You are on page 1of 9

The Science of Psychology Chapter 1 Study Sheet What Is Psychology?

Psychology - The scientific study of the causes of behaviour; also, the applicat ion of the findings of psychological research to the solution of problems Why Behaviour Is Studied The ultimate goal of research in psychology is to understand human behaviour: explain why people do what they do Causal event - An event that causes another event to occur Psychological research is more than the idle endeavour of curious scientists; holds the promise of showing us how to solve our most important and pressing oblems One reason for studying behaviour is that human behaviour is the root of many the world s problem to it pr of

Fields of Psychology Areas of Psychology Research psychologists differ from one another in two principal ways: in the typ es of behaviour they investigate, and in the causal events they analyze Physiological Psychology - The branch of psychology that studies the physiologic al basis of behaviour Physiological psychologists study almost all behavioural phenomena that can be o bserved in non-human animals, including learning, memory, sensory processes, emo tional behaviour, motivation, sexual behaviour, and sleep Each phenomenon in non-human animals is considered a model that can help us unde rstand the causal events in human behaviour Comparative Psychology - The branch of psychology that studies the behaviours of a variety of organisms in an attempt to understand the adaptive and functional significance of the behaviours and their relation to evolution They are likely to study inherited behavioural patterns, such as courting and ma ting, predation and aggression, defensive behaviours, and parental behaviours Behaviour Analysis - The branch of psychology that studies the effect of the env ironment on behaviour primarily, the effects of the consequences of behaviours o n the behaviours themselves Behaviour analysts are primarily interested in learning and motivation They believe that an important cause of a specific behaviour is the relationship between the behaviour and some consequent event Behaviour analysts do their research in the laboratory or in applied settings, s uch as schools, homes, and businesses Their findings have been applied to teaching, business management, and psychothe rapy Behaviour Genetics -The branch of psychology that studies the role of genetics i n behaviour Behaviour geneticists study the role of genetics in behaviour by examining simil arities in physical and behavioural characteristics of blood relatives, whose ge nes are more similar than those of unrelated individuals They also perform breeding experiments with laboratory animals to see what aspec ts of behaviour can be transmitted to an animal s offspring Cognitive Psychology - The branch of psychology that studies complex behaviours and mental processes such as perception, attention, learning and memory, verbal behaviour, concept formation, and problem solving To cognitive psychologists, the events that cause behaviour consist of functions of the human brain that occur in response to environmental events Their explanations involve characteristics of inferred mental processes, such as imagery, attention, and mechanisms of language The study of the biology of cognition has been greatly aided by the development of harmless brain-scanning methods that permit us to measure the activity of var ious parts of the human brain Cognitive Neuroscience - The branch of psychology that attempts to understand co gnitive psychological functions by studying the brain mechanisms that are respon

