The Story of Psychology

Prologue

Psychological Science is Born

Wilhelm Wundt and psychology’s first graduate students studied the “atoms of the mind” by conducting

experiments at Leipzig, Germany, in 1879. This work is considered the birth of psychology as we know it

today.

Wundt’s student, Edward Titchner, introduced structuralism at Cornell University. He wanted to discover

the structural elements of the mind, so he trained people in introspection

(looking inward) and reporting elements of their experiences.

Generally speaking, the structuralists focused on inner

sensations, images and feelings.W

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Titchner (1867-1927)

Psychological Science is Born

American philosopher William James looked at the evolved functions of our thoughts and

feelings.

James believed that thinking, like smelling and seeing, developed because it was adaptive. He studied how mental and behavioral processes function and enable us to adapt, survive, and

flourish. This approach to psychology is called functionalism.

James was better known for teaching at Harvard and for writing Principles of

Psychology (1890), the first psychology textbook, a task that took him 12 years to

complete.

Mary Calkins, James’s student, became the APA’s first female president.

Margaret Floy Washburn was the first female psychology Ph.D., the second female APA president, and a distinguished writer (The

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Mary Whiton Calkins and William James

Margaret Floy Washburn

Psychological Science DevelopsThose involved in the birth of

psychology, dubbed “Magellans of the mind,” developed from

more established fields. Many, like Wundt, were physiologists.

Sigmund Freud, an Austrian physician, and his followers

emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind and its effects on human behavior.

Psychology originated in many disciplines and countries. It

was, until the 1920s, defined as the science of mental life.

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(1856

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Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Psychological Science DevelopsBehaviorists

Watson and later Skinner dismissed introspection and redefined psychology as “the scientific study of observable behavior.”

The behaviorists emphasized the study of overt behavior as the subject matter of scientific psychology.

John Watson (1878-1958) B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)

Psychological Science Develops

Humanistic PsychologyThe humanists thought behaviorism’s focus on learned behaviors was too mechanistic and that psychoanalysis

focused too much on the meaning of childhood memories.

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)

Carl Rogers (1902-1987)

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Maslow and Rogers emphasized current

environmental influences on our

growth potential and our need for love and

acceptance.

Thinking Critically

With Psychological Science

Chapter 1

The Biology of

Mind

Chapter 2

Consciousness and the Two Track

MindChapter 3

Is Hypnosis an Altered State of Consciousness?

1.Social Influence Theory: Hypnotic subjects may simply be imaginative actors playing a social role.

2.Divided Consciousness Theory: Hypnosis is a special state of dissociated (divided) consciousness (Hilgard, 1986, 1992).

(Hilgard, 1992)

Hilgard felt that hypnotic dissociation was a vivid form of everyday mind splits – similar to doodling while listening to a

lecture.

For example, if someone lowered their hand into an ice bath, the hypnosis

dissociated the sensation of pain from the emotional suffering that defines their experience of pain…the water

feels cold but not painful.

Nature, Nurture,

and Human Diversit

y

Chapter 4

Howard GardnerHoward Gardner (1998)

concludes that parents and peers are complementary.

– Parents are more important when it comes to education, discipline, responsibility, orderliness, charitableness, and ways of interacting with authority figures

– Peers are more important for learning cooperation, finding the road to popularity, inventing styles of interaction among people the same age

Developing

Through the Life

Span

Chapter 5

The Competent Newborn – William James

Presumed that newborns experience a blooming, buzzing confusion.

Until the 1960s, few people disagreed.

Then, researchers found out that newborns know a lot if you know how to ask. You must capitalize on what babies can do…gaze, suck, turn their heads

Typical Age Range

Description of Stage

Developmental Phenomena

Birth to nearly 2 years SensorimotorExperiencing the world through senses and actions (looking, touching, mouthing)

•Object permanence•Stranger anxiety

About 2 to 6 years

About 7 to 11 years

About 12 through adulthood

PreoperationalRepresenting things with words and images but lacking logical reasoning

•Pretend play•Egocentrism•Language development

Concrete operationalThinking logically about concrete events; grasping concrete analogies and performing arithmetical operations

•Conservation •Mathematical transformations

Formal operationalAbstract reasoning

•Abstract logic•Potential for moral reasoning

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Origins of AttachmentFor years, researchers reasoned that infants became attached to

those who satisfied their need for nourishment.

An accidental finding overturned this explanation showing that

comfort and safety were highly important.

