Why Study Psychology

What you hope to learn from the study of psychology?

 Others?
 Self?
 Specific topics?
Psychology provides a different way to view and interpret the world and the
people who inhabit it.

What is psychology?
Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
Behavior is any action that people can observe or measure such as
 Walking
 Talking
 Sleeping
 Eating
 Brain activity
Mental processes are cognitive activities.
 Dreams
 Perceptions
 Thoughts
 Memories
Psychologists also study people’s emotions as they can affect both behaviour
and cognition.

A history of psychology
Hippocrates interest in psychology goes back to ancient Greece Scientific
approach, which began in the 1500s, led to birth of modern psychology in the
late 1800s

STRUCTURALISM

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) was a German scientist who was the first person
to be referred to as a psychologist.
Wundt viewed psychology as a scientific study of conscious experience, and he
believed that the goal of psychology was to identify components of
consciousness and how those components combined to result in our conscious
experience.
Wundt used introspection (internal perception) a processes by which someone
examines their own conscious experience as objectivity as possible, making the
human mind like any other aspect of nature that a scientist observed.
Broke down consciousness into objective sensations and subjective feelings

FUNCTIONALISM
Functionalism school of thoughts was emerged as a reaction to structuralism.
The funder of functionalism is William James, he is also known as founder of
American Psychology.
Functionalism emphasized function rather than structure of human
consciousness.
This is called natural selection. In a nutshell, people who are better adapted to
their environment are more likely to survive and procreate.
Functionalist were thus more concerned with the practical application of
psychology than structuralists.
Because of this practical slant, functionalist influenced the development of
applied psychology and behaviourism.
PSYCHOANALYSIS
Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic theory encompasses many of the themes in
psychoanalysis about the unconscious and uses it to explain personality.
It is in Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality which first introduces his
concepts of the id, ego, and superego.
Freud’s interpretation of behaviour almost always suggested a sexual
instinctual drive and cause.
His psychosexual theory of development, he states explains many behaviours
from childhood to adulthood.
Freud’s idea that attributes personality to unconscious motives and childhood
experiences
Unconsciousness: ideas unavailable in awareness that guide behaviour, can be
expressed through dreams, free association, or the slip of the tongue
Free association: person talks freely without censoring thoughts.
 Goal is for the unconscious to eventually become expressed through
“talk therapy”
BEHAVIOURISM
J.B Watson: the founder of behaviorism theory
A learning theory based on the belief that behaviors can be measured, trained
and changed.
Behaviorists call this method of learning “conditioning”
Empirical evidence is needed to understand and change human behavior.
Psychology should be seen as science.
Behaviorism is primarily concerned with observable behavior as opposed to
internal events like thinking and emotion because it can be scientifically
measured
People have no free will – a person’s environment determines their behavior.
Minds are born “blank slates”
Behavior is the result of stimulus- response (i.e. all behavior, no matter how
complex, can be reduced to a simple stimulus – response association
It assumes that the behavior of a human or animal is a consequence of that
individual’s history, including especially reinforcement and punishment,
together with the individual’s current motivational state and controlling
stimuli.

SCHOOL OF DESCRIPTION IMPORTANT

PSYCHOLOGY CONTRIBUTORS
Structuralism Uses the method of Wilhelm Wundt, Edward
introspection to identify B. Titchner
the basic elements or
“structures” of
psychological experience

Functionalism Attempts to understand William James

why animals and
humans have developed
the particular
psychological aspects
that they currently
possess
Psychodynamic Focuses on the role of Sigmund Freud, Carl
our unconscious Jung, Alfred Adler, Erik
thoughts, feelings, and Erikson
memories and our early
childhood experiences in
determining behaviour
Behaviourism Based on the premise John. B. Watson, B.F.
that It is not possible to Skinner
objectively study the
mind, and therefore that
psychologists should
limit their attention to
the study of behaviour
itself
Cognitive The study of mental Hermann Ebbinghaus, Sir
processes, including Frederic Bartlett, Jean
 perception, thinking, Piaget
memory, and
judgements
Social- cultural The study of hoe the Fritz Heider, Leon
social situations and the Festinger
cultures and in which
people find themselves
influence thinking and
behaviour.

Although it cannot capture every important psychologist, the following

timeline shows some of the most important contributors to the history of
psychology.

Date Psychologist(s) Description

428 to
Greek philosopher who argued for the role of
347 Plato
nature in psychological development.
BCE

384 to
Greek philosopher who argued for the role of
432 Aristotle
nurture in psychological development.
BCE

1588
to
Thomas Hobbes English philosopher.
1679
CE
Date Psychologist(s) Description

1596
to René Descartes French philosopher.
1650

1632
to John Locke English philosopher.
1704

1712
Jean-Jacques
to French philosopher.
Rousseau
1778

German experimental psychologist who

1801
developed the idea of the “just noticeable
to Gustav Fechner
difference” (JND), which is considered to be the
1887
first empirical psychological measurement.

