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1

What Is Psychology?

MODULE 1 .1

Psychologists’ GoalsGeneral Points About Psychology

Major Philosophical Issues in Psychology

Free Will Versus Determinism

CRITICAL THINKING: A STEP FURTHER DeterminismThe Mind–Brain Problem

CRITICAL THINKING: A STEP FURTHER Mind and BrainThe Nature–Nurture Issue

CRITICAL THINKING: A STEP FURTHER Nature and Nurture

What Psychologists DoPsychologists in Teaching and

ResearchService Providers to IndividualsService Providers to Organizations

CRITICAL THINKING: A STEP FURTHER I/O Psychology

Should You Major in Psychology?

In Closing: Types of Psychologists

Summary

Answers to Concept Checks

MODULE 1 .2

Psychology Then and NowThe Early Era

Wilhelm Wundt and the First Psychological Laboratory

Edward Titchener and Structuralism

William James and Functionalism Studying SensationDarwin and the Study of Animal

IntelligenceMeasuring Human Intelligence

The Rise of BehaviorismJohn B. WatsonStudies of Learning

From Freud to Modern ClinicalPsychology

Recent Trends in Psychology

In Closing: Psychology Throughthe Years

Summary

Answers to Concept Checks

Chapter Ending: Key Terms and ActivitiesKey Terms

Suggestions for Further Reading

Web/Technology Resources

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� Who has the correct answers?None of us do, at least not always.Even when people we trust seemvery confident of their opinions, weshould ask for their evidence orreasoning.

If you are like most students, you start off assuming that just about everything you read in your textbooks

and everything your professors tell you must be true. But what if it isn’t? Suppose a group of impostors has replaced the fac-

ulty of your college. They pretend to know what they are talking about

and they all vouch for one another’s competence, but in fact they are

all unqualified. They have managed to find textbooks that support their

prejudices, but the information in the textbooks is all wrong, too. If that

happened, how would you know?

As long as we are entertaining such skeptical thoughts, why limit

ourselves to colleges? When you read advice columns in the newspa-

per, read books about how to invest money, or listen to political com-

mentators, how do you know who has the right answers?

The answer is that no one has the right answers all of the time. Pro-

fessors, textbook authors, advice columnists, politicians, and others

have strong reasons for some beliefs and weak reasons for others, and

sometimes, they think they have strong reasons but discover to their

embarrassment that they were wrong. I don’t mean to imply that you

should disregard everything you read or hear. But you should expect

people to tell you the reasons for their conclusions so that you can

draw your own conclusions. At least if you make a mistake, it will be

your own and not someone else’s.

You have just encountered the theme of this book:Evaluate the evidence. You have heard and you will continue to

hear all sorts of claims concerning psychology. Some are valid, others

are wrong, many are valid under certain conditions, and some are too

vague to be either right or wrong. When you finish this book, you will

be in a better position to examine evidence and to judge for yourself

which claims to take seriously.

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• What is psychology?• What philosophical questions motivate psycholo-

gists?• What do various kinds of psychologists do?• Should you consider majoring in psychology?

The term psychology derives from the Greek rootspsyche, meaning “soul” or “mind,” and logos, mean-ing “word.” Psychology is literally the study of themind or soul. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, psy-chology was defined as the scientific study of themind. Around 1920, psychologists became disen-chanted with the idea of studying the mind. First, sci-ence deals with what we can observe, and no one canobserve a mind. Second, talking about “the mind”seemed to imply that mind is a thing with an inde-pendent existence. Most researchers consider mind aprocess, more like a fire than like the piece of woodthat is undergoing the fire. At any rate, through themid-1900s, psychologists defined their field simply asthe study of behavior.

However, people care about what they see, hear,and think, not just about what they do. When you lookat this optical illusion and say that the horizontal partof the top line looks longer than that of the bottomline (although really they are the same length), wewant to know why it looks longer to you, not just whyyou said it looks longer. So for a compromise, let’s de-fine psychology as the systematic study of behaviorand experience. The word experience lets us discussyour perceptions without implying that a mind existsindependently of your body.

The kind of psychologist familiar to most people isclinical psychologists—those who try to help worried,depressed, or otherwise troubled people. That field isonly part of psychology. Psychology also includes re-search on sensation and perception, learning andmemory, hunger and thirst, sleep, attention, child de-velopment, and more. You might expect that a coursein psychology will teach you to “analyze” people, to

decipher hidden aspects of their personality, perhapseven to use psychology to control them. It will not.You will learn to understand certain aspects of behav-ior, but you will gain no dazzling powers. Ideally, youwill become more skeptical of those who claim to an-alyze people’s personality from small samples of theirbehavior.

General Points About PsychologyLet’s start with six general themes that arise repeat-edly in psychology. They may not be the most impor-tant things you learn about psychology; depending onyour own interests, something that strikes other peo-ple as a minor detail might be extremely important foryou. However, the following points apply so widelythat we shall encounter them frequently.

“It Depends”That is, few statements apply to all people’s behaviorat all times. For example, almost any statement de-pends on age. (Newborn infants differ drastically fromolder children, and children from adults.) Almost anybehavior varies among individuals depending on theirgenetics, health, past experiences, and whether theyare currently awake or asleep. Some aspects of behav-ior differ between males and females or between oneculture and another. Some aspects depend on thetime of day, the temperature of the room, or how re-cently someone ate. The way people answer a ques-tion depends on exactly how the question is worded,what other questions they have already answered, andwho is asking the question.

When I describe “it depends” as a general truth ofpsychology, you may think I am making fun of psy-chology, suggesting that psychology has no real an-swers. On the contrary, I believe that “it depends” is aserious point. The key is to know what it depends on.The further you pursue your studies of psychology, themore you will become attuned to the wealth of influ-ences on our behavior, some of which are so subtlethat we might easily overlook them. For one example,decades ago, two psychology laboratories in differentparts of the United States were conducting similarstudies on human learning but consistently reporting

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MODULE 1.1Psychologists’ Goals



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4 CHAPTER 1 What Is Psychology?

contradictory results. Both researchers were experi-enced and highly respected, they thought they werefollowing the same procedures, and they did not un-derstand why their results differed. Eventually, one ofthem traveled to the other’s university to watch theother in action. Almost immediately, he noticed a keydifference in procedure: the chairs in which the par-ticipants sat! His colleague at the other university hadobtained some chairs from a dentist who retired. Sothe research participants were sitting in these dentist’schairs, which reminded them of visits to the dentist.They were sitting there in a state of heightened anxi-ety, which altered their behavior (Kimble, 1967).

Another way of saying “it depends” is that no onereason explains your behavior fully. To illustrate, youmight try listing the reasons you are reading this bookright now, such as (a) I like to keep up to date on read-ing assignments, (b) I was curious what psychology isall about, (c) my roommate who is also taking thiscourse read the chapter and said it was interesting, (d)I have about an hour before dinner with nothing else todo, (e) it’s raining outside so I don’t want to go any-where, (f) I want to procrastinate working on a lesspleasant assignment for some other course, and so on.In short, people seldom do anything for just one reason.

Research Progress Depends on Good MeasurementNobel Prize–winning biologist Sidney Brenner wasquoted as saying, “Progress in science depends onnew techniques, new discoveries, and new ideas,probably in that order” (McElheny, 2004, p. 71). Forexample, brain scans and other new techniques en-able researchers to measure brain activity in more de-tail and with greater accuracy than in the past, result-ing in rapid increases in our knowledge. Similarly,psychologists’ understanding has advanced fastest ontopics such as sensory processes, learning, and mem-ory because researchers can measure these aspects ofbehavior fairly accurately. On topics such as emotionand personality, research progress has been slowerbecause of the difficulty of measurement. As you pro-ceed through this text, especially in the second half,you will note that we occasionally have to interruptsome discussion to ask, “Wait . . . how well do thosescores measure intelligence?” or “When people saythey are happy, how do we know whether they reallyare happy?” Areas of psychology with less certainmeasurement have only tentative conclusions andslow progress.

Correlation Does Not Indicate CausationThis statement will make more sense to you after youread about correlation in chapter 2. Here, let’s con-sider the idea briefly: A correlation indicates that twothings tend to go together. For example, taller people

tend to be heavier than shorter people, on the aver-age. Better educated people tend to have better payingjobs than less educated people. And so forth. Some-times, we are tempted to draw cause-and-effect con-clusions after observing a correlation. For example,people with schizophrenia are more likely than otherpeople to abuse alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana. Al-though we might be tempted to assume that thesesubstances increase the risk of schizophrenia, we can-not draw that conclusion. It is equally plausible thathaving schizophrenia increases one’s uses of alcohol,tobacco, and marijuana (Degenhardt, Hall, & Lynskey,2003). That is, a correlation between two items doesnot tell us which one caused the other or, indeed,whether either of them caused the other. As long asyou continue studying psychology or related fields,your instructors and texts will continue emphasizingthis point.

Variations Among Individuals Reflect Both Heredity and EnvironmentWithin any group people differ in their interests, pref-erences, abilities, and personalities. What accountsfor these differences? Some relate to differences in ex-perience. For example, suppose you enjoy using com-puters. You could not have nurtured that interest ifyou had lived in some part of the world without elec-tricity. However, experiences and opportunities do notaccount for all of the differences among people. Withregard to almost everything psychologists have mea-sured, identical twins resemble each other moreclosely than fraternal twins do. The greater similaritybetween identical twins is taken as evidence of a ge-netic influence on behavior. Environment and hered-ity can also combine their influences in many ways(Moffitt, Caspi, & Rutter, 2006). For example, a genethat enhances fear produces a bigger effect after youhave had frightening experiences.

The Best Predictor of Future Behavior Is Past Behavior in Similar SituationsPeople are fairly consistent in how they act. If in thepast you have usually started on every schoolworktask as soon as it was assigned, you will probably dothe same this semester. If you have almost alwaysprocrastinated your assignments until the last possi-ble minute, you will probably do the same this se-mester, despite your good intentions to the contrary.(If this is you, I shall be delighted if you prove mewrong.)