sible for them. One of the principal research techniques is to study the behaviour of people who se brains have been damaged by natural causes, such as diseases, strokes, or tum ours Cognitive neuroscientists have developed many tests that are useful in assessing behavioural and cognitive deficits caused by abnormal brain functions Developmental Psychology - The branch of psychology that studies the changes in behavioural, perceptual, and cognitive capacities of organisms as a function of age and experience Some developmental psychologists study phenomena of adolescence or adulthood in particular, the effects of aging The causal events they study are as comprehensive as all of psychology: physiolo gical processes, cognitive processes, and social influences Social Psychology - The branch of psychology devoted to the study of the effects people have on each other s behaviour Social psychologists explore phenomena such as perception (of oneself as well as of others), cause-and-effect relations in human interactions, attitudes and opi nions, interpersonal relationships, group dynamics, and emotional behaviours, in cluding aggression and sexual behaviour Personality Psychology - The branch of psychology that attempts to categorize an d understand the causes of individual differences in patterns of behaviour Personality psychologists look for causal events in a person s history, both gen etic and environmental Evolutionary Psychology - The branch of psychology that explains behaviour in te rms of adaptive advantages that specific behaviours provided during the evolutio n of a species Evolutionary psychologists use natural selection as a guiding principle The task of the evolutionary psychologist is to trace the development of differe nces and to explore how their adaptive advantages might explain the behaviours o f modern humans Cross-Cultural Psychology - The branch of psychology that studies the effects of culture on behaviour Because the ancestors of people of different racial and ethnic groups lived in d ifferent environments that presented different problems and opportunities, diffe rent cultures have developed different strategies for adapting to their environm ents These strategies show themselves in laws, customs, myths, religious beliefs, and ethical principles Clinical Psychology - The branch of psychology devoted to the investigation and treatment of abnormal behaviour and psychological disorders Most clinical psychologists are practitioners who try to help people solve their problems, whatever the causes The rest are scientists who look for a wide variety of causal events, including genetic and physiological factors, and environmental factors such as parental up bringing, interactions with siblings, and other social stimuli They also do research to evaluate and improve methods of psychotherapy Not all psychologists are involved in research - some psychologists work outside the laboratory, applying the findings of research psychologists to problems rel ated to people s behaviour Eg. Consumer psychologist, school psychologists The Growth of Psychology as a Science Philosophical Roots of Psychology Perhaps the most notable part of our mental experience is that each of us is con scious of our own existence Animism - The belief that all animals and all moving objects possess spirits pro viding their motive force Psychology as a science must be based on the assumption that behaviour is strict ly subject to physical laws, just as any other natural phenomenon is The rules of scientific research impose discipline on humans, whose natural incl

inations might lead them to incorrect conclusions Ren Descartes (1596-1650) was a seventeenth-century French philosopher and mathem atician who had been called the father of modern philosophy and of a biological tradition that led to modern physiological psychology He assumed that the world was a purely mechanical entity that, having once been set in motion by God, ran its course without divine interference The Church was against that notion To Descartes, animals were creatures of the natural world only; accordingly, the ir behaviours were controlled by natural causes and could be understood by the m ethods of science His view of the human body was the same Reflex - An automatic response to a stimulus, such as the blink reflex to the su dden unexpected approach of an object toward the eyes What set humans apart from the rest of the world, according to Descartes, was th eir possession of a mind -> it was not part of the natural world, and therefore it obeyed different laws-> Dualism Dualism - The philosophical belief that reality consists of mind and matter Physical bodies, he believed, do not think, and minds are not made of ordinary m atter He suggested that a causal link existed between the mind and its physical housin g Although, later philosophers pointed out that this theoretical link actually con tradicted the belief in dualism, the proposal of a causal interaction between mi nd and matter was absolutely vital to the development of a psychological science He conceived of the muscles as balloons, which became inflated when a fluid pass ed through the nerves that connected them to the brain and spinal cord, just as water flowed through pipes to activate the statues This inflation was the basis of the muscular contraction that causes us to move Descartes explanation was one of the first to use a technological device as a mod el of the nervous system Model - A relatively simple system that works on known principles and is able to do at least some of the things that a more complex system can do Although Descartes s model of the human body was mechanical, it was controlled, as we have seen, by a nonmechanical (in fact, non-physical) mind Thus, humans were born with a special capability that made them greater than sim ply the sum of their physical parts John Locke (1632-1704) took this analysis one step further since he did not exem pt the mind from the laws of the material universe Empiricism - The philosophical view that all knowledge is obtained through the s enses Locke proposed all knowledge comes from experience and that our minds were empty at birth; ready to accept the writings of experience Irish bishop, philosopher, and mathematician George Berkeley (1685 1753) suggest ed that our knowledge of events in the world also requires inferences based on t he accumulation of past experiences -> We must learn to perceive Scottish philosopher James Mill (1773-1836) caused speculation about the mind, c ompleting an intellectual swing from animism (physical matter animated by spirit s) to materialism (mind composed entirely of matter) He worked on the assumption that humans and animals were fundamentally the same However, James Mill rejected Descartes concept that the mind is immaterial He felt that the mind, no less than the body, was a machine Materialism - A philosophical belief that reality can be known only through an u nderstanding of the physical world, of which the mind is a part Biological Roots of Psychology Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) was an Italian physiologist who discovered that muscle s could be made to contract by applying an electrical current directly to them o r to the nerves attached to them The muscles themselves contained the energy needed to contract They did not have to be inflated by pressurized fluid