1809 British naturalist whose theory of natural selection

to Charles Darwin influenced the functionalist school and the field of
1882 evolutionary psychology.

Although psychology has changed dramatically over its history, the most
important questions that psychologists address have remained constant. Some
of these questions follow, and we will discuss them both in this chapter and in
the chapters to come:
Nature versus nurture. Are genes or environment most influential in
determining the behaviour of individuals and in accounting for differences
among people? Most scientists now agree that both genes and environment
play crucial roles in most human behaviours, and yet we still have much to
learn about how nature (our biological makeup) and nurture (the experiences
that we have during our lives) work together (Harris, 1998; Pinker, 2002). The
proportion of the observed differences of characteristics among people (e.g., in
terms of their height, intelligence, or optimism) that is due to genetics is known
as the heritability of the characteristic, and we will make much use of this
term in the chapters to come. We will see, for example, that the heritability of
intelligence is very high (about .85 out of 1.0) and that the heritability of
extraversion is about .50. But we will also see that nature and nurture interact
in complex ways, making the question “Is it nature or is it nurture?” very
difficult to answer.

Free will versus determinism. This question concerns the extent to which
people have control over their own actions. Are we the products of our
environment, guided by forces out of our control, or are we able to choose the
behaviours we engage in? Most of us like to believe in free will, that we are
able to do what we want—for instance, that we could get up right now and go
fishing. And our legal system is premised on the concept of free will; we punish
criminals because we believe that they have choice over their behaviours and
freely choose to disobey the law. But as we will discuss later in the research
focus in this section, recent research has suggested that we may have less
control over our own behaviour than we think we do (Wegner, 2002).

Accuracy versus inaccuracy. To what extent are humans good information

processors? Although it appears that people are good enough to make sense of
the world around them and to make decent decisions (Fiske, 2003), they are
far from perfect. Human judgment is sometimes compromised by inaccuracies
in our thinking styles and by our motivations and emotions. For instance, our
judgment may be affected by our desires to gain material wealth and to see
ourselves positively and by emotional responses to the events that happen to
us. Many studies have explored decision making in crisis situations such as
natural disasters, or human error or criminal action, such as in the cases of the
Tylenol poisoning, the Maple Leaf meats listeriosis outbreak, the SARS
epidemic or the Lac-Mégantic train derailment.

Conscious versus unconscious processing. To what extent are we conscious of

our own actions and the causes of them, and to what extent are our
behaviours caused by influences that we are not aware of? Many of the major
theories of psychology, ranging from the Freudian psychodynamic theories to
contemporary work in cognitive psychology, argue that much of our behaviour
is determined by variables that we are not aware of.

Differences versus similarities. To what extent are we all similar, and to what
extent are we different? For instance, are there basic psychological and
personality differences between men and women, or are men and women by
and large similar? And what about people from different ethnicities and
cultures? Are people around the world generally the same, or are they
influenced by their backgrounds and environments in different ways?
Personality, social, and cross-cultural psychologists attempt to answer these
classic questions.

Early Psychologists

The earliest psychologists that we know about are the Greek philosophers
Plato (428-347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC). These philosophers (see Figure
1.3) asked many of the same questions that today’s psychologists ask; for
instance, they questioned the distinction between nature and nurture and the
existence of free will. In terms of the former, Plato argued on the nature side,
believing that certain kinds of knowledge are innate or inborn, whereas
Aristotle was more on the nurture side, believing that each child is born as an
“empty slate” (in Latin, a tabula rasa) and that knowledge is primarily acquired
through learning and experience.

Figure 1.3 Early Psychologists. The earliest psychologists were the Greek
Philosophers Plato (left) and Aristotle (right). Plato believed that much
knowledge was innate, whereas Aristotle thought that each child was born as
an “empty slate” and that knowledge was primarily acquired through learning
and experience.

European philosophers continued to ask these fundamental questions during

the Renaissance. For instance, the French philosopher René Descartes (1596-
1650) also considered the issue of free will, arguing in its favour and believing
that the mind controls the body through the pineal gland in the brain (an idea
that made some sense at the time but was later proved incorrect). Descartes
also believed in the existence of innate natural abilities. A scientist as well as a
philosopher, Descartes dissected animals and was among the first to
understand that the nerves controlled the muscles. He also addressed the
relationship between mind (the mental aspects of life) and body (the physical
aspects of life). Descartes believed in the principle of dualism: that the mind is
fundamentally different from the mechanical body. Other European
philosophers, including Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704),
and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), also weighed in on these issues. The
fundamental problem that these philosophers faced was that they had few
methods for settling their claims. Most philosophers didn’t conduct any
research on these questions, in part because they didn’t yet know how to do it,
and in part because they weren’t sure it was even possible to objectively study
human experience. But dramatic changes came during the 1800s with the help
of the first two research psychologists: the German psychologist Wilhelm
Wundt (1832-1920), who developed a psychology laboratory in Leipzig,
Germany, and the American psychologist William James (1842-1910), who
founded a psychology laboratory at Harvard University.