Psychology Chapter 1: What is

Psychology?

Section 1: The Science of Psychology

• Psychologists take as their subjects the entire spectrum of human beings as well as animals

–Want to know why people do things

–Want to know how people and animals solve problems, learn, remember, perceive, feel, & get along or don’t get along with others

• Study child rearing, gossiping, remembering a shopping list, daydreaming, etc

• What makes people tick

• Definition- the discipline concerned with behavior & mental processes & how they are affected by an organism’s physical & mental state & external environment

Psychology, Pseudoscience, & Common Sense

• What Psychology is NOT–“pop psych”–Self help books & talk shows–A pseudoscience promising a quick

fix to life’s problems

• Serious psych is more complex, more informative & based on rigorous research & empirical evidence

–Evidence gathered by careful observation, experimentation, and measurement.

• Not handwriting analysis, fortune telling, numerology, or astrology

• Psychology is not just a fancy name for common sense

• Psychological research often produces findings that contradict popular beliefs

The Birth of Modern Psychology

• Like today’s psychologists they wanted to describe, predict, understand, & modify behavior in order to add to human knowledge & increase human happiness

–Didn’t rely on empirical evidence

• Hippocrates

–Father of modern medicine

–Observed patients with head injuries & inferred that the brain must be the source of our pleasures, joys, laughter, sorrows, pains, grief, & tears

Bumpy Logic• Phrenology “Study of the

mind”–Popular in the early 1800s–Argued that different

areas of the brain accounted for specific character & personality traits & could be determined by the bumps on the head

• 1879- First psychology lab was officially established in Leipzig, Germany by Wilhelm Wundt

–Trained introspection- volunteers were taught to carefully observe, analyze, & describe their own sensations, mental images, & emotional reactions

• Goal is to break down behavior into its most basic elements

• Later rejected for being too subjective

• Still important to making psychology a science

• Functionalism- emphasized the function of behavior

–William James

–Looked at the causes & consequences of behavior

• Psychotherapy

–Sigmund Freud

•Psychoanalysis- emphasized unconscious motives & conflicts

• Psychology eventually grew into a complex discipline encompassing many different specialties, perspectives, & methods

Psychology’s Present

• Five Major Theoretical Perspectives

–Reflecting the different assumptions about how the mind works, different questions that psychologists ask about human behavior, & different ways of explaining why people do what they do

1. Biological Perspective

• Emphasizes bodily events and changes associated with actions, feelings, and thoughts

• Study how physical events interact with events in the external environment to produce perceptions, memories, emotions, etc

• Investigate the contribution of genes & other biological factors to the development of abilities & personality traits

• Evolutionary psychology- focuses on how genetically influenced behavior that was functional or adaptive during our evolutionary past may be reflected in our present behavior, mental processes, & traits

2. Learning Perspective

• Emphasizes how the environment and experience affect a person's or animal's actions

• Behaviorists focus on the environmental rewards & punishers that maintain or discourage specific behavior

–Look at what they can observe & measure directly

• Social Cognitive learning theorists combine behaviorism with research on thoughts, values, & intentions

–People learning by adapting their behavior to the environment & by imitating others, & by thinking about the events happening around them

3. Cognitive Perspective

• Emphasizes mental processes in perception, memory, language, problem solving, and other areas of behavior

• What goes on in people’s heads, how they reason, explain experiences, acquire moral standards, & form beliefs

• Infer mental processes from observed behavior

• Show how our thoughts & explanations of events affect what we feel & do

4. Sociocultural Perspective

• Emphasizes social and cultural forces outside the individual, forces that shape every aspect of behavior

• Most of us underestimate the impact of other people, the social context, & cultural rules on nearly everything we do

5. Psychodynamic Perspective

• Emphasizes unconscious dynamics within the individual, such as inner forces, conflicts, or the movement of instinctual energy

• Says that psychologists should focus in what really matter to most people- their hopes & aspirations

• “positive psychology”- focuses on the qualities that enable people to be happy, optimistic, & resilient in times of stress