Monkeys preferred contact with the comfortable cloth mother, even

while feeding from the nourishing wire mother.

Harlow (1971) showed that infants bond with surrogate mothers not

because of nourishment, but because of bodily contact.

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Imprinting is the process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life.

Konrad Lorenz and his ducklings (1937)

Attachment DifferencesSensitive responsive

mothers, who noticed what their babies were doing and

responded appropriately, had infants who exhibited

secure attachment.

Insensitive, unresponsive mothers who attended to

their babies when they felt like doing it and ignored them

at other times had infants who often became insecurely

attached.

Mary Ainsworth (1979)

Developing Morality

Kohlberg (1981, 1984) sought to describe the development of moral reasoning by posing moral dilemmas to

children and adolescents, such as

“Should a person steal medicine to save a

loved one’s life?” He found stages of moral

development.

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Kohlberg’s 3 Basic Levels of Moral Thinking

1. Preconventional Morality: Before age 9, children show morality to avoid punishment or gain reward.

2. Conventional Morality: By early adolescence, social rules and laws are upheld for their own sake.

3. Postconventional Morality: Affirms people’s agreed-upon rights or follows personally perceived ethical principles.

Sensation and

Perception

Chapter 6

Opponent Process Theory

Hering proposed that we process four primary colors combined in pairs of red-green, blue-

yellow, and black-white.

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Perceptual Interpretation

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) maintained that knowledge comes from our inborn ways of organizing

sensory experiences.

How important is experience in shaping our perceptual

interpretation?

John Locke (1632-1704) argued that we learn to

perceive the world through our experiences.

Learning

Chapter 7

BehaviorismJohn B. Watson viewed psychology as an objective science based on observable behavior. This new

science was called behaviorism.

Watson also urged colleagues to discard the reference to inner

thoughts and motives.

Although there is contemporary agreement that psychology

should be an objective study, behaviorism is not universally

accepted by all schools of thought today.

John B. Watson (1878 – 1958)

Ideas of classical conditioning originate from old philosophical theories. However, it was the

Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov who elucidated classical conditioning. His work provided a basis for later behaviorists like John Watson and B.F.

Skinner.

Classical Conditioning

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)

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Classical or Pavlovian Conditioning

Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physician and

neurophysiologist.

He was the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize

(1904).

He studied digestive secretions and spent the last three decades of his

life running novel experiments on learning.

Like Watson after him, he had a disdain for

“mentalistic concepts” such as consciousness.

Ivan Pavlov (1849 – 1936)

Biological Predispositions

John Garcia

Garcia showed that the duration between the CS and the US may be

long (hours), but yet result in conditioning. A biologically adaptive

CS (taste) led to conditioning but other stimuli (sight or sound) did not.

Operant & Classical Conditioning

1. Classical conditioning forms associations between stimuli (CS and US). Operant conditioning, on the other hand, forms an association between behaviors and the resulting events.

Operant & Classical Conditioning

2. Classical conditioning involves respondent behavior that occurs as an automatic response to a certain stimulus. Operant conditioning involves operant behavior, a behavior that operates on the environment, producing rewarding or punishing stimuli.

3. To distinguish classical from operant conditioning, we can ask “is the organism learning associations between events it does not control (classical conditioning), or is it learning associations between its behavior and resulting events (operant conditioning)?”

Biological PredispositionBiological constraints

predispose organisms to learn associations that are naturally adaptive.

Breland and Breland (1961) showed that

operantly conditioned animals drift towards

their biologically predisposed instinctive

behaviors (e.g. pigs pushing an object with their nose instead of

picking them up). They called this instinctive

drift.Marian Breland Bailey

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Bandura's ExperimentsBandura's Bobo doll

study (1961) indicated that

individuals (children) learn

through imitating others who receive

rewards and punishments.

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Memory

Chapter 8

RehearsalEffortful learning usually requires

rehearsal or conscious

repetition.

Ebbinghaus studied rehearsal by using nonsense syllables: TUV YOF GEK XOZ

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Hermann Ebbinghaus(1850-1909)

Motivated ForgettingMotivated Forgetting: People unknowingly revise their memories (e.g. Myers chocolate chip cookie example).

Repression: A defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness.

Repression was central to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and has become widely accepted (9 in 10 university students believe in it [Brown et al, 1996]); however, increasing numbers of memory researchers think repression rarely, if ever, occurs.