The work of the German physiologist Johannes Mller (1801-1858) clearly shows the way in which emerging biological knowledge shaped the evolution of psychology Mller was a forceful advocate of applying experimental procedures to the study of physiology His most important contribution to what would become the science of psychology w as his doctrine of specific nerve energies Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies - Johannes Mllers observation that different n erve fibres convey specific information from one part of the body to the brain o r from the brain to one part of the body Mller s doctrine had important implications -> if different nerves convey message s about different kinds of information, then the regions of the brain that recei ve these messages must have different functions Pierre Flourens (1774-1867) was a French physiologist who provided experimental evidence for the implications of Mllers doctrine He operated on animals, removing various parts of the nervous system, and found that the resulting effects depended on which parts were removed He observed what the animal could no longer do and concluded that the missing ca pacity must have been the function of the part that had been removed Experimental Ablation - The removal or destruction of a portion of the brain of an experimental animal for the purpose of studying the functions of that region Paul Broca (1824-1880) a French surgeon, performed an autopsy on the brain of a man who had had a stroke several years previously The stroke (damage to the brain caused in this case by a blood clot) had caused the man to lose the ability to speak Broca discovered that the stroke had damaged part of the cerebral cortex on the left side of the man s brain and suggested that this region of the brain is a ce ntre for speech In 1870, the German physiologists Gustav Fritsch and Eduard Hitzig introduced th e use of electrical stimulation as a tool for mapping the functions of the brain Fritsch and Hitzig discovered that applying a small electrical shock to differen t parts of the cerebral cortex caused movements of different parts of the body >the body appeared to be mapped on the surface of the brain Later on, Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield would be able to show that highl y specific sensory experiences and even memories could be mapped in a similar wa y The work of the German physicist and physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-18 94) did much to demonstrate that mental phenomena could be explained by physiolo gical means He advocated a purely scientific approach, with conclusions based on objective i nvestigation and precise measurement Helmholtz successfully measured the speed of the nerve impulse and found that it was only about 27 metres per second, which is considerably slower than the spee d of electricity in wires This finding suggested to later researchers that the nerve impulse is more compl ex than a simple electrical current passing through a wire, which is indeed true Helmholtz next sought to measure the speed of a person s reaction to a physical stimulus however, he discovered that there was too much variability from person to person to make the kind of scientific laws that were common in physics Helmholtz s research was very important in setting the stage for the science of psychology In Germany, a contemporary of Helmholtz s, Ernst Weber (1795-1878), began work t hat led to the development of a method for measuring the magnitude of human sens ations Weber, an anatomist and physiologist, found that peoples ability to distinguish b etween two similar stimuli such as the brightness of two lights, the heaviness o f two objects, or the loudness of two tones followed orderly laws This regularity suggested to Weber and his followers that perceptual phenomena c ould be studied as scientifically as physics or biology Psychophysics - The branch of psychology that measures the quantitative relation between physical stimuli and perceptual experience

