Final Exam Psyc 289

• Psychology


  The study of the mind
• Psyche


  Soul (Greek)
• Logos


  The study of a subject (Greek)
• The words 'psyche' and 'logos' were first put together to define a topic of study

  16th century
• Psychology gained its usage among scholars

  18th century
• Psychology


  The literal meaning is "the study of the mind"
• Disciplines that influenced the early history of psychology

  • Philosophy
  • Physiology
• Wundt established the first formal laboratory for research in psychology at the University of Leipzig


  1879
• Wundt established the first journal devoted to publishing research on psychology

  1881
• Wundt's contributions


  • He declared that the new psychology should be a science modeled after fields such as physics and chemistry
  • He stated that the subject matter of the new science was consciousness - the awareness of immediate experience
• Psychology became the scientific study of conscious experience
• Structuralism


  • Emerged through the leadership of Edward Titchener
  • Based on the notion that the task of psychology is to analyze consciousness into its basic elements and investigate how these elements are related
  • Depended on the method of introspection (careful, systematic self-observation of one's own conscious experience)
• Functionalism


  • Heavily influenced by William James
  • Based on the belief that psychology should investigate the function or purpose of consciousness, rather than its structure
  • Focused on how people adapt their behaviour to the demands of the real world around them
• Whereas structuralists naturally gravitated to the lab, the functionalists were more interested in how people adapt their behaviour to the demands of the real world around them
• Behaviourism


  A theoretical orientation based on the premise that scientific psychology should study only observable behaviour
• Behaviour


  Any (observable) response or activity by an organism
• Watson proposed that psychologists abandon the study of consciousness because mental processes are ultimately private events that cannot be scientifically studied
• Nature-nurture issue


  Concerned with whether behaviour is determined mainly by genetic inheritance ("nature") or by environment and experience ("nurture")
• Watson's view on nature-nurture

  • He believed that behavior is governed primarily by the environment, not heredity
• Freud's psychoanalytic theory


  • Attempts to explain personality, motivation, and mental disorders by focusing on unconscious determinants of behaviour
  • Proposed that behaviour is greatly influenced by how people cope with their sexual urges
• Freud's theory gradually won acceptance, attracting prominent followers such as Carl Jung and Alfred Adler
• Skinner's view of psychology

  • He did not deny the existence of internal mental events but insisted that they could not be studied scientifically
  • He emphasized how environmental factors mould behaviour
• Humanism


  A theoretical orientation that emphasizes the unique qualities of humans, especially their freedom and their potential for personal growth
• Humanistic psychology


  • Maintains that people are not pawns of either their animal heritage or environmental circumstances
  • Argues that to fully understand people's behaviour, psychologists must take into account the fundamental human drive toward personal growth
• Major contemporary theoretical perspectives in psychology

  • Behavioural
  • Psychoanalytic
  • Humanistic
  • Cognitive
  • Biological
  • Evolutionary
• Clinical psychology


  The branch of psychology concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of psychological problems and disorders
• The emergence of clinical psychology in North America was driven by the need to screen military recruits and treat soldiers suffering from trauma during World War II
• Cognition


  The mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge
• Important people in the development of cognitive psychology

  • Jean Piaget (focused on cognitive development)
  • Noam Chomsky (researched the psychological underpinnings of language)
  • Herbert Simon and colleagues (researched problem solving)
• Cognitive theorists argue that psychology must study internal mental events to fully understand behaviour
• Behavioural neuroscience perspective


  • Maintains that much of our behaviour can be explained in terms of structures of and processes in the brain
  • Highlights the importance of physiological and neuropsychological perspectives
• Cell assembly


  Cognitive units in the brain that together or in concert with other cell assemblies facilitate behaviour
• Hebb's ideas suggested how neural networks might work and be organized, and set the stage for contemporary developments in cognition and neuroscience
• Cell assembly


  Cognitive units that together or in concert with other cell assemblies facilitate behaviour
• Hebb's ideas


  • Suggested how neural networks might work and be organized
  • Proposed that the key to understanding this was activity at the neuronal level
• Hebb's innovative ideas set the stage for contemporary developments in cognition and neuroscience and underscored the importance of the neuropsychological approach to understanding behaviour
• Interest in the neuroscience approach to psychology has increased dramatically in the past few years and is pervasive across all areas of psychology, including developmental, clinical, personality, and social psychology
• Psychology has largely been a Western (North American and European) enterprise with a rather provincial slant
• Traditionally, Western psychologists have paid scant attention to how well their theories and research might apply to non-Western cultures, to ethnic minorities in Western societies, or even to women as compared to men
• In recent decades Western psychologists have begun to recognize that their neglect of cultural variables has diminished the value of their work