General Psychology - Class #1
. Definition of psychology - Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
Behavior - any action that we can observe or record - external
Mental processes - internal, subjective experiences
When and how psychology began-
Psychology has its roots in philosophy
Greek philosopher, Aristotle theorized about learning, memory, motivation, and emotion before 300 BC
the birth of psychology is credited to Wilhelm Wundt
Dec. 1879 Wundt was professor at the Univ. of Leipzig in Germany. He conducted what is considered to be psychology's first experiment. Wundt and students established a laboratory and built instruments to measure time intervals between awareness and being aware of awareness.
This was demonstrated in class.
They called mental processes, the "atoms of the mind".
Soon the new science of psychology began to diversity and spread to the U.S.
schools of psychology - meaning schools of thought or branches of psychology
Edward Titchener, Ph.D. was a student of Wundt's - introduced Structuralism in the 1890's at Cornell University
He aimed to discover the structural elements of the mind ...just like chemists identified elements of matter.
The scientific questions was "What?"
Titchener used INTROSPECTION (looking inward).
He trained people to report elements of their experience...sensations, images, feelings But introspection proved to be unreliable - different responses from different people
However, introspection did work successfully in research regarding the sensation of taste...Titchener was able to identify consistently the components of taste - bitter, sweet, salty, and sour.
William James - Harvard Professor - Functionalism - in the same time period
James was influenced by the school of philosophy known as Pragmatism - ideas are evaluated based on how useful they are
James was influenced by Charles Darwin who had proposed the theory of natural selection in evolution - that evolution favors those characteristics that help the organism to survive
To understand the mind, we should look at its functions or purpose - thinking and feeling and what are they for? Or Why do we think and feel? The scientific question was “WHY?”
Where were the women when the field of psychology was taking hold?
Mary Calkins - William James admitted her to his graduate seminar in psychology at Harvard in 1890 over the objections of Harvard’s president. When she joined, all the other students who were men, dropped out. James was forced to tutor her individually. She later completed all requirements for her Ph.D. at Harvard and had the highest score on the qualifying exams…but Harvard refused to grant her degree - offered her Radcliffe degree - but she refused. She went on to become the first female president of the APA in 1905 and a distinguished memory researcher. She died in 1930. In 2002, psychologists and students lobbied Harvard to award her degree posthumously…but it was again denied.
In 1894, Margaret Floy Washburn became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in Psychology from Cornell Univ. She wrote an influential book called “The Animal Mind” and was the 2 female president of the APA.
In 1900, Sigmund Freud published “The Interpretation of Dreams”
He, like the preceding psychologists, focused on inner experiences. Freud however also developed a theory of personality which had a far reaching impact on the development of psychology. id - ego - super-ego
Freud also focused on the treatment of patients because he was a physician. This was different from the research approach of the previous schools.
This was a new branch in psychology……. Which developed into psychiatrists and psychologists.
From the 1920’s to the 1960’s American psychologists shifted away from looking at the inner experience and re-defined psychology as
The scientific study of observable behavior.
These were the behaviorists. They applied learning theory to treatment of individuals. The basic approach was to understand behavior in terms of Stimulus and Response. Behaviors are a reaction to a stimulus.
This was followed by Carl Rogers and Humanistic psychology.
This school focused on our needs for love and acceptance.
Humanistic psychology had an enormous effect on the field of counseling psychology. Counseling moved beyond observing with occasional confronting………to interaction between the patient and the therapist.
The key term….unconditional positive regard….became an important part of therapist training.
Also, in the 1960’s cognitive-behavioral psychology began to emerge. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is the most common approach in psychotherapy with considerable research behind it. This approach is based upon - S - O - R, meaning the response is based upon the stimulus, and the experience of the organism…..thoughts and feelings.
Beginning in 2000 - a new movement began with psychology - known as Positive psychology! This was in reaction to psychology emphasizing the illness model and focusing on what can go wrong in people’s lives.- psychopathology.
Now psychologists are attempting to research and understand a fuller range of what we experience such as hope, optimism, and happiness.
Martin Seligman is one of the founders of the positive psychology movement. He first began his career conducting experiments with dogs. In his classic experiment, dogs were place in cages and shocks were administered to the floor of each cage in varying intervals. At first the dogs would jump and bark in response to the shocks. However, they had no control over the shocks and they had no means of escape. Eventually, the dogs stopped reacting to the shocks in any way. They simply laid down in their cages. For the next step of the experiment, the doors to each cage were opened just enough that the dogs could escape by jumping through them. However, when the shocks were administered, the dogs continued to lay on the floor of their cages. This phenomenon was termed, "Learned Helplessness" and was compared to the experience of people with depression. Even though the dogs had a means of escape, it is assumed that they felt so helpless, that the means of escape did not register for them. In people, this learned helplessness can occur when individuals become depressed in response to chronic stress.
Homework assignment # 1 discusses the positive psychology movement in depth.
In class we watched the video on "Happiness" from the homework assignment and also listened to the song. The song gave more than 12 examples of steps to encourage happiness:
1. gratitude
2. optimism
3. stop comparing yourself to others
4. practice acts of kindness
5. nurture social relationships
6. learn forgiveness
7. grieve your losses
8. increase "flow" experiences
9. savor the joys of life
10. commit to a goal
11. spirituality
12. take care of your body
- physical activity
- meditation
- act happy.