Applications in Education and Therapy Descartes believed that the mind had free will the ability to make decisions for which it was morally responsible However, it stood in opposition to a very different, even older, conception that individual decisions were determined by outside forces Philosophers began to recognize that a commitment to empiricism and materialism might also imply a commitment to determinism Determinism - The doctrine that behaviour is the result of prior events Sigmund Freud, believed in a strong version of determinism based on internal psy chological events Others, particularly those who practise humanistic psychology, emphasize autonom ous choice as a factor In January 1800, a boy about 12 years old was found living alone in the forests around Aveyron, France who was found and brought back with authorities to an orp hanage Later on the boy was confined to a Parisian Institute for the deaf There, his case was taken up by a young physician, Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard (1774 1838), who had been hired by the institute only a few months before the boy s a rrival Itard worked with the boy who he named Victor for five years, trying to find out what Victor could learn Unfortunately, Victor s deficits in language improved only slightly under Itard s teaching However, Itard stressed the identification of factors that could bring about cha nge and inspired a new approach in Europe to the education of individuals with c ognitive disabilities Childcare was an important issue in the U.S. at this time Educators such as Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) and philosophers such as John Dewey (1859-1952) advocated reforms based on the needs and faculties of childre n Dewey believed that one aim of education should be to establish habits that inte grate the child into the community Edward Thorndike (1874 1949) originally studied the behaviour of animals, lookin g at responses that might indicate intelligence and discovered the law of effect Law of Effect - Thorndike s observation that stimuli that occur as a consequence of a response can increase or decrease the likelihood of making that response a gain. The law of effect seemed to provide a universal principle by which habits could be learned: Goals were satisfiers that caused the action to recur more frequentl y An alternative view of children s learning was being developed in Italy by Maria Montessori (1870-1952) Montessori became the first woman in Italy to earn a medical degree Appointed to administer an institution for children with developmental disabilit ies, Montessori discovered Itards work with Victor and applied Itards approach to individualized instruction with considerable success Montessori added some innovations of her own and developed a system now known as the Montessori method This method was based on her belief that children matured through stages and wer e sensitive to different kinds of instruction at specific age range In contrast to Thorndikes emphasis on rewards as the basis for learning, Montesso ri felt that extrinsic rewards actually interfered with a child s natural incent ive to learn She also believed that movement was closely related to thought, and encouraged h er pupils to move around in the classroom Before Itard took responsibility for Victor, the boy was examined by Philippe Pi nel (1745-1826) A physician like Itard, Pinel would influence how psychology thought about chang

e, but in a different direction: He is widely regarded now as the father of psyc hiatry, the medical specialty that treats psychological disorders Pinel introduced some limited humanitarian reforms to the hospital, but his main influence was to propose that an asylum could, with proper practices, become a therapeutic institution There were the women of one ward, Salptrire, who were admitted with a collection o f symptoms such as memory loss, intermittent paralysis, and insensitivity to pai nful stimuli They were thought to be suffering from a nervous disorder that had been labelled hysteria Beginning in 1862, a neurologist by the name of Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) developed a clinical practice based on observations from the Salptrire ward Neurology as a medical specialty deals with the treatment of diseases of the ne rvous system and is closely allied with psychiatry Charcot proposed that hysteria was closely related to the condition produced by hypnosis and treated his patients by hypnotizing them Major Trends in the Development of Psychology Psychology as a science, separate from philosophy and biology, began in Germany in the late nineteenth century with Wilhelm Wundt (1832 1920) Wundt was the first person to call himself a psychologist Structuralism Structuralism - The system of experimental psychology that began with Wundt; it emphasized introspective analysis of sensation and perception Introspection - Literally, looking within, in an attempt to describe ones own mem ories, perceptions, cognitive processes, or motivations Wundt and his associates made inferences about the nature of mental processes by seeing how changes in the stimuli caused changes in trained observers verbal re ports His trained observers attempted to ignore complex perceptions and report only th e elementary ones For example, the sensation of seeing a patch of red is immediate and elementary, whereas the perception of an apple is complex. In 1889, one of Wundts protgs, James Mark Baldwin (1861-1934), was appointed profes sor of psychology at the University of Toronto His appointment, which was the first of the modern psychologists in a Canadian u niversity, was quite controversial Structuralism died out in the early twentieth century The major problem with his approach was the difficulty of reporting the raw data of sensation, unmodified by experience Also, the emphasis of psychological investigation shifted from the study of the mind to the study of behaviour Functionalism Functionalism - The strategy of understanding a species structural or behavioura l features by attempting to establish their usefulness with respect to survival and reproductive success Structuralists were interested in what they called the components of consciousne ss (ideas and sensations); in contrast, functionalists focused on the process of conscious activity (perceiving and learning) Functionalism grew from the new perspective on nature supplied by Charles Darwin and his followers The concept of natural selection showed how the consequences of an animals charac teristics affect its ability to survive Darwins theory was important to psychology because it suggested that behaviours, like other biological characteristics, could best be explained by understanding their role in the adaptation of an organism to its environment Thus, behaviour has a biological context