Sigmund Freud

Culver Pictures

Constructed MemoriesLoftus’ research shows that if false

memories (lost at the mall or drowned in a lake) are implanted in individuals, they construct (fabricate) their memories.

Don Shrubshell

Thinking and

Language

Chapter 9

Explaining Language Development

Operant Learning: Skinner (1957, 1985)

believed that language development may be

explained on the basis of learning principles such as association,

imitation, and reinforcement.

Babies learn to talk in many of the same ways that animals learn to peck keys and press bars (Skinner, 1985).

B.F. Skinner

Inborn Universal Grammar: Chomsky (1959, 1987) opposed Skinner’s ideas and

suggested that the rate of language acquisition is so fast that it cannot be explained through

learning principles, and thus most of it is

inborn.

Explaining Language Development

Noam Chomsky

Intelligence

Chapter 10

General IntelligenceCharles Spearman developed

the idea that general intelligence (g) exists.

General intelligence (g) is the idea that we have one intelligence that underlies

specific mental abilities and is measured by every task on

an intelligence test.

Spearman helped develop factor analysis, a statistical

procedure that identifies clusters of related items.

Athleticism, like intelligence, is many thingsCharles Spearman (1863 – 1945)

Howard GardnerGardner

proposes eight types of

intelligences and speculates about

a ninth one — existential

intelligence.Existential

intelligence is the ability to

think about the question of life,

death and existence.Howard Gardner

Robert SternbergSternberg (1985, 1999, 2003) also agrees with Gardner, but suggests three intelligences (a

triarctic theory of intelligence) rather than

eight.

1. Analytical Intelligence: Intelligence that is assessed by intelligence tests.

2. Creative Intelligence: Intelligence that makes us adapt to novel situations, generating novel ideas.

3. Practical Intelligence: Intelligence that is required for everyday tasks (e.g. street smarts).

Robert Sternberg

Alfred BinetAlfred Binet and his colleague Théodore

Simon practiced a more modern form of

intelligence testing by developing questions that would predict children’s future progress in the Paris school system.

The goal became measuring each child’s

mental age – the level of performance associated

with a certain chronological age.Alfred Binet (1857 – 1911)

Lewis TermanIn the US, Lewis Terman adapted Binet’s

test for American school children by adding some items and extending the

upper end of the test. The new test was named the Stanford-Binet Test.

Terman promoted widespread use of intelligence testing even sympathizing

with the ideas of eugenics, the 19th Century idea that only smart and fit

people should reproduce.

The U.S. engaged in the world’s first mass administration of intelligence tests

testing arriving immigrants and army recruits (WWI).

Eventually, Terman (and others) came to realize that test scores reflected not only

innate ability but also education and culture.

Lewis Terman

William SternThe formula for Intelligence

Quotient (IQ) was introduced by William Stern. Average score was 100. The test worked for children,

but not for adults.

Most current intelligence tests, including the Stanford-Binet, no

longer compute IQ, although the term still lingers in everyday vocabulary as

a shorthand expression for intelligence test scores.William Stern

David WechslerWechsler developed

what is the most widley used

intelligence test, the Wechsler Adult

Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and later the

Wechsler Intelligence Scale

for Children (WISC), an

intelligence test for school-aged children.

Motivation and Work

Chapter 11

A Hierarchy of MotivesAbraham Maslow

(1970) suggested that certain needs have priority over others. Physiological needs

like breathing, thirst, and hunger come

before psychological needs such as

achievement, self-esteem, and the need

for recognition.

(1908-1970)

Introduction – Ancel Keys

Creator of the Army – K rations.

Did an experiment with 36 conscientious objectors to

the war (people who did not want to serve but who

wanted to do something to contribute to the war

effort).

Fed them just enough to maintain their initial weight and then cut their food level

in half for six months.Ancel Keys (1904 – 2004)

Emotions, Stress,

and Health

Chapter 12

James-Lange TheoryWilliam James and

Carl Lange proposed an idea that was

diametrically opposed to the common-sense

view. The James-Lange Theory proposes that

physiological activity precedes the

emotional experience.

Cannon-Bard TheoryWalter Cannon and

Phillip Bard questioned the James-Lange

Theory and proposed that an emotion-

triggering stimulus and the body's arousal take place simultaneously.

Physiological response and experienced

emotions are separate.

Two-Factor TheoryStanley Schachter and Jerome Singer

proposed yet another theory which suggests

our physiology and cognitions create

emotions. Emotions have two factors–

physical arousal and cognitive label.

