Psychology: The Early Years

AP PsychologyMs. Desgrosellier

September 16, 2009

Objectives:

SWBAT trace psychology’s prescientific roots, from early philosophy to the beginnings of modern science.

SWBAT explain how early psychologists attempted to understand the mind.

SWBAT identify leading early psychologists.

Earliest Roots of Psychology

Buddha: how sensations and perceptions combine to form ideas

Confucius: stressed power of ideas and of an educated mind

Hebrew scholars: linked mind and emotion to the body

Philosophy Gets Psychological

Socrates (469-399 BC) and Plato (428-348 BC)

The mind and body are separate

Knowledge is innate

Aristotle

Believed in careful observation

Soul and body are connected

Knowledge is NOT pre-existing

René Decartes (1595-1650)

• Agreed with Socrates and Plato

• Communication???

• Dissected animals and discovered nerves (didn’t know what they were really for)

• Thought they contained “animal spirits” that controlled movement.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

• From England

• One of the founders of modern science

• Found that our minds naturally look for patterns even in random events

• Foresaw how people tend to notice and remember events that confirm our beliefs

John Locke (1632-1704)

• British

• Argued that the mind is blank at birth (blank slate)

• This idea helped form modern empiricism

• The view that knowledge originates in experience and science should therefore rely on observation and experimentation.

Wilhelm Wundt

• Set up the first psychological laboratory in Germany in 1879

• Measured the difference between when people heard a sound occur versus when they were consciously aware they had perceived the sound

Edward Bradford Titchener

• Student of Wundt’s (received his Ph. D. in 1892)

• Introduced structuralism, an early school of psychology that used introspection to explore the elemental structure of the human mind.

• Encouraged people to engage in introspection (looking inward)

• Structuralism and introspection lost popularity.

William James

• Influenced by Darwin

• Started functionalism, a school of psychology that focused on how mental and behavioral processes function - how they enable the organism to adapt, survive, and flourish.

• Teacher at Harvard University

• Took 12 years to complete his textbook: Principles of Psychology

Mary Calkins

• Mentored individually by James

• Harvard denied her Ph. D. and she refused one from a sister school

• APA’s first female president in 1905

Margaret Floy Washburn

• First female psychology Ph. D.

• Second female APA president in 1921

• Denied entry into the organization of experimental psychologists