan (stages and milestones of development)
• The social and personality pillar:

  1. social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others
  2. personality psychology is the study of patterns of thoughts and behaviors that make each individual unique; a personality trait is a consistent pattern of thought and behavior
• Five factor of model of personality:

  • O: openness (imagination, feelings, actions, ideas)
  • C: conscientiousness (competence, self-discipline, thoughtfulness, goal-driven)
  • E: extroversion (sociability, assertiveness, emotional expression)
  • A: agreeableness (cooperative, trustworthy, good-natured)
  • N: neuroticism (tendency toward unstable emotions)
• The mental health and physical health pillar:

  1. abnormal psychology focuses on abnormal thoughts and behaviors
  2. clinical psychology focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and other problematic patterns of behavior
  3. health psychology focuses on how health is affected by the interaction of biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors
• Other sub-fields in psychology:

  1. industrial-organizational psychology applies psychological theories, principles, and research findings in industrial and organizational settings
  2. forensic psychology applies the science and practice of psychology to the justice system
  3. sport and exercise psychology focuses on the interactions between mental and emotional factors and physical performance in sports, exercise, and other activities