Chapter 1:Psychology -

The evolution of a science

Slides prepared by Randall E. Osborne, Texas State University-San Marcos,

adapted by Dr Mark Forshaw, Staffordshire University, UK

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Psychology Today

Psychology today is a sophisticated and diverse subject. Psychological studies and discoveries are wide-ranging and varied including (to name a few):

• Using state of the art technologies to find out what happens in the brain when we take an intelligence test

• Examining the impact of culture on individuals• Discovering new treatments for depression

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Fields of Psychological Inquiry

• Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behaviour.

• The mind refers to our private inner experience.• Behaviour refers to observable actions of human

beings and nonhuman animals, the things that we do in the world, by ourselves or with others.

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Fields of Psychological Inquiry

• Biological: how our physical body creates and is affected by behaviour

• Cognitive: how we think• Developmental: how we change over time• Individual differences: what makes us distinct

from others• Social: how we interact with each other

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• What are the bases of perceptions, thoughts, memories, and feelings, or our subjective sense of self?

• How does the mind usually allow us to function effectively in the world?

• Why does the mind occasionally function so ineffectively in the world?

What kind of questions is Psychology interested in?

Psychology’s Roots: the path to the science of a

mind

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Psychology’s ancestors

• Plato (428 BC–347 BC) argues for nativism– innate knowledge

• Aristotle (384 BC–322 BC) and “tabula rasa”– philosophical empiricism

• Descartes (1596–1650) – dualism– pineal gland

• Phrenology – Franz Gall (1758–1828) – Literally mapping the mind

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From Physiology to Psychology

• Physiology – the study of biological processes, especially in the human body.

• William James, a pioneer of psychology in the mid 19th century, was inspired by two physiologists:

• Helmholtz (1821–1894) – the speed of responses• Wundt (1832–1920) – structuralism

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Exporting European Psychology

• Titchener (1867–1927)– hard introspective labor– Elemental qualities of consciousness

• James (1842–1910)– functional approach

• Darwin – The Origin of Species (1859)– natural selection

• G. Stanley Hall (1844–1924)– child development & adolescence

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Errors and Illusions Reveal Psychology

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Errors and Illusions Reveal Psychology

• Illusions of movement– Müller-Lyer line illusion– Max Wertheimer (train ride & movement)

• Birth of Gestalt psychology– perception of wholes, not parts

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Mental Disorders and Multiple Selves

• Psychological disorders can shed light on the workings of the “normal” mind – Felida X– dissociative identity disorder– hysteria– James’ view of and awareness of single self

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Freud and Psychoanalytic Theory

• Freud’s work with Breuer• Psychoanalytic theory

– unconscious– psychoanalysis– sexual experiences– clues into nature of mind from mental aberrations

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Influence of Psychoanalysis and the Humanistic Response

• Freud — one of the most influential thinkers• Psychoanalysis — greatest impact on clinical practice

– inherent pessimism• Humanistic psychology

– positive potential– Abraham Maslow & Carl Rogers

- clients not patients- driven toward future rather than prisoners of the past

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Psychology in the 20th Century: Behaviourism

Takes Centre Stage

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Psychology in the 20th Century

• Behaviourism — advocated that psychologists should restrict themselves to the scientific study of objectively observable behaviour.

• Watson (1878–1958) & emergence of behaviourism– study what people “do”– influenced by work of Ivan Pavlov

• Stimulus-response• Little Albert

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B. F. Skinner & Behaviourism

• Skinner (1904—1990) • The conditioning chamber (“Skinner box”)

– consequences matter– influenced by work of Ivan Pavlov

- response- reinforcement

• Teaching machines (break complicated task into small bits and use reinforcement)

• No free will (reinforcements from our past)

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Beyond Behaviourism: Psychology Expands

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Beyond Behaviourism• Advent of computers

– decline in behaviourism • Information processing systems

– can we think of mental events as the flow of information through the mind?

– computer metaphor• Cognitive psychology

– Remembering, attending, thinking, believing, evaluating, feeling, and assessing

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The Emergence of Cognitive Psychology

• Sir Frederic Bartlett (1886–1969) — memory– expectations affect memory

• Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) — nonsense syllables for studying memory

• Piaget (1896–1980)– cognitive errors of children and insight into mind

• Kurt Lewin (1890–1947)– behaviour is predicted by person’s subjective experience

of the world

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The Emergence of Cognitive Psychology — Technology

• World War II — how to train radar operators– required an understanding of perception, attention,

identification, memory, & decision-making• Donald Broadbent (1926–1993)

– paying attention to several things at once• George Miller

– similarity in capacity limitations across situations– 7 +/- 2

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The Emergence of Cognitive Psychology — Technology

• Writing computer programs to mimic language?– Skinner’s Verbal Behaviour– Chomsky’s critique based on novel constructions

• Developments of 1950s set stage for explosion of cognitive psychology in the 1960s

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The Rise of Cognitive Neuroscience

• Cognitive psychologists studied the “software” of the brain– but what about the hardware?

• Karl Lashley (1890–1958)– train rats to run maze– surgically remove brain parts & run maze again– hope to find spot in brain where learning occurs

• Scientists who followed him developed the area now called behavioural neuroscience

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The Rise of Cognitive Neuroscience

• The goal of cognitive neuroscience is to learn about relationship between brain and behaviour

• Which brain parts perform which functions?• New technologies to observe living brains (such

as PET scans depicted in Figure 1.3)

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The Rise of Cognitive Neuroscience

• Behavioural neuroscience– links psychological processes to activities in nervous

system– cannot do “experimental” brain surgery

• Cognitive neuroscience– brain scanning techniques– which brain parts are active with which tasks?

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The Adaptive Mind: the Emergence of Evolutionary Psychology

• Garcia — rats learn to associate nausea with food smell faster than with a flashing light– adaptive– organisms are not just blank slates

• Charles Darwin (1809–1892)– theory of natural selection

• Evolutionary psychology– things that remain serve or served an adaptive

function

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Beyond the Individual: Social and Cultural

Perspectives

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Social and Cultural Perspectives

• Social psychology– Triplett’s bicycle study– Lewin’s “field theory”– Asch’s “mental chemistry”

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Social and Cultural Perspectives

• Cultural psychology– defining “culture”– Wundt paid attention to culture?– anthropology and psychology– absolutism– relativism

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The Profession of Psychology: It’s not just common sense

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Psychology’s Past and Present• July 1892 — APA is born at Clark University

– 7 original members– 150,000 members today– 20% come from academia

• British Psychological Society– Formed 1901, 45,000 chartered members

• Australian Psychological Society• Broke away from BPS in 1966, now 17,500

members

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What Psychologists Do• Lecturing and Researching in Universities• Private practice• Educational Psychologists• Health Psychologists• Counselling psychologists• Sport and Exercise Psychologists• Forensic Psychologists• Occupational Psychologists• Clinical Psychologists• Clinical Neuropsychologists

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