An emotional experience requires a

conscious interpretation of the

arousal.

The Schachter Singer Experiment (1962)

• 184 University of Minnesota Introduction to Psychology students were told they were getting a shot of vitamin C to do a test on vitamin C and eyesight. They were broken down into four groups:1. An informed group was told it would make their hearts race

and bodies tremble.2. A misinformed group was told it would make them numb.3. An uninformed group was not told anything about the shot.4. A control group which received a a neutral injection (saline

solution). Like the third group, this group was uninformed.• They were then taken to a waiting room with other

experimentees (really members of the experiment’s staff) who behaved in one of two ways:

1. Behaved euphorically, shooting the paper from a “questionnaire” at the trashcans, making paper airplanes, etc.

2. Behaved angrily, becoming more and more annoyed at the “questionnaire.”

Schachter Singer Experiment Continued

• Results:

1. Subjects who were informed (group 1) or who had received the neutral shot (group 4) looked on in mild amusement at both the euphoric and angry actions of others.

2. Subjects who were misinformed (group 2) or uninformed (group 3) joined in with the euphoric and angry behavior.

• Conclusions:1. Internal components of emotion affect a person differently

depending on his or her interpretation or perception of the social situation.

2. When people cannot explain their physical reactions, they take cues from their physical environment.

3. When people knew that their hearts were beating faster, they did not feel particularly euphoric or angry.

4. Finally, this shows that internal changes are important (or the neutral group would have acted same way as those from the misinformed groups).

Personality

Chapter 13

Psychoanalytic PerspectiveFreud was a brilliant student

who had a great memory and a drive to study. He attended

medical school at the University of Vienna and began a private clinical

practice.

In his clinical practice, Freud encountered patients

suffering from nervous disorders. Their complaints could not be explained in terms of purely physical

causes.

Freud’s clinical experience led him to develop the first comprehensive theory of

personality, which included the unconscious mind,

psychosexual stages, and defense mechanisms.

Sigmund Freud(1856-1939)

Culver Pictures

The Neo-FreudiansLike Freud, Adler

believed in childhood tensions. However, these tensions were social in nature and

not sexual.

Adler, who overcame childhood illnesses and

accidents, believed that a child struggles with an inferiority

complex during growth and strives for superiority and power.Alfred Adler (1870-1937)

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The Neo-FreudiansLike Adler, Horney

believed in the social aspects of childhood

growth and development. She believed childhood anxiety, caused by the

dependent child’s sense of helplessness, triggers our desire for love and

security.

She countered Freud’s assumption that women

have weak superegos and suffer from “penis envy.”

She also attempted to balance the bias she

detected in the masculine view of psychology.

Karen Horney (HORN-eye) (1885-1952)

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The Neo-FreudiansJung believed in the

collective unconscious, which contained a common reservoir of images derived from our

species’ past. This is why many cultures

share certain myths and images such as the

mother being a symbol of nurturance.

Carl Jung (Yoong) (1875-1961)

Archive of the H

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Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)Developed by Henry Murray, the TAT is a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests

through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.

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The story includes the event shown in the picture, preceding events, emotions and thoughts of those portrayed, and the outcome of the event shown. The story content and structure are thought to reveal

the subject's attitudes, inner conflicts, and views.

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Rorschach Inkblot TestThe most widely used projective test uses a set of

10 inkblots and was designed by Hermann Rorschach. It seeks to identify people’s inner

feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots.

Lew

Merrim

/ Photo Researcher, Inc.

Humanistic PerspectiveBy the 1960s, psychologists became discontent with

Freud’s negativity and the mechanistic psychology of the behaviorists.

Abraham Maslow(1908-1970)

Carl Rogers(1902-1987)

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The Trait PerspectiveA trait is an individual’s unique

constellation of durable dispositions and consistent ways

of behaving. Each person is uniquely made up of traits.

After meeting with Freud, Gordon Allport came to define personality in terms of identifiable behavior patterns and was concerned less with explaining individual traits

than with describing them.

Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother Kathleen Briggs attempted to sort people

according to Jung’s personality types using 126 questions. This is

called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

Examples of Traits

HonestDependable

MoodyImpulsive

Gordon Allport (1897 –1967)

Exploring TraitsEach personality is

uniquely made up of multiple traits.

Allport & Odbert (1936), identified

almost 18,000 words representing traits.