Darwin assembled evidence that behaviours, like body parts, could be inherited The most important psychologist to embrace functionalism was the American schola r William James (1842 1910) As James said, My thinking is first, last, and always for the sake of my doing. That is, thinking was not an end in itself; its function was to produce useful b ehaviours One of the last functionalists, James Angell (1869 1949), described its basic pr inciples: 1. Functional psychology is the study of mental operations and not mental struct ures It is not enough to compile a catalogue of what the mind does; one must try to u nderstand what the mind accomplishes by this doing 2. Mental processes are not studied as isolated and independent events but as pa rt of the biological activity of the organism These processes are aspects of the organisms adaptation to the environment and a re a product of its evolutionary history 3. Functional psychology studies the relation between the environment and the re sponse of the organism to the environment There is no meaningful distinction between mind and body; they are part of the s ame entity Freuds Psychodynamic Theory Sigmund Freud (1856 1939 formulated a theory of human behaviour that would great ly affect psychology and psychiatry and radically influence intellectuals of all kinds He devised his concepts of ego, superego, id, and other mental structures throug h talking with his patients, not through laboratory experiments And, unlike Wundt, Freud emphasized function; his mental structures served biolo gical drives and instincts and reflected our animal nature Psychology in Transition Psychology as a science took a radical turn in the early decades of the 20th cen tury The controversy over James Mark Baldwin s appointment at the University of Toron to quickly died down, helped in part by the creation by the Ontario Minister of Education of a second position for Baldwin s rival The first psychological lab was created in the British Dominion; it was designed for the experimental investigation of the mind, with attention to the control o f noise and light The new emphasis on experiment and observation was becoming prominent in the cla ssroom as well Through the efforts of both researchers and instructors, psychology became part of university curricula throughout Canada The Canadian Psychological Association was created in 1938 Baldwin formulated a special principle (now called the Baldwin effect) that he t hought could explain the evolution of mental phenomena Behaviourism Behaviourism - A movement in psychology that asserts that the only proper subje ct matter for scientific study in psychology is observable behaviour Behaviourists believe that because psychology is the study of observable behavio urs, mental events, which cannot be observed, are outside the realm of psycholog y One of the first behaviourists was Edward Thorndike, who formulated the law of e ffect He insisted that the subject matter of psychology was behaviour However, his explanations contained mentalistic terms Eg. Satisfaction, Discomfo rt Another major figure was Ivan Pavlov (1849 1936), a Russian who studied the phys iology of digestion

Pavlov found that a dog would salivate at completely arbitrary stimuli, such as the sound of a bell, if the stimuli were quickly followed by the delivery of a b it of food into the animal s mouth. Pavlovs discovery had profound significance for psychology He showed that through experience an animal could learn to make a response to a stimulus that had never caused this response before This ability might explain how organisms learn cause-and-effect relations in the environment Behaviourism as a formal school of psychology began with the publication of a bo ok by John B.Watson (1878 1958) According to Watson, psychology was a natural science whose domain was restricte d to observable events: the behaviour of organisms Behaviourism is still very much in evidence today in psychology Its advocates included B. F. Skinner (1904-1990), one of the most influential ps ychologists of the twentieth century Modern psychologists have moved more