Similarly, if you consider marrying someone andwonder how that person would treat you after mar-riage, ask how that person treats you now. If we wantto predict how dangerous some prisoner will be afterrelease, we should ask how dangerous this person hasbeen in the past. If you wonder whether you can trust



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Module 1.1 Psychologists’ Goals 5

someone to fulfill a promise, ask how well that personhas kept promises in the past.

Some Statements in Psychology ReflectStronger Evidence Than OthersAuthors revise psychology textbooks because of newresearch, and psychologists conduct new research be-cause of the many things we don’t know. Unfortu-nately, people sometimes express strong opinionseven when the evidence is weak. Admittedly, wesometimes have to form opinions without completeevidence. For example, parents have to decide how torear children without waiting for conclusive researchabout what works best. Still, it is important to knowwhat evidence supports an opinion. For example,solid evidence indicates that a woman who drinksmuch alcohol during pregnancy risks damage to herinfant’s brain. Therefore, we take whatever steps wecan to discourage pregnant women from drinking. Onthe other hand, what are the consequences of lettingchildren watch television all day? Here, opinions runstrong, but the evidence is weak. Anyone who ex-presses an opinion should state his or her evidence (orlack of it) so that others can overrule that opinion inthe light of newer, better evidence.

Major Philosophical Issues in PsychologyMany psychological concerns date back to the philoso-phers of ancient Greece. Although psychology hasmoved away from philosophy in its methods, it contin-ues to be motivated by some of the samequestions. Three of the most profound arefree will versus determinism, the mind–brainproblem, and the nature–nurture issue.

Free Will Versus DeterminismThe scientific approach seeks the immediatecauses of an event (what led to what) insteadof the final or ultimate causes (the purpose ofthe event in an overall plan). That is, scien-tists act on the basis of determinism, the as-sumption that everything that happens has acause, or determinant, in the observableworld.

Is the same true for human behavior? Weare, after all, part of the physical world, andour brains are made of chemicals. Accordingto the determinist assumption, everythingwe do has causes. This view seems to conflictwith the impression all of us have that “Imake the decisions about my actions. Some-times, when I am making a decision, like

� Behavior is guided by external forces, such as waves, and by forces withinthe individual. According to the determinist view, even those internal forcesfollow physical laws.

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what to eat for lunch or which sweater to buy, I am indoubt right up to the last second. The decision couldhave gone either way. I wasn’t controlled by anything,and no one could have predicted what I would do.”The belief that behavior is caused by a person’s in-dependent decisions is known as free will.

Some psychologists maintain that free will is an il-lusion (Wegner, 2002): What you call a conscious in-tention is more a prediction than a cause of your be-havior. When you have the conscious experience of“deciding” to move a finger, the behavior is alreadystarting to happen. Other psychologists and philoso-phers reply that you do make decisions in the sensethat something within you initiates the action. Never-theless, your behavior still follows laws of cause and ef-fect. When you order soup and salad for lunch, the de-cision was a product of forces within you, as well as theexternal situation. The kind of person you are also de-termines what career you will choose, how hard youwill work at it, how kind you will be to others, and soforth. However, the “you” that makes all these deci-sions is itself a product of your heredity and the eventsof your life. (You did not create yourself.) In this sense,yes, you have a will, and you might even call it “free”will depending on what you mean by “free” (Dennett,2003). If you mean uncaused, then your will is not free.

The test of determinism is ultimately empirical: Ifeverything we do has a cause, our behavior should bepredictable. In some cases it definitely is. For exam-ple, after a sudden, unexpected, loud noise, I can pre-dict that, unless you are deaf, in a coma, or paralyzed,you will tense your muscles. I can even be more pre-cise and predict you will tense your neck muscles inless than a quarter of a second.



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In other cases psychologists’ predictions are morelike those of a meteorologist. A meteorologist whowants to predict tomorrow’s weather for some city willwant to know the location and terrain of that city, to-day’s weather, and so forth. Even with all that infor-mation, the meteorologist will predict something suchas, “High temperature around 30, low temperaturearound 20, with a 10% chance of precipitation.” Theimprecision and occasional errors do not mean thatthe weather is “free” but only that it is subject to somany influences that no one can predict it exactly.

Similarly, a psychologist trying to predict your be-havior for the next few days will want to know as muchas possible about your past behavior, that of yourfriends and family, your current health, your genetics,where you live, and a great deal more. Even with all thatinformation, the psychologist cannot predict perfectly.

Determinists are unembarrassed by their inabilityto predict behavior precisely; after all, human behav-ior is subject to a great many influences. Still, themore knowledge we gain, the better predictions wecan make. Anyone who rejects determinism must in-sist that predictions of behavior could never becomeaccurate, even with complete information about theperson and the situation. To that idea a deterministreplies that the only way to find out is to try.

Let’s note an important point here: The assumptionthat behaviors follow cause and effect seems to work,and anyone planning to do research on behavior is al-most forced to start with this assumption. Still, to behonest, it is an assumption, not a certainty. We can testthe assumption only by extensive research, and in asense all research in psychology tests the assumption.The question of determinism arises explicitly in chap-ter 6 (learning) and module 10.1 (consciousness).

C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G

A STEP FURTHER

Determinism

What kind of evidence, if any, would support theconcept of free will? To support the concept offree will, one would need to demonstrate that noconceivable theory could make correct predic-tions about some aspect of behavior. Should apsychologist who believes in free will conductthe same kind of research that determinists con-duct, a different kind, or no research at all?

The Mind–Brain ProblemEverything we experience or do depends on the physicsand chemistry of the nervous system. Then what, ifanything, is the mind? The philosophical question ofhow experience relates to the brain is the mind–brainproblem (or mind–body problem). In a universe com-

posed of matter and energy, why is there such a thingas a conscious mind? One view, called dualism, holdsthat the mind is separate from the brain but somehowcontrols the brain and therefore the rest of the body.However, dualism contradicts the law of conservationof matter and energy, one of the cornerstones ofphysics. According to that principle, the only way to in-fluence any matter or energy, including the matter andenergy that compose your body, is to act on it withother matter or energy. That is, if the mind isn’t com-posed of matter or energy, it can’t do anything. For thatreason nearly all brain researchers and philosophers fa-vor monism, the view that conscious experience is in-separable from the physical brain. That is, either themind is something the brain produces, or mind andbrain activity are just two terms for the same thing. Asyou can imagine, the mind–brain problem is a thornyphilosophical issue, but it does lend itself to research,some of which we shall discuss in chapter 3 on thebrain and chapter 9 on consciousness.

The photos in Figure 1.1 show brain activity whilea person is engaged in nine different tasks, as mea-sured by a technique called positron-emission tomog-raphy (PET). Red indicates the highest degree of brainactivity, followed by yellow, green, and blue. As youcan see, the various tasks increase activity in differentbrain areas, although all areas show some activity atall times (Phelps & Mazziotta, 1985). Data such asthese show a close relationship between brain activityand psychological events. You might well ask: Did thebrain activity cause the thoughts, or did the thoughtscause the brain activity? Most brain researchers replythat neither brain activity nor mental activity causesthe other; rather, brain activity and mental activityare the same thing (see Dennett, 1991).

Even if we accept this position, we are still farfrom understanding the mind–brain relationship. Ismental activity associated with all brain activity orjust certain types? Why does conscious experienceexist at all? Could a brain get along without it? Re-search studies are not about to resolve these ques-tions and put philosophers out of business. But re-search results do constrain the philosophical answersthat we can seriously consider.


A STEP FURTHER

Mind and Brain

One way to think about the mind–brain relation-ship is to ask whether something other than abrain—a computer, for example—could have amind. How would we know? If we built a computerthat could perform all the intellectual functionsthat humans perform, could we then decide thatthe computer is conscious, as human beings are?



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The Nature–Nurture IssueWhy do most little boys spend more time than littlegirls with toy guns and trucks and less time withdolls? Are such behavioral differences mostly the re-sult of biological differences between boys and girls, orare they mainly the result of differences in how soci-ety treats boys and girls?

Alcohol abuse is a big problem in some culturesand a rare one in others. Are these differences entirelya matter of social custom, or do genes influence alco-hol use also?

Certain psychological disorders are more commonin large cities than in small towns and in the country-side. Does life in crowded cities somehow cause psy-chological disorders? Or do people develop such dis-orders because of a genetic predisposition and thenmove to big cities in search of jobs, housing, and wel-fare services?

Each of these questions is related to the na-ture–nurture issue (or heredity–environment is-

sue): How do differences in behavior relate to dif-ferences in heredity and environment? The na-ture–nurture issue shows up from time to time inpractically all fields of psychology, and it seldom hasa simple answer. It is the central issue of chapter 5(development) and also important in chapters 9(intelligence), 11 (motivation), and 16 (abnormalbehavior).


A STEP FURTHER

Nature and Nurture

Suppose researchers conclude that alcohol abuseis uncommon in Turkey because of Turkey’sstrict legal sanctions against alcohol use. Shouldwe then assume that the differences in alcoholuse among people in other countries is also dueto nongenetic causes?

FIGURE 1.1 PET scans show the brainactivity of normal people engaged indifferent activities. Left column: Brainactivity with no special stimulation, whilepassively watching something or listeningto something. Center column: Brainactivity while listening to music,language, or both. Right column: Brainactivity during performance of a cognitivetask, an auditory memory task, and thetask of moving the fingers of the righthand. Red indicates the highest activity,followed by yellow, green, and blue.Arrows indicate the most active areas.(Courtesy of Michael E. Phelps and John C. Mazziotta, University of

California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine)



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C O N C E P T C H E C K

1. In what way does all scientific research presupposedeterminism?

2. What is one major objection to dualism? (Checkyour answers on page 16.)

What Psychologists DoWe have considered some major philosophical issuesrelated to the entire field of psychology. However, psy-chologists usually deal with smaller, more answerablequestions.

Psychology is an academic discipline with special-ties that range from the helping professions to re-search on brain functions. The educational require-ments for becoming a psychologist vary from onecountry to another. In the United States and Canada,a psychologist starts with a bachelor’s degree (usuallyrequiring 4 years of college) and then probably a PhDdegree (at least another 4 or 5 years, often more). Agrowing number of clinical psychologists (those deal-ing directly with clients) have a PsyD (doctor of psy-chology) degree, which generally requires less re-search experience than a PhD but a similar period oftraining. Some work with a master’s degree (interme-diate between a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate),but the opportunities are more limited.

