The origins of psychology

• Psychology = "The scientific study of behaviour and mental processes and how these are affected by internal and external factors" (IB definition)
• Science = "The pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world, following a systematic methodology based on evidence"
• Features of science


  • Universal paradigm
  • Theory construction
  • Hypothesis testing
  • Deduction
  • Falsification
  • Replicability
  • Objectivity
  • Empirical method
• Introspection


  A means of learning about one's own currently ongoing mental states or processes. Introspective knowledge is often held to be more immediate or direct than sensory knowledge
• Conditions of introspection


  • Mentality condition
  • First-person condition
  • Temporal proximity condition
• Structuralism


  Isolating conscious thoughts into basic structures of thoughts, processes and images
• Skinner disagreed with the subjective nature of introspection, in which the findings differed greatly from individual to individual, making it difficult to establish general laws and unifying principles of behaviour and cognition
• Radical behaviourism


  Private events could be measured and quantified in the same way as observable behaviour
• The laboratory experiment method of research allowed for the objective measurement of observable behaviour, providing reliable data through controlling and eliminating the effects of extraneous and confounding variables, by using highly controlled conditions
• The cognitive approach flourished as psychologists had a metaphor for the functions and workings of the mind i.e. the 'computer analogy'
• Bandura agreed with behaviourist principles (i.e. that behaviour is learnt through experience) but argued that these principles are better applied to a social context
• Advances in technology, particularly with brain scanning techniques in the 1970s, allowed psychologists to objectively observe and measure the biological basis of behaviour