One way to condense the immense list of personality traits is

through factor analysis, a statistical

approach used to describe and relate personality traits.

Cattell used this approach to develop a 16 Personality Factor

(16PF) inventory.

Raymond Cattell(1905-1998)

Social-Cognitive PerspectiveBandura (1986, 2001, 2005)

proposed the social-cognitive perspective. This personality

theory emphasizes that personality is the result of an interaction that takes place between a person and their

social context.We learn many of our

behaviors either through conditioning or by observing

others and modeling our behaviors after theirs (the

social part).

They also emphasize the importance of mental

processes…what we think about our situations affects our behavior (the cognitive

part).Albert Bandura

Positive Psychology and Humanistic Psychology

Positive psychology, such as humanistic psychology, attempts to foster human fulfillment.

Positive psychology seeks positive emotions which include satisfaction with the past, present, and optimism for the future.

Positive character, focuses on exploring and enhancing

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creativity, courage, compassion, integrity, self-control, leadership, wisdom

and spirituality, Finally, positive social

groups including healthy families, communal

neighborhoods, effective schools, socially responsible

media, and civil dialogue.

Psychological

Disorders

Chapter 14

Therapy

Chapter 15

Psychoanalysis: Methods

Dissatisfied with hypnosis, Freud developed the method of free association to unravel the unconscious mind and

its conflicts.The patient lies on a couch and speaks about whatever

comes to his or her mind while the psychoanalyst sits out of the patient’s line of vision. Their job is to not

interrupt, listen, and remain objective. Here’s an example of psychoanalysis in the 1940s.

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Psychodynamic TherapyInfluenced by Freud, in a face-to-face setting (counter

Freud), psychodynamic therapists understand symptoms and themes across important relationships in a patient’s life.

Interpersonal psychotherapy, a variation of psychodynamic therapy, is effective in treating depression. It

focuses on symptom relief here and now, not an overall personality change.

Client-Centered TherapyDeveloped by Carl Rogers, client-centered therapy is a

form of humanistic therapy.

The therapist listens to the needs of the patient in an accepting and non-judgmental way, addressing problems in

a productive way and building his or her self-esteem.

The therapist engages in active listening and echoes, restates, and clarifies the patient’s thinking,

acknowledging expressed feelings.

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A clip of Rogers describing his

therapy:

Beck’s Therapy for DepressionAaron Beck (1979) suggests that

depressed patients believe that they can never be happy (thinking) and thus associate minor failings (e.g.

failing a test [event]) in life as major causes for their depression.

We often think in words. Consequently, getting people to

change what they say to themselves is an effective way to change their

thinking.

Donald Meichenbaum (1977, 1985) introduced stress inoculation

training which trained people to restructure their thinking in

stressful situations. Example:

“Relax, the exam may be hard, but it will be hard for everyone else too. I studied harder than most people.

Besides, I don’t need a perfect score to get a good grade.”

Social Psycholog

y

Chapter 16

Attributing Behavior to Persons or to Situations

Attribution Theory: Fritz Heider (1958) suggested that we have a

tendency to give causal explanations for someone’s

behavior, often by crediting either the situation or the person’s

disposition.

A teacher may wonder if a child’s hostility reflects an aggressive personality (a dispositional

attribution) or a reaction to stress or abuse (a situational

attribution).

Dispositions are enduring personality traits. So, if Joe is a

quiet, shy, and introverted child, he is likely to be like that in a number

of situations.

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Fritz Heider

Role Playing Affects Attitudes

When people adopt a new role (e.g. college student, new job, marriage), they strive to follow

the social prescriptions.Zimbardo (1972) assigned the

roles of guards and prisoners to random students and found that guards and prisoners developed role- appropriate attitudes. So

disturbing were the findings that he had to discontinue a two week

experiment after six days (10:17).

Similar situations have played out in the real world (e.g. Abu Ghraib Prison); however, it’s important to note that some

people succumb to the situation and others do not.

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Group Pressure & ConformitySuggestibility is a subtle type of conformity, adjusting our

behavior or thinking toward some group standard.

To study conformity, Solomon Asch (1955) performed a test using lines and five cohorts to see if someone would conform

with the group and join them in giving the wrong answer.

This experiment was done with thousands of college students and

more than one third of them answered incorrectly to go along

with the group (1:57).

ObediencePeople comply to social pressures. How

would they respond to outright command?

Stanley Milgram designed a study that investigates the effects of authority on

obedience.

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