Psychologists work in many occupational settings,as shown in Figure 1.2. The most common settings arecolleges and universities, private practice, hospitalsand mental health clinics, and government agencies.

Psychologists in Teaching and ResearchMany psychologists, especially those who are notclinical psychologists, have positions in colleges and universities where they teach and do researchthat will ideally lead to a greater understanding ofbehavior and experience. Here, let’s preview a fewmajor categories of psychological research. To someextent different kinds of psychologists study differ-ent topics. For example, a developmental psycholo-gist might observe children’s attempts to controltheir emotions, while biological psychologists mightexamine the consequences of some kind of braindamage. However, different kinds of psychologistssometimes study the same questions but approachthem in different ways. To illustrate, let’s consider

� Why do different children develop different interests? Theymay have had different hereditary tendencies, but they havealso experienced different environmental influences.Separating the roles of nature and nurture can be difficult.

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businesses32%

Privatepractice

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Government11% Other

educational6%

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34%

FIGURE 1.2 More than one third of psychologists work inacademic institutions; the remainder find positions in a variety ofsettings. (Based on data of Chamberlin, 2000)



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the example of how we select what to eat. How doyou know what is edible and what isn’t? We won’tfind just one answer; as usual, your behavior hasmany explanations. Different kinds of psychologistsseek different kinds of explanations.

Developmental PsychologyDevelopmental psychologists study how behaviorchanges with age, “from womb to tomb.” For example,they might examine language development from age 2to 4 or memory from age 60 to 80. After describing thechanges over age, they try to explain those changes,frequently dealing with the nature–nurture issue.

With regard to food selection, some taste prefer-ences are present from birth. Newborns prefer sweettastes and avoid bitter and sour substances. However,they appear indifferent to salty tastes, as if they couldnot yet taste salts (Beauchamp, Cowart, Mennella, &Marsh, 1994). Toddlers around the age of 11⁄2 will tryto eat almost anything they can fit into their mouths,unless it tastes sour or bitter. For that reason parentsneed to keep dangerous substances like furniture pol-ish out of toddlers’ reach. Later, they become increas-ingly selective, even “picky” about what foods theywill accept. However, even up to age 7 or 8, about theonly reason children give for refusing to eat somethingis that they think it would taste bad (Rozin, Fallon, &Augustoni-Ziskind, 1986). As they grow older, they

cite more complex reasons for rejecting foods, such ashealth concerns.

Learning and MotivationThe research field of learning and motivation studieshow behavior depends on the outcomes of past be-haviors and current motivations. How often we en-gage in any particular behavior depends on the resultsof that behavior in the past.

We learn our food choices largely by learning whatnot to eat. For example, if you eat something and thenfeel sick, you form an aversion to the taste of that food,especially if it was unfamiliar. It doesn’t matter whetheryou consciously think the food made you ill. If you eatsomething at an amusement park and then go on a wildride and get sick, you may never again like that food.Even though you know the ride was at fault, your brainstill associates the food with the sickness.

Cognitive PsychologyCognition refers to thought and knowledge. A cogni-tive psychologist studies those processes. (The rootcogn- also shows up in the word recognize, which liter-ally means “to know again.”) Consider the role of cog-nition in food selection: Most animals will eat anythingthey can find that tastes good and does not make themsick. Humans, however, often refuse an edible food justbecause of the very idea of it (Rozin & Fallon, 1987;Rozin, Millman, & Nemeroff, 1986). In the UnitedStates, most people refuse to eat meat from dogs, cats,or horses. Vegetarians reject all meat and some are dis-tressed even to watch other people eat it. The longerpeople have been vegetarians, the more firmly theytend to regard meat eating as not only undesirable butalso immoral (Rozin, Markwith, & Stoess, 1997).

� Infants and young children will try to eat almost anything. Asthey grow older, they learn to avoid foods for reasons other thanjust taste.

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How would you like to try the tasty morsels de-scribed in Figure 1.3? Most people find the idea of eat-ing insects repulsive, even if the insects were sterilizedto kill all the germs (Rozin & Fallon, 1987). Would yoube willing to drink a glass of apple juice after a deadcockroach had been dipped into it? What if the cock-roach had been carefully sterilized? Some people notonly refuse to drink that glass of apple juice but say theyhave lost their taste for apple juice in general (Rozin etal., 1986). Would you drink pure water from a brand-new, never-used toilet bowl? Would you eat a piece ofchocolate fudge shaped like dog feces? If not, you areguided by the idea of the food, not its taste or safety.

Biological PsychologyA biopsychologist (or behavioral neuroscientist) triesto explain behavior in terms of biological factors,such as electrical and chemical activities in the ner-vous system, the effects of drugs and hormones, ge-netics, and evolutionary pressures. How would a bio-logical psychologist approach the question of howpeople (or animals) select foods?

A major contributor to food selection is taste, andwe have some built-in taste preferences. From birthon, people (and nearly all other mammals) avidly con-sume sweets but spit out anything sour or bitter.

A small part of the difference among people in theirtaste preferences relates to the fact that some peoplehave up to three times as many taste buds as others do,mostly for genetic reasons. The genes vary within eachpopulation, although the relative frequencies of strongtasters and weak tasters are fairly similar for Asia, Eu-

rope, and Africa (Wooding et al., 2004). People with themost taste buds usually have the least tolerance forstrong tastes, including black coffee, black breads, hotpeppers, grapefruit, radishes, and Brussels sprouts(Bartoshuk, Duffy, Lucchina, Prutkin, & Fast, 1998;Drewnowski, Henderson, Short, & Barratt-Fornell,1998). They also tend to be satisfied with small por-tions of desserts, as they don’t need much sugar to sat-isfy their craving for sweet tastes.

Hormones also affect taste preferences in severalways. For example, many years ago, a young childshowed a strong craving for salt. As an infant he lickedthe salt off crackers and bacon without eating the fooditself. He put a thick layer of salt on everything he ate,and sometimes, he swallowed salt directly from theshaker. When deprived of salt, he stopped eating andbegan to waste away. At the age of 31⁄2, he was takento the hospital and fed the usual hospital fare. He soondied of salt deficiency (Wilkins & Richter, 1940).

The reason was that he had defective adrenalglands, which secrete the hormones that enable thebody to retain salt (Verrey & Beron, 1996). He cravedsalt because he had to consume it fast enough to re-place what he lost in his urine. (We are often told tolimit our salt intake for health reasons, but too littlesalt can also be dangerous.) Later research confirmedthat salt-deficient animals immediately show an in-creased preference for salty tastes (Rozin & Kalat,1971). Apparently, becoming salt deficient causessalty foods to taste especially good (Jacobs, Mark, &Scott, 1988). People often report salt cravings afterlosing salt by bleeding or sweating.

Evolutionary PsychologyAn evolutionary psychologist tries to explain behav-ior in terms of the evolutionary history of thespecies, including reasons evolution might have fa-vored a tendency to act in particular ways. For ex-

Crispy Cajun Crickets

Adapted from a recipe in the Food Insects Newsletter, March 1990

Tired of the same old snack food? Perk up your next party with Crispy Cajun Crickets (“pampered” house crickets, Acheta domesticus, available from Flucker’s Cricket Farm, P.O. Box 378, Baton Rouge, LA 70821, 800-735-8537).

1 cup crickets1 pinch oatmeal4 ounces butter, melted Salt Garlic Cayenne

1.

2.

3.

Put crickets in a clean, airy container with oatmeal for food. After one day, discard sick crickets and freeze the rest. Wash frozen crickets in warm water and spread on a cookie sheet. Roast in a 250-degree oven until crunchy.

Meanwhile heat butter with remaining ingredients and sprinkle this sauce on crickets before serving.

Yield: 1 serving

FIGURE 1.3 People avoid some potential foods because theyare disgusted by the very idea of eating them. For example, mostWesterners refuse to eat insects, despite assurances that most arenutritious and harmless. (“Recipe for fried crickets” from The FoodInsects Newsletter. Reprinted by permission of Douglas Whitman, IllinoisState University)

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ample, why do people and other animals crave sweetsand avoid bitter tastes? Here, the answer is easy:Most sweets are nutritious and almost all bitter sub-stances are poisonous (Scott & Verhagen, 2000). An-cient animals that ate fruits and other sweets sur-vived to become our ancestors. Any animals thatpreferred bitter substances, or that chose foods with-out regard to taste, were likely to die before they hada chance to reproduce.

However, although some evolutionary explanationsof behavior are persuasive, others are uncertain or de-batable (de Waal, 2002). Yes, the brain is the product ofevolution, just as any other organ is, but the question iswhether evolution has micromanaged our behavior.The research challenge is to separate the evolutionaryinfluences on our behavior from what we have learnedduring a lifetime. Chapter 13 on social psychology willexplore this question in more detail.

Social Psychology and Cross-Cultural PsychologySocial psychologists study how an individual influ-ences other people and how the group influences anindividual. For example, people usually eat together,and on the average we eat about twice as much whenwe are in a large group than we do when eating alone(de Castro, 2000). If you invite guests to your house,you offer them something to eat or drink as an impor-tant way of strengthening a social relationship.

Cross-cultural psychology compares the behaviorof people from different cultures. It often resembles so-cial psychology, except that it compares one culture toanother. Cuisine is one of the most stable and definingfeatures of any culture. In one study researchers inter-viewed Japanese high school and college students whohad spent a year in another country as part of an ex-change program. The satisfaction reported by studentswith their year abroad had little relationship to the ed-ucational system, religion, family life, recreation, or dat-ing customs of the host country. The main determinantof their satisfaction was the food: Students who couldsometimes eat Japanese food had a good time. Thosewho could not became homesick (Furukawa, 1997).

