Approaches

• What was psychology like in the 17th to 19th century?

  A branch of philosophy known as experimental philosophy
• What occured in psychology in 1879?

  Wilhelm Wundt opened the first experimental psychology lab in Germany and psychology becomes its own discipline
• What occurred in psychology in around 1900?

  Sigmund Freud emphasises the influence of the unconscious mind on behaviour in the psychodynamic approach, developing a person-centred therapy called psychoanalysis where physical problems are explained as mental conflicts
• What occurred in psychology in 1913?

  John Watson writes ‘psychology as the behaviourist views it’ and then, with Skinner, establishes the behaviourist approach which dominates psychology along with the psychodynamic approach for the first half of the 20th century
• What occurred in psychology in the early 1950s?

  Rogers and Maslow develop the humanistic approach - the ‘third force’ in psychology which rejects the psychodynamic and behaviourist idea that behaviour is determined by outside factors, emphasising the importance of self-determination and free will
• What occurred in psychology in the late 1950s?

  The digital computer gives psychologists a metaphor for the operations of the mind, with the cognitive approach reintroducing the study of mental processes but in a more scientific way than Wundt
• What happened in psychology in the 1960s?

  Bandura proposed the social learning theory which draws attention to the role of cognitive factors in learning, providing a bridge between the newly established cognitive approach and traditional behaviourism
• What happened in psychology in the 1980s?

  The biological approach becomes the dominant scientific perspective due to advances in technology that have increased understanding of the brain and biological processes
• What happened in psychology at the end of the 20th century?

  Cognitive neuroscience, which investigates how biological structures influence mental states, emerges as a distinct discipline bringing together cognitive and biological approaches
• When did Wilhelm Wundt open the first ever lab dedicated entirely to psychology?

  1879
• Where was Wundts lab?

  Leipzig, Germany
• Why is Wundts work significant?

  Marked the beginning of scientific psychology, separating it from its broader philosophical roots
• What was Wundts aim?

  To try and analyse the nature of human consciousness
• What was his systematic attempt to study the mind under controlled conditions called?

  Introspection
• What did Wundt develop theories about?

  Mental processes like language and perception
• What was Wundts method of investugating mental processes?

  Him and his co-workers recorded their experiences of various stimuli they were presented with such as different objects or sounds are divided their observations into thoughts, images and sensations
• What is isolating the structure of consciousness called?

  Structuralism
• How were Wundts procedures standardised?

  The stimuli were always in the same order and the same instructions issues to all participants
• What are the evaluations of Wundt?

  • Strength: Standardised instructions and in a lab to reduce extraneous variables
  • Weakness: Subjective data as it is self-report so could be influenced by personal perspectives and hard to establish ‘laws of behaviour’
  • Strength: Contributed to future approaches like cognitive approach and is the ‘father of psychology‘, even making the first textbook
• What does science involve?


  Building knowledge through systematic and objective measurement with an aim of discovering general laws
• Who was the first to question the value of introspection?

  Watson
• What was the issue with introspection?


  It produced subjective data so it was very difficult to establish general laws
• What did Watson and Skinner claim a truly scientific psychology must do?

  Study phenomena that can be observed objectively and measured
• How were behaviourists scientific?

  They focused on behaviours they could see and used carefully controlled experiments
• How was the cognitive approach scientific?

  They tested predictions using experiments
• How is the biological approach scientific?

  They use technology to investigate physiologiCal processes as they happen, for example fMRI, EEG and genetic testing
• What are the evaluations for the emergence of psychology as a science?

  • Strength: Modern psychology is scientific as it has the same aims as natural sciences (to describe and understand behaviour) and most approaches rely on experiments
  • Weakness: Not all approaches use objective methods - humanistic approach uses individual experience and psychodynamic approach uses case studies and either way humans are active participants with demand characteristics
  • Weakness: Kuhn - Psychology has no paradigm - set of principles and assumptions everyone agrees on
• What type of behaviour is the behaviourist approach interested in studying?

  Observable and measurable
• What is the behaviourist approach not interest in investigating?

  Mental processes of the mind as they were seen as irrelevant
• Why did Watson reject introspection?

  Because it involved too many concepts that were vague and difficult to measure
• How did behaviourists maintain more control and objectivity within their research?

  By using lab studies
• What do behaviourists think all behaviour is?

  Learned
• What do behaviourists describe a baby’s mind like?

  A ‘blank slate’, written on by experience
• What did behaviourists believe abut differences in learn ing between species?

  The basic processes that govern learning are the same in all species
• What did behaviourists test on?

  Animals
• What were the two types of learning identified by behaviourists?

  Classical and operant conditioning
• What is classical conditioning?

  Learning through association
• Who studied classical conditioning?

  Pavlov
• How did Pavlov demonstrate classical conditioning?

  Pavlov’s dogs learned to associate the sound of a bell with food, producing a salivation response every time they heard the sound
• What did Pavlov’s study show?

  How a neutral stimulus can be associated with an unconditioned stimulus which produces an unconditioned response, creating a conditioned stimulus and a conditioned response