The similarity between the words culture andagriculture is no coincidence, as cultivating crops wasa major step toward civilization. We learn from ourculture what to eat and how to prepare it (Rozin,1996). Consider, for example, cassava, a root veg-etable that is poisonous unless someone washes andpounds it for 3 days. Can you imagine discovering thatfact? Someone had to say, “So far, everyone who atethis plant died, but I bet that if I wash and pound it for3 days, then it will be okay.” Our culture also teachesus good ways of combining foods. American corn(maize) has a deficit of certain nutrients and beansare deficient in other nutrients, but corn and beans

together make a good combination—as the NativeAmericans discovered long ago.


3. a. Of the kinds of psychological research just de-scribed—developmental psychology, learningand motivation, cognitive psychology, biologicalpsychology, evolutionary psychology, social psy-chology, and cross-cultural psychology—whichfield concentrates most on children?

b. Which two are most concerned with how peoplebehave in groups?

c. Which concentrates most on thought andknowledge?

d. Which is most interested in the effects of braindamage?

e. Which is most concerned with studying the ef-fect of a reward on future behavior?

4. Why do many menstruating women crave potatochips? (Check your answers on page 17.)

Service Providers to IndividualsWhen most people hear the term psychologist, theyfirst think of clinical psychologists, who constituteone type of mental health professionals. Clinical psy-chologists deal with problems ranging from depres-sion, anxiety, and substance abuse to marriage con-flicts, difficulties making decisions, or even the feelingthat “I should be getting more out of life.” Some clin-ical psychologists are college professors and re-searchers, but most are full-time practitioners.

It is important to distinguish among severaltypes of mental health professionals. The term ther-

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apist itself has no precise meaning, and in manyplaces even untrained, unlicensed people can hangout a shingle and call themselves therapists. Some of the main kinds of service providers for peoplewith psychological troubles are clinical psycholo-gists, psychiatrists, social workers, and counselingpsychologists.

Clinical PsychologyClinical psychologists have an advanced degree inpsychology, with a specialty in understanding andhelping people with psychological problems. Mosthave a PhD, which requires research training and thecompletion of a substantial research dissertation. Aspart of their training, clinical psychologists undergo atleast a year of supervised clinical work called an in-ternship. An alternative to the PhD is a PsyD (doctorof psychology) degree, which requires internship ex-perience but little or no research experience. PsyDprograms vary strikingly, including some that are aca-demically strong and others that have low admissionsstandards (Norcross, Kohout, & Wicherski, 2005).

Clinical psychologists can base their work on any ofvarious theoretical viewpoints, or they can use a prag-matic, trial-and-error approach. They try, in one way oranother, to understand why a person is having problemsand then help that person overcome the difficulties.

PsychiatryPsychiatry is a branch of medicine that deals withemotional disturbances. To become a psychiatrist,someone first earns an MD degree and then takes anadditional 4 years of residency training in psychiatry.Psychiatrists and clinical psychologists provide simi-lar services for most clients: They listen, ask ques-tions, and try to help. Psychiatrists, however, are med-ical doctors and can therefore prescribe drugs, such astranquilizers and antidepressants, whereas in mostplaces psychologists cannot. Some states now permitpsychologists with additional specialized training toprescribe drugs. More psychiatrists than clinical psy-chologists work in mental hospitals, and psychiatristsmore often treat clients with severe disorders.

Does psychiatrists’ ability to prescribe drugs givethem an advantage over psychologists in places wherepsychologists cannot prescribe them? Sometimes, butnot always. Some psychiatrists habitually treat anxi-ety and depression with drugs, whereas psychologiststreat problems by changing the person’s way of living.Drugs can be useful, but relying on them too exten-sively can be a hazard.

Other Mental Health ProfessionalsSeveral other kinds of professionals also provide helpand counsel. Psychoanalysts are therapy providerswho rely heavily on the theories and methods pio-

neered by the early 20th-century Viennese physicianSigmund Freud and later modified by others. Freudand his followers attempted to infer the hidden, un-conscious, symbolic meaning behind people’s wordsand actions, and in various ways psychoanalysts todaycontinue that effort.

There is some question about who may rightly callthemselves psychoanalysts. Some people apply theterm to anyone who attempts to uncover unconsciousthoughts and feelings. Others apply the term only tograduates of a 6- to 8-year program at an institute ofpsychoanalysis. These institutes admit only peoplewho are already either psychiatrists or clinical psy-chologists. Thus, people completing psychoanalytictraining will be at least in their late 30s.

A clinical social worker is similar to a clinicalpsychologist but with different training. In mostcases a clinical social worker has a master’s degree insocial work with a specialization in psychologicalproblems. A master’s degree takes less education thana doctorate and requires much less research experi-ence. Many health maintenance organizations(HMOs) steer most of their clients with psychologicalproblems toward clinical social workers instead ofpsychologists or psychiatrists because the socialworkers, with less formal education, charge less perhour. Some psychiatric nurses (nurses with additionaltraining in psychiatry) provide similar services.

Counseling psychologists help people with educa-tional, vocational, marriage, health-related, and otherdecisions. A counseling psychologist has a doctoratedegree (PhD, PsyD, or EdD) with supervised experiencein counseling. The activities of a counseling psycholo-gist overlap those of a clinical psychologist, but the em-phasis is different. Whereas a clinical psychologistdeals mainly with anxiety, depression, and other emo-tional distress, a counseling psychologist deals mostlywith important life decisions and family or career re-adjustments, which, admittedly, can cause anxiety ordepression. Counseling psychologists work in educa-tional institutions, mental health centers, rehabilita-tion agencies, businesses, and private practice.

You may also have heard of forensic psychologists,those who provide advice and consultation to police,lawyers, courts, or other parts of the criminal justicesystem. Forensic psychologists are, in nearly all cases,trained as clinical or counseling psychologists with ad-ditional training in legal issues. They help with such de-cisions as whether a defendant is mentally competentto stand trial and whether someone eligible for parole isdangerous (Otto & Heilbrun, 2002). Several popularfilms have depicted forensic psychologists helping po-lice investigators develop a “psychological profile” of aserial killer. That may sound like an exciting, glam-orous profession, but few psychologists engage in suchactivities (and the accuracy of their profiles is uncer-



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tain, as discussed in chapter 14). Most criminal profil-ers today have training and experience in law enforce-ment, not psychology.

Table 1.1 compares various types of mental healthprofessionals.


5. Can psychoanalysts prescribe drugs? (Check youranswer on page 17.)

Service Providers to OrganizationsPsychologists also work in business, industry, andschool systems in some capacities that might be unfa-miliar to you, doing things you might not think of aspsychology. The job prospects in these fields havebeen good, however, and you might find these fieldsinteresting.

Industrial/Organizational PsychologyThe psychological study of people at work is knownas industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology. It dealswith issues you might not think of as psychology, suchas matching the right person with the right job, train-ing people for jobs, developing work teams, determin-ing salaries and bonuses, providing feedback to

workers about their performance, planning an organi-zational structure, and organizing the workplace sothat workers will be both productive and satisfied. I/Opsychologists study the behavior of both the individ-ual and the organization, including the impact of eco-nomic conditions and government regulations. Weshall consider work motivation in chapter 11.

Here’s an example of a concern for industrial/organizational psychologists (Campion & Thayer,1989): A company that manufactures complex elec-tronic equipment needed to publish reference and re-pair manuals for its products. The engineers who de-signed the devices did not want to spend their timewriting the manuals, and none of them were skilledwriters anyway. So the company hired a technicalwriter to prepare the manuals. After a year she re-ceived an unsatisfactory performance rating becausethe manuals she wrote contained too many technicalerrors. She countered that, when she asked variousengineers in the company to check her manuals or toexplain technical details to her, they were always toobusy. She found her job complicated and frustrating;her office was badly lit, noisy, and overheated; and herchair was uncomfortable. Whenever she mentionedany of these problems, however, she was told that she“complained too much.”

In a situation such as this, an industrial/organiza-tional psychologist can help the company evaluate theproblem and develop possible solutions. Maybe thecompany hired the wrong person for this job. If so,they should fire her and hire some expert on electri-cal engineering who is also an outstanding writer andlikes a badly lit, noisy, overheated, uncomfortable of-fice. However, if the company cannot find or affordsuch a person, then it needs to improve the workingconditions and provide the current employee withmore training or more help with the technical aspectsof the job.

When a company criticizes its workers, I/O psy-chologists try to discover whether the problem is poorworkers or a difficult job. Depending on the answer,they then try to improve the hiring decisions or im-prove the working conditions.


A STEP FURTHER

I/O Psychology

Industrial/organizational psychologists usuallyconsult with business and industry, but supposethey were called on to help a university wherecertain professors had complained that “thestudents are too lazy and stupid to understandthe lectures.” How might the I/O psychologistsreact?

TABLE 1.1 Several Types of Mental Health Professionals

Type of Therapist Education

Clinical psychologist PhD with clinical emphasis or PsyDplus internship. Ordinarily, 5�years after undergraduate degree.

Psychiatrist MD plus psychiatric residency. To-tal of 8 years after undergraduatedegree.

Psychoanalyst Psychiatry or clinical psychologyplus 6–8 years in a psychoanalyticinstitute. Many others who rely onFreud’s methods also call them-selves psychoanalysts.

Psychiatric nurse From 2-year (AA) degree to mas-ter’s degree plus supervised experi-ence.

Clinical social worker Master’s degree plus 2 years of su-pervised experience. Total of atleast 4 years after undergraduatedegree.

Counseling psychologist PhD, PsyD, or EdD plus supervisedexperience in counseling.

Forensic psychologist Doctorate, ordinarily in clinicalpsychology or counseling psychol-ogy, plus additional training in legalissues.



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ErgonomicsMany years ago, my son Sam, then about 16 years old,turned to me as he rushed out the door and asked meto turn off his stereo. I went to the stereo in his roomand tried to find an on–off switch or a power switch.No such luck. I looked in vain for the manual. Finally,in desperation I had to unplug the stereo.

Learning to operate our increasingly complex ma-chinery is one of the perennial struggles of modernlife. Sometimes, the consequences can be serious.Imagine an airplane pilot who intends to lower thelanding gear and instead raises the wing flaps. Or aworker in a nuclear power plant who fails to notice awarning signal. In one field of psychology, an ergono-mist, or human factors specialist, attempts to facili-tate the operation of machinery so that ordinary peo-ple can use it efficiently and safely. The termergonomics is derived from Greek roots meaning“laws of work.” Ergonomics was first used in militarysettings, where complex technologies sometimes re-quired soldiers to spot nearly invisible targets, under-stand speech through deafening noise, track objects inthree dimensions while using two hands, and makelife-or-death decisions in a split second. The militaryturned to psychologists to determine what skills theirpersonnel could master and to redesign the tasks to fitthose skills.

Ergonomists soon applied their experience notonly to business and industry but also to everyday de-vices. As Donald Norman (1988) pointed out, manyintelligent and educated people find themselves un-able to use all the features on a camera or a mi-crowave oven; some even have trouble setting thetime on a digital watch.

At various universities the ergonomics program ispart of the psychology department, engineering, or

both. Regardless of who administers the program, er-gonomics necessarily combines features of psychol-ogy, engineering, and computer science. It is a grow-ing field with many jobs available.

School PsychologyMany if not most children have academic problems atone time or another. Some children have trouble sit-ting still or paying attention. Others get into troublefor misbehavior. Some have specialized problems withreading, spelling, arithmetic, or other academic skills.Other children master their schoolwork quickly andbecome bored. They too need special attention.

School psychologists are specialists in the psy-chological condition of students, usually in kinder-garten through the 12th grade. Broadly speaking,school psychologists identify the educational needs ofchildren, devise a plan to meet those needs, and theneither implement the plan themselves or adviseteachers how to implement it.

School psychology can be taught in a psychologydepartment, a branch of an education department, ora department of educational psychology. In somecountries it is possible to practice school psychologywith only a bachelor’s degree. In the United States theminimum is usually a master’s degree, but job oppor-tunities are much greater for people with a doctoratedegree, and a doctorate may become necessary in thefuture. Job opportunities in school psychology havebeen strong and continue to grow. Most school psy-chologists work for a school system; others work formental health clinics, guidance centers, and other in-stitutions.

Table 1.2 summarizes some of the major fields of psychology, including several that have not beendiscussed.

Should You Major in Psychology?Can you get a job if you major in psychology? Psy-chology is one of the most popular majors in theUnited States, Canada, and Europe. So if psychologymajors cannot get jobs, a huge number of people aregoing to be in trouble!

The bad news is that few jobs specifically adver-tise for college graduates with a bachelor’s degree inpsychology. The good news is that an enormous vari-ety of jobs are available for graduates with a bachelor’sdegree, not specifying any major. Therefore, if youearn a degree in psychology, you will compete withhistory majors, English majors, astronomy majors,and everyone else for jobs in government, business,and industry. According to one survey, only 20 to 25%of people who graduated with a degree in psychology

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took a job closely related to psychology, such as per-sonnel work or social services (Borden & Rajecki,2000). Still, many other jobs were good ones, even ifthey were not in psychology.

Even if you get a job that seems remote from psy-chology, your psychology courses will have taught youmuch about how to evaluate evidence, organize andwrite papers, handle statistics, listen carefully to whatpeople say, understand and respect cultural differ-ences, and so forth. You will, of course, also gain use-ful background in your other courses. Regardless ofyour major, you should develop your skills in commu-nication, mathematics, and computers. (If you don’thave those skills, you will work for someone whodoes.)

Psychology also provides a good background forpeople entering professional schools. Many students

major in psychology and then apply to medical school,law school, divinity school, or other programs. Findout what coursework is expected for the professionalprogram of your choice and then compare the course-work required for a psychology major. You will proba-bly find that the psychology major is compatible withyour professional preparation.

If you want a career as a psychologist, you shouldaspire to an advanced degree, preferably a doctorate.A doctorate will qualify you to apply for positions as acollege professor or, depending on your area of spe-cialization, jobs in hospitals, clinics, private practice,school systems, industry, or research. An increasingpercentage of doctorate-level psychologists now workin business, industry, and the military doing researchrelated to practical problems. If you are a first- orsecond-year college student now, it is hard to predict

TABLE 1.2 Some Major Specializations in Psychology

Specialization General Interest Example of Interest or Research Topic

Biopsychologist Relationship between brain and behavior What body signals indicate hunger andsatiety?

Clinical psychologist Emotional difficulties How can people be helped to overcomesevere anxiety?

Cognitive psychologist Memory, thinking Do people have several kinds ofmemory?

Community psychologist Organizations and social structures Would improved job opportunitiesdecrease psychological distress?

Counseling psychologist Helping people make important decisions Should this person consider changingcareers?

Developmental psychologist Changes in behavior over age At what age can a child first distinguishbetween appearance and reality?

Educational psychologist Improvement of learning in school What is the best way to test a student’sknowledge?

Environmental psychologist How noise, heat, crowding, etc. affect behavior What building design can maximize theproductivity of the people who use it?

Ergonomist Communication between person and machine How can an airplane cockpit beredesigned to increase safety?

Evolutionary psychologist Evolutionary history of behavior Why do men generally show moresexual jealousy than women?

Industrial/organizational psychologist People at work Should jobs be made simple andfoolproof or interesting and challenging?

Learning and motivation specialist Learning in humans and other species What are the effects of reinforcementand punishment?

Personality psychologist Personality differences Why are certain people shy and othersgregarious?

Psychometrician Measuring intelligence, personality, interests How fair are current IQ tests? Can wedevise better tests?

School psychologist Problems that affect schoolchildren How should the school handle a childwho regularly disrupts the classroom?

Social psychologist Group behavior, social influences What methods of persuasion are mosteffective for changing attitudes?



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what the job market will be by the time you finish anadvanced degree. If you are just looking for a safe, se-cure way to make a living, psychology offers no guar-antees. A career in psychology is for those whose ex-citement about the field draws them irresistibly to it.

For more information about majoring in psychol-ogy, prospects for graduate school, and a great varietyof jobs for psychology graduates, visit either of thesewebsites:

www.drlynnfriedman.com/www.apa.org/students/

IN CLOSING

Types of Psychologists

An experimental psychology researcher, a clinicalpsychologist, an ergonomist, and an industrial/organi-zational psychologist are all psychologists, eventhough their daily activities have little in common.What does unite psychologists is a dedication toprogress through research.

I have oversimplified this discussion of the vari-ous psychological approaches in several ways. In par-ticular, biological psychology, cognitive psychology,social psychology, and the other fields overlap signif-icantly. Nearly all psychologists combine insightsand information gained from a variety of approaches.To understand why one person differs from another,psychologists combine information about biology,learning experiences, social influences, and muchmore.

As we proceed through this book, we shall con-sider one type of behavior at a time and, generally,one approach at a time. That is simply a necessity; wecannot talk intelligently about many topics at once.But bear in mind that all these processes do ultimatelyfit together; what you do at any given moment de-pends on a great many influences. �

SummaryThe page number after an item indicates where thetopic is first discussed.

• What is psychology? Psychology is the systematicstudy of behavior and experience. Psychologistsdeal with both theoretical and practical questions.(page 3)

• Six generalities. Almost any statement in psychol-ogy depends on many factors, and few statementsapply to everyone all the time. Research progressdepends on good measurement. Correlation doesnot mean causation. People differ from one anotherbecause of heredity and environment. The best

predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Someconclusions in psychology are based on stronger ev-idence than others. (page 3)

• Determinism–free will. Determinism is the viewthat everything that occurs, including human be-havior, has a physical cause. That view is difficult toreconcile with the conviction that humans havefree will—that we deliberately, consciously decidewhat to do. (page 5)

• Mind–brain. The mind–brain problem is the ques-tion of how conscious experience is related to theactivity of the brain. (page 6)

• Nature–nurture. Behavior depends on both nature(heredity) and nurture (environment). Psycholo-gists try to determine the influence of these two fac-tors on differences in behavior. The relative contri-butions of nature and nurture vary from onebehavior to another. (page 7)

• Research fields in psychology. Psychology as anacademic field has many subfields, including bio-logical psychology, learning and motivation, cogni-tive psychology, developmental psychology, and so-cial psychology. (page 8)

• Psychology and psychiatry. Clinical psychologistshave either a PhD, PsyD, or master’s degree; psy-chiatrists are medical doctors. Both clinical psy-chologists and psychiatrists treat people with emo-tional problems, but psychiatrists can prescribedrugs and other medical treatments, whereas inmost states psychologists cannot. Counseling psy-chologists help people deal with difficult decisions;they sometimes but less often also deal with psy-chological disorders. (page 12)

• Service providers to organizations. Nonclinicalfields of application include industrial/organizationalpsychology, ergonomics, and school psychology.(page 13)

• Job prospects. People with a bachelor’s degree inpsychology enter a wide variety of careers or con-tinue their education in professional schools. Thosewith a doctorate in psychology have additional pos-sibilities depending on their area of specialization.In psychology, as in any other field, job prospectscan change between the start and finish of one’s ed-ucation. (page 14)

Answers to Concept Checks1. Any attempt to make discoveries about nature pre-

supposes that we live in a universe of cause and ef-fect. (page 8)

2. Dualism conflicts with the principle of the conser-vation of matter and energy. A nonmaterial mindcould not influence anything in the universe.(page 8)



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3. a. Developmental psychology. b. Social psychologyand cross-cultural psychology. c. Cognitive psy-chology. d. Biological psychology. e. Learning andmotivation. (page 11)

4. By losing blood, they also lose salt, and a defi-ciency of salt triggers a craving for salty tastes.(page 11)

5. Most psychoanalysts can prescribe drugs becausemost are psychiatrists, and psychiatrists are med-ical doctors. However, in most states, those whoare not medical doctors cannot prescribe drugs.(page 13)



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• How did psychology get started?• What were the interests of early psychologists?• How has psychology changed over the years?

Imagine yourself as a young scholar in 1880. Enthusi-astic about the new scientific approach in psychology,you have decided to become a psychologist yourself.Like other early psychologists, you have a backgroundin either biology or philosophy. You are determined toapply the scientific methods of biology to the prob-lems of philosophy.

So far, so good. But what questions will you ad-dress? A good research question is both interestingand answerable. (If it can’t be both, it should at leastbe one or the other!) In 1880 how would you choosea research topic? You cannot get research ideas froma psychological journal because the first issue won’tbe published until next year. (And incidentally, it willbe all in German.) You cannot follow in the traditionof previous researchers because there haven’t beenany previous researchers. You are on your own.

Furthermore, in the late 1800s, psychologists werenot sure which questions were answerable. Sometimes,psychologists today are still unsure: Should we studyinteresting questions about consciousness, or shouldwe concentrate on observable behavior? Many of the

changes that have occurred during the history of psy-chology have reflected investigators’ decisions aboutwhich questions are answerable.

In the next several pages, we shall explore some ofthese changes in psychological research, includingprojects that dominated psychology for a while andthen faded from interest. We shall discuss additionalhistorical developments in later chapters. Figure 1.4outlines some major historical events inside and out-side psychology. For additional information about thehistory of psychology, visit either of these websites:

www.cwu.edu/~warren/today.htmlwww.uakron.edu/ahap

The Early EraAt least since Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), philosophersand writers have debated why people act the way theydo, why they have the experiences they do, and whyone person is different from another. Without dis-counting the importance of these great thinkers, sev-eral 19th-century scholars wondered whether a scien-tific approach would be fruitful. Impressed by thegreat strides made in physics, chemistry, and biology,they hoped for similar progress in psychology by con-ducting research.

18

MODULE 1.2 Psychology Then and Now

WorldEvents

PsychologyEvents

Year

European Renaissance

c. 1000 1400s–1500s 1600s 1649 1740s 1776 late 1700s 1843 1856 1859 1879 1885 1887 1890 1892 1896 1900 1903 1905 1907 1908

Arab philosopher Ibn al-Haythemdiscovers that vision depends on lightstriking the eye, not on sending out sightrays. This is the first discovery aboutpsychology based on scientific research.

Discovery ofcolor blindness

René Descartes’sprimary philosophicalwritings about the mind

David Hume and David Hartleypioneer the British associationistmovement, which formulatesquestions and theories that moldmuch of later psychological research

Mesmer introduceshypnosis

Wundt establishes firstpsychology laboratory

Ebbinghaus’sMemory

Founding of American Journal of Psychology

William James’s Principles of Psychology

First convention ofAmerican PsychologicalAssociation

University of Pennsylvaniaestablishes first psychological clinic

Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams;rise of psychoanalysis

Binet introduces firstpractical IQ test

Dorothea Dix campaignsfor better treatmentof the mentally ill

U.S. Declarationof Independence

Mendel discoversprinciples of genetics

Tchaikovsky's“The Nutcracker” First color motion

picture with sound

Model T Fordintroduced

First airplane flight

Darwin's Origin of Species

FIGURE 1.4 Dates of some important events in psychology and elsewhere. (Based partly on Dewsbury, 2000a)



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Module 1.2 Psychology Then and Now 19

Wilhelm Wundt and the FirstPsychological LaboratoryThe origin of psychology as we now know it is gener-ally dated to 1879, when medical doctor and sensoryresearcher Wilhelm Wundt (pronounced VOONT) setup the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Ger-many. Psychological research was not new, but thiswas the first laboratory intended exclusively for psy-chological research.

Wundt’s broad interests ranged from the physiologyof the sense organs to cultural differences in behavior,with emphases on motivation, voluntary control, andcognitive processes (Zehr, 2000). One of Wundt’s fun-damental questions was: What are the components ofexperience, or mind? He proposed that experience iscomposed of elements and compounds, like those ofchemistry. Psychology’s elements were, he maintained,sensations and feelings (Wundt, 1896/1902).1 So at anyparticular moment, you might experience the taste of afine meal, the sound of good music, and a certain de-gree of pleasure. These would merge into a single expe-rience (a compound) based on the separate elements.Furthermore, Wundt maintained, your experience ispartly under your voluntary control; you can shift yourattention from one element to another and get a differ-ent experience.

Wundt tried to test his idea about the componentsof experience by collecting data. He presented variouskinds of lights, textures, and sounds and asked sub-

jects to report the intensity and quality of their sen-sations. That is, he asked them to introspect—to lookwithin themselves. He recorded the changes in peo-ple’s reports as he changed the stimuli.

Wundt demonstrated the possibility of meaningfulpsychological research. For example, in one of his earli-est studies, he set up a pendulum that struck metal ballsand made a sound at two points on its swing (points band d in Figure 1.5). People would watch the pendulumand indicate where it appeared to be when they heardthe sound. Often, the pendulum appeared to be slightlyin front of or behind the ball when people heard thestrike. The apparent position of the pendulum at thetime of the sound differed from its actual position by anaverage of 1⁄8 of a second (Wundt, 1862/1961). Appar-ently, the time we think we see or hear something is notthe same as when the event occurred. Wundt’s inter-pretation was that a person needs about 1⁄8 of a secondto shift attention from one stimulus to another.

Wundt and his students were prolific investiga-tors, and the brief treatment here cannot do him jus-tice. He wrote more than 50,000 pages about his re-search, but his most lasting impact came from settingthe precedent of studying psychological questions bycollecting scientific data.

Edward Titchener and StructuralismAt first most of the world’s psychologists receivedtheir education from Wilhelm Wundt himself. One ofWundt’s students, Edward Titchener, came to theUnited States in 1892 as a psychology professor atCornell University. Like Wundt, Titchener believedthat the main question of psychology was the natureof mental experiences.

c. 1910 1911 1919 1920s 1928 1935 1938 1939–45 1946 1948 1950s 1953 1954 1955 1956 1963 1970s 1975 1981 1980s 1994 2000

Pavlov discovers classical conditioning

Bleuler publishesfirst good descriptionof schizophrenia

Thorndike’s first studiesof operant conditioning

J. B. Watson’s Psychology fromthe Standpoint of a Behaviorist;rise of behaviorism

B. F. Skinner’s Behavior of Organisms

Spread and popularizationof clinical psychology

Discoveryof REMsleep stage

Brown vs. Board ofEducation decisionorders integration ofU.S. public schools

Milgram’sfirst studieson obedience

Rise ofcognitivepsychology

Elizabeth Loftus’searly work onmemory distortions

Sperry, Hubel, and Wieselshare Nobel Prize fordiscoveries about brainand behavior

Discovery of distinction betweenimplicit and explicit memory

Baillargeon, Rovee-Collier, DeLoache,and others demonstrate greater thanexpected abilities of human infants

Publication of DSM-IV,standard manual fordiagnosis of mental illness

Introduction ofdrugs to combatschizophreniaand depression

Rise of humanisticpsychology

World War II

First electronicdigital computer

Introductionof Salk poliovaccine

Kinsey publishes first extensivesurvey of human sexual behavior

Watson and Crickdiscover thestructure of DNA

Rise in use of radio

Soviet Unionlaunches firstspace satellite

Onset ofAIDS epidemic

2002

Daniel Kahnemanwins Nobel Prize inEconomics for studiesof decision making

First demonstrationof television

Founding ofAlcoholicsAnonymous

Human genomemostly mapped

J. F. Kennedy assassinated

M. L. King, Jr.’s,“I Have a Dream” speech

1A reference citation containing a slash between the years, such as this one,refers to a book originally published in the first year (1896) and reprinted inthe second year (1902). All references are listed at the end of the book.



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Titchener (1910) typically presented a stimulusand asked his subject to analyze it into its separatefeatures—for example, to look at a lemon and de-scribe its yellowness, brightness, shape, and othercharacteristics. He called his approach structuralism,an attempt to describe the structures that composethe mind, particularly sensations, feelings, and im-ages. For example, imagine you are the psychologist: Ilook at a lemon and say my experience of its bright-ness is separate from my experience of its yellowness.

You see the problem with this approach. How doyou know whether I am lying, telling you what I thinkyou want me to say, or even deceiving myself? AfterTitchener died in 1927, psychologists virtually aban-doned both his questions and his methods. Why? Re-member that a good scientific question is both interest-ing and answerable. Regardless of whether Titchener’s

questions about the elements of the mind were inter-esting, they seemed unanswerable.

William James and FunctionalismIn the same era as Wundt and Titchener, Harvard Uni-versity’s William James articulated some of the majorissues of psychology and earned recognition as thefounder of American psychology. James’s book ThePrinciples of Psychology (1890) defined many of thequestions that dominated psychology long afterwardand still do today.

James had little patience with searching for the el-ements of the mind. He focused on what the minddoes rather than what it is. That is, instead of tryingto isolate the elements of consciousness, he preferredto learn how people produce useful behaviors. Forthis reason we call his approach functionalism. He

� Edward Titchener asked subjects to describe their sensations. For example, they might describetheir sensation of shape, their sensation of color, and their sensation of texture while looking at alemon. Titchener had no way to check the accuracy of these reports, however, so later psychologistsabandoned his methods.

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suggested the following examples of good psychologi-cal questions (James, 1890):

• How can people strengthen good habits?• Can someone attend to more than one item at a

time?• How do people recognize that they have seen some-

thing before?• How does an intention lead to action?

James proposed possible answers but did little re-search of his own. His main contribution was to in-spire later researchers to address the questions thathe posed.

Studying SensationOne of early psychologists’ main research topics wasthe relationship between physical stimuli and psy-chological sensations. To a large extent, the study of sensation was psychology. The first English-language textbook of the “new” scientifically basedpsychology devoted almost half of its pages to thesenses and related topics (Scripture, 1907). By the1930s standard psychology textbooks devoted lessthan 20% of their pages to these topics (Woodworth,1934), and today, the proportion is down to about 5to 10%. Why were early psychologists so interestedin sensation?

One reason was philosophical: They wanted tounderstand mental experience, and experience con-sists of sensations. Another reason was strategic: Ascientific psychology had to begin with answerablequestions, and questions about sensation are moreeasily answerable than those about, say, personality.

Early psychologists discovered that what we see,hear, and otherwise experience is not the same as thephysical stimulus. For example, a light that is twice asintense as another one does not look twice as bright.Figure 1.6 shows the relationship between the inten-sity of light and its perceived brightness. The mathe-

matical description of the relationship between thephysical properties of a stimulus and its perceivedproperties is called the psychophysical function be-cause it relates psychology to physics. Such researchdemonstrated that, at least in the study of sensation,scientific methods can provide nonobvious answers topsychological questions.


6. What topic was the main focus of research for theearliest psychologists and why?

7. What was the difference between structuralists andfunctionalists? (Check your answers on page 26.)

Darwin and the Study of Animal IntelligenceCharles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selec-tion (Darwin, 1859, 1871) had an enormous impacton psychology as well as biology. Darwin argued thathumans and other species share a remote commonancestor. This idea implied that each species has spe-cializations adapted to its own way of life but also thatall vertebrate species have many basic features incommon. It further implied that nonhuman animalsshould exhibit varying degrees of human characteris-tics, including intelligence.

Based on this last implication, early comparativepsychologists, specialists who compare differentanimal species, did something that seemed morereasonable at first than it did later: They set out tomeasure animal intelligence. They apparently imag-ined that they could rank-order animals from thesmartest to the dullest. Toward that goal they set var-ious species to such tasks as the delayed-responseproblem and the detour problem. In the delayed-response problem, an animal was given a signal indi-

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FIGURE 1.6 This graph of a psychophysical event shows the perceived intensity of light versus its physicalintensity. When a light becomes twice as intense physically, it does not seem twice as bright. (Adapted from Stevens, 1961)

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cating where it could find food. Then the signal wasremoved, and the animal was restrained for a while(Figure 1.7) to see how long it could remember thesignal. In the detour problem, an animal was sepa-rated from food by a barrier (Figure 1.8) to seewhether it would take a detour away from the food inorder to reach it.

However, measuring animal intelligence turnedout to be more difficult than it sounded. Often, aspecies seemed dull-witted on one task but brilliant onanother. For example, zebras are generally slow tolearn to approach one pattern instead of another forfood, unless the patterns happen to be narrow stripesversus wide stripes, in which case they suddenly excel(Giebel, 1958) (see Figure 1.9). Rats seem unable tofind food hidden under the object that looks differentfrom the others, but they easily learn to choose the ob-ject that smells different from the others (Langworthy& Jennings, 1972).

Eventually, psychologists realized that the relativeintelligence of nonhuman animals was probably ameaningless question. The study of animal learningcan illuminate general principles of learning and shedlight on evolutionary questions (Papini, 2002), but noone measurement applies to all. A dolphin is neithermore nor less intelligent than a chimpanzee; it is sim-ply intelligent in different ways.

Psychologists today do study animal learning andintelligence, but the emphasis has changed. The ques-tion is no longer which animals are the smartest, but“What can we learn from animal studies about themechanisms of intelligent behavior?” and “How dideach species evolve the behavioral tendencies itshows?”

Measuring Human IntelligenceWhile some psychologists studied animal intelli-gence, others pursued human intelligence. FrancisGalton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, was among thefirst to try to measure intelligence and to askwhether intellectual variations were based on hered-ity. Galton was fascinated with trying to measure al-most everything (Hergenhahn, 1992). For example,he invented the weather map, measured degrees ofboredom during lectures, suggested the use of finger-prints to identify individuals, and—in the name ofscience—attempted to measure the beauty of womenin different countries.

Light on;food hiddenfrom rat

Delay chamber

FIGURE 1.7 Early comparative psychologists assessed animalintelligence with the delayed-response problem. A stimulus waspresented and a delay ensued; then the animal was expected torespond to the remembered stimulus. Variations on this delayed-response task are still used today.

Food

FIGURE 1.8 Another task popular among early comparativepsychologists was the detour problem. An animal needed to firstgo away from the food in order to move toward it.

FIGURE 1.9 Zebras learn rapidly when they have to comparestripe patterns (Giebel, 1958). How “smart” a species is perceivedto be depends in part on what ability or skill is being tested.



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In an effort to determine the role of heredity inhuman achievement, Galton (1869/1978) examinedwhether the sons of famous and accomplished mentended to become eminent themselves. (Women in19th-century England had little opportunity for fame.)Galton found that the sons of judges, writers, politi-cians, and other noted men had a high probability ofsimilar accomplishment themselves. He attributedthis edge to heredity. (I’ll leave this one for you tojudge: Did he have adequate evidence for his conclu-sion? If the sons of famous men become famous them-selves, is heredity the only explanation?)

Galton also tried to measure intelligence usingsimple sensory and motor tasks, but his measure-ments were unsatisfactory. In 1905 a French re-searcher, Alfred Binet, devised the first useful intelli-gence test, which we shall discuss further in chapter9. At this point just note that the idea of testing intel-ligence became popular in the United States and otherWestern countries. Psychologists, inspired by the pop-ularity of intelligence tests, later developed tests ofpersonality, interests, and other psychological charac-teristics. Note that measuring human intelligencefaces some of the same problems as animal intelli-gence: People have a great many intelligent abilities,and it is possible to be more adept at one than an-other. However, a great deal of research has been doneto try to make tests of intelligence fair and accurate.

The Rise of BehaviorismEarlier in this chapter, I casually defined psychology as“the systematic study of behavior and experience.” Fora substantial period of psychology’s history, most exper-imental psychologists would have objected to the words“and experience.” Some psychologists still object today,though less strenuously. From about 1920 to 1960 or1970, most researchers described psychology as thestudy of behavior, period. These researchers had little tosay about minds, experiences, or anything of the sort.(According to one quip, psychologists had “lost theirminds.”) What did psychologists have against “mind”?

Recall the failure of Titchener’s effort to analyzeexperience into its components. Most psychologistsconcluded that questions about mind were unanswer-able. Instead, they addressed questions about observ-able behaviors: What do people and other animals doand under what circumstances? How do changes inthe environment alter what they do? What is learningand how does it occur? These questions were clearlymeaningful and potentially answerable.

John B. WatsonMany regard John B. Watson as the founder of behav-iorism, a field of psychology that concentrates on ob-servable, measurable behaviors and not on mental

processes. Watson was not the first behaviorist, but hesystematized the approach, popularized it, and statedits goals and assumptions (Watson, 1919, 1925). Hereare two quotes from Watson:

Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely ob-jective experimental branch of natural science. Itstheoretical goal is the prediction and control of behav-ior. (1913, p. 158)

The goal of psychological study is the ascertaining ofsuch data and laws that, given the stimulus, psychol-ogy can predict what the response will be; or, on theother hand, given the response, it can specify the na-ture of the effective stimulus. (1919, p. 10)

Studies of LearningInspired by Watson, many researchers set out to studyanimal behavior, especially animal learning. One ad-vantage of studying nonhuman animals is that the re-searcher can control the animals’ diet, waking–sleepingschedule, and so forth far more completely than withhumans. The other supposed advantage was that non-human learning might be simpler to understand. Manypsychologists optimistically expected to discover sim-ple, basic laws of behavior, more or less the same fromone species to another and from one situation to an-other. Just as physicists could study gravity by drop-ping any object in any location, many psychologists inthe mid-1900s thought they could learn all about be-havior by studying rats in mazes. One highly influentialpsychologist, Clark Hull, wrote, “One of the most per-sistently baffling problems which confronts modernpsychologists is the finding of an adequate explanationof the phenomena of maze learning” (1932, p. 25). An-other wrote, “I believe that everything important inpsychology (except perhaps . . . such matters as involvesociety and words) can be investigated in essencethrough the continued experimental and theoreticalanalysis of the determiners of rat behavior at a choice-point in a maze” (Tolman, 1938, p. 34).

As research progressed, however, psychologistsfound that even the behavior of a rat in a maze wasmore complicated than they had expected, and suchresearch declined in popularity. Just as psychologistsof the 1920s abandoned the structuralist approach tothe mind, later psychologists abandoned the hope thatstudying rats in mazes would uncover universal prin-ciples of behavior. Psychologists continue to study an-imal learning, but the methods have changed.

The behaviorist approach is still alive and well to-day, as we shall see in chapter 6, but it no longer dom-inates experimental psychology the way it once did.The rise of computer science showed that it was pos-sible to talk about memory, knowledge, and informa-tion processing in machines, and if machines canhave such processes, presumably humans can too.Psychologists demonstrated the possibility of mean-



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ingful research on cognition (thought and knowledge)and other topics that behaviorists had avoided.

From Freud to Modern Clinical PsychologyIn the early 1900s, clinical psychology was a smallfield devoted largely to visual, auditory, movement,and memory disorders (Routh, 2000). The treatmentof psychological disorders (or mental illness) was theprovince of psychiatry, a branch of medicine. TheAustrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud revolutionizedand popularized psychotherapy with his methods ofanalyzing patients’ dreams and memories. He tried totrace current behavior to earlychildhood experiences, includingchildren’s sexual fantasies. Weshall examine Freud’s theories inmuch more detail in chapter 14.Here, let me foreshadow that dis-cussion by saying that Freud’s in-fluence has decreased sharply overthe years. Freud was a persuasivespeaker and writer, but the evi-dence he proposed for his theorieswas weak. Nevertheless, Freud’sinfluence was enormous, and bythe mid-1900s, most psychiatristsin the United States and Europewere following his methods.

During World War II, morepeople wanted help, especially sol-diers traumatized by war experi-ences. Because psychiatrists couldnot keep up with the need, psy-chologists began providing ther-

apy. Clinical psychology became a more popular fieldand more similar to psychiatry. Research began tocompare the effectiveness of different methods, andnew methods have taken the place of Freud’s proce-dures, as we shall see in chapters 15 and 16.

Recent Trends in PsychologyThe rest of this book will focus on the current era inpsychology, with occasional flashbacks on the historyof particular topics. Psychology today ranges from thestudy of simple sensory processes to interventions in-tended to change whole communities. Recall thatsome of the earliest psychological researchers wantedto study the conscious mind but became discouragedwith Titchener’s introspective methods. Since themid-1960s, cognitive psychology (the study of thoughtand knowledge) has gained in prominence (Robins,Gosling, & Craik, 1999). Instead of asking peopleabout their thoughts, today’s cognitive psychologistscarefully measure the accuracy and speed of re-sponses under various circumstances to draw infer-ences about the underlying processes. They also usebrain scans to determine what happens in the brainwhile people perform various tasks.

Another rapidly growing field is neuroscience. Re-search on the nervous system has advanced rapidly inrecent decades, and psychologists in almost any fieldof specialization need to be aware of developments inneuroscience and their theoretical implications (Nor-cross et al., 2005).

New fields of application have also arisen. For ex-ample, health psychologists study how people’s healthis influenced by their behaviors, such as smoking,

drinking, sexual activities, exer-cise, diet, and reactions to stress.They also try to help people changetheir behaviors to promote betterhealth. Sports psychologists applypsychological principles to helpingathletes set goals, train, concen-trate their efforts during a contest,and so forth.

Psychologists today have alsobroadened their scope to includemore of human diversity. In its earlydays, around 1900, psychology wasmore open to women than mostother academic disciplines, buteven so, the opportunities forwomen were limited (Milar, 2000).Mary Calkins (Figure 1.10), an earlymemory researcher, was regardedas the Harvard psychology depart-ment’s best graduate student, butshe was denied a PhD because Har-

FIGURE 1.10 Mary Calkins, one of the firstprominent women in U.S. psychology.

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vard insisted on its tradition ofgranting degrees only to men(Scarborough & Furomoto,1987). She did, however, serveas president of the AmericanPsychological Association, asdid Margaret Washburn, an-other important woman in theearly days of psychology.

Today, women receiveabout two thirds of the psy-chology PhDs in North Amer-ica and most of those in Eu-rope (Bailey, 2004; Newstead& Makinen, 1997). Womenheavily dominate some fields,such as developmental psy-chology, and hold many lead-ership roles in the major psy-chological organizations. Thenumber of African Americanand other minority studentsstudying psychology has alsoincreased, and today, minoritystudents receive bachelor’sand master’s degrees almost inproportion to their numbers inthe total population (Figure 1.11). However, the per-centages continue to lag for minority students receiv-ing PhD degrees or serving on college faculties (Maton,Kohout, Wicherski, Leary, & Vinokurov, 2006).

What will psychology be like in the future? Wedon’t know, of course, but we assume it will reflect thechanging needs of humanity. A few likely trends areforeseeable. Advances in medicine have enabled peopleto live longer, and advances in technology have enabledthem to build where there used to be forests and wet-lands, heat and cool their homes, travel by car or planeto distant locations, and buy and discard enormousnumbers of products. In short, we are quickly destroy-ing our environment, using up natural resources, andpolluting the air and water. Sooner or later, it will be-come necessary either to decrease the population or to decrease the average person’s use of resources(Howard, 2000). Convincing people to change their be-havior is a task for both politics and psychology.


8. Why did behaviorists avoid the topics of thoughtand knowledge?

9. What event led to the rise of clinical psychology aswe know it today? (Check your answers on page26.)

African-AmericanEuropean-American

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Master’s Degrees

FIGURE 1.11 Ethnic groups as a percentage of the U.S.population and as a percentage of people receiving master’sdegrees in psychology during 2002. (Based on data of K. I. Maton et al., 2002)

� We can learn much about what is or is not a stable feature of human nature by comparingpeople of different cultures.

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IN CLOSING

Psychology Through the Years

Throughout the early years of psychology, many psy-chologists went down blind alleys, devoting enormous ef-forts to projects that produced disappointing results. Notall the efforts of early psychologists were fruitless, and inlater chapters you will encounter many classic studiesthat have withstood the test of time. Still, if psychologistsof the past spent much of their time on projects we nowconsider misguided, can we be sure that many of today’spsychologists aren’t on the wrong track?

We can’t, of course. In later chapters you will readabout careful, cautious psychological research thathas amassed what seems in many cases to be strongevidence, but you are welcome to entertain doubts.Maybe some psychologists’ questions are not as sim-ple as they seem; perhaps some of their answers arenot solid; perhaps you can think of a better way to ap-proach certain topics. Psychologists have better dataand firmer conclusions than they used to, but still,they do not have all the answers.

But that is not a reason for despair. Much like a ratin a maze, researchers make progress by trial and er-ror. They pose a question, try a particular researchmethod, and discover what happens. Sometimes, theresults support fascinating and important conclu-sions; other times, they lead to rejections of old con-clusions and a search for replacements. In either casethe experience leads ultimately to better questionsand better answers. �

Summary• Choice of research questions. During the history of

psychology, researchers have several times changedtheir opinions about what constitutes an interest-ing, important, answerable question. (page 18)

• First research. In 1879 Wilhelm Wundt establishedthe first laboratory devoted to psychological re-search. He demonstrated the possibility of psycho-logical experimentation. (page 19)

• Limits of self-observation. One of Wundt’s stu-dents, Edward Titchener, attempted to analyze theelements of mental experience, relying on people’sown observations. Other psychologists became dis-couraged with this approach. (page 19)

• The founding of American psychology. WilliamJames, generally considered the founder of Ameri-can psychology, focused attention on how the mindguides useful behavior rather than on the contentsof the mind. By doing so James paved the way forthe rise of behaviorism. (page 20)

• Early sensory research. In the late 1800s and early1900s, many researchers concentrated on studies

of the senses, partly because they were more likelyto find definite answers on this topic than on othertopics. (page 21)

• Darwin’s influence. Charles Darwin’s theory of evo-lution by natural selection influenced psychology inmany ways. It prompted some prominent early psy-chologists to compare the intelligence of differentspecies. That question turned out to be more com-plicated than anyone had expected. (page 21)

• Intelligence testing. The measurement of humanintelligence was one concern of early psychologiststhat has persisted through the years. (page 22)

• The era of behaviorist dominance. As psychologistsbecame discouraged with their attempts to analyzethe mind, they turned to behaviorism. For manyyears psychological researchers studied behavior,especially animal learning, to the virtual exclusionof mental experience. (page 23)

• Maze learning. Clark Hull exerted a great influenceon psychology for a number of years. Eventually,his approach became less popular because rats inmazes did not seem to generate simple or generalanswers to major questions. (page 23)

• Freud. Sigmund Freud’s theories, which were his-torically very influential, have given way to otherapproaches to therapy, based on more careful use ofevidence. (page 24)

• Clinical psychology. At one time psychiatrists pro-vided nearly all the care for people with psycholog-ical disorders. After World War II, clinical psychol-ogy began to assume much of this role. (page 24)

• Psychological research today. Today, psychologistsstudy a wide variety of topics. Cognitive psychologyhas replaced behaviorist approaches to learning asthe dominant field of experimental psychology.However, we cannot be certain that we are not cur-rently going down some blind alleys, just as manypsychologists did before us. (page 24)

Answers to Concept Checks6. Early psychological research focused mainly on

sensation because sensation is central to experienceand because the early researchers believed that sen-sation questions were answerable. (page 21)

7. Structuralists wanted to understand the compo-nents of the mind. They based their researchmainly on introspection. Functionalists wanted toexplore what the mind could do, and they focusedmainly on behavior. (page 20)

8. Behaviorists concentrate on observable behaviors,whereas thought and knowledge are unobservableprocesses within the individual. (page 23)

9. During and after World War II, the need for ser-vices was greater than psychiatrists could provide.Clinical psychologists began providing treatmentfor psychological distress. (page 24)



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Chapter Ending 27

CHAPTER ENDING

Key Terms and Activities

Key TermsYou can check the page listed for acomplete description of a term. Youcan also check the glossary/index atthe end of the text for a definition ofa given term, or you can download alist of all the terms and their defini-tions for any chapter at this website:

www.thomsonedu.com/psychology/kalat

behaviorism (page 23)biopsychologist (or behavioral

neuroscientist) (page 10)clinical psychologist (page 12)clinical social worker (page 12)

cognition (page 9)cognitive psychologist (page 9)comparative psychologist (page 21)counseling psychologist (page 12)cross-cultural psychology

(page 11)determinism (page 5)developmental psychologist (page 9)dualism (page 6)ergonomist (or human factors spe-

cialist) (page 14)evolutionary psychologist (page 10)forensic psychologist (page 12)free will (page 5)functionalism (page 20)

industrial/organizational (I/O)psychology (page 13)

introspection (page 19)learning and motivation (page 9)mind–brain problem (page 6)monism (page 6)nature–nurture issue (page 7)psychiatry (page 12)psychoanalyst (page 12)psychology (page 3)psychophysical function (page 21)school psychologist (page 14)social psychologist (page 11)structuralism (page 20)

Suggestion for FurtherReading

Sechenov, I. (1965). Reflexes of the brain. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press. (Original work published 1863). One of thefirst attempts to deal with behavior scientifically and stillone of the clearest statements of the argument for deter-minism in human behavior.

Web/Technology ResourcesStudent Companion Website

www.thomsonedu.com/psychology/kalat

Explore the Student Companion Website for Online Try-It-Yourself activities, practice quizzes, flashcards, and more!The companion site also has direct links to the followingwebsites.

Careers in Psychology

www.drlynnfriedman.com/

Clinical psychologist Lynn Friedman offers advice on ma-joring in psychology, going to graduate school, and startinga career.

Nontraditional Careers in Psychology

www.apa.org/students

Advice and information for students from the AmericanPsychological Association.

Podcasts

www.yorku.ca/christo/podcasts/

You can download weekly podcasts about the history ofpsychology.

Today in the History of Psychology

www.cwu.edu/~warren/today.html

Warren Street, at Central Washington University, offers asample of events in the history of psychology for every dayof the year. Pick a date, any date (as they say) from the His-tory of Psychology Calendar and see what happened on thatdate. The APA sponsors this site, which is based on Street’sbook, A Chronology of Noteworthy Events in AmericanPsychology.

More About the History of Psychology

www.uakron.edu/ahap

The University of Akron has assembled a museum of oldpsychology laboratory equipment and other mementosfrom psychology’s past.

What Else Would You Like to Know?

psychclassics.yorku.ca

This online library offers many of the most famous booksand articles ever written in psychology.

Annotated Links

www.psywww.comwww.psychology.org

Both of these sites provide annotated links to a vast array ofinformation about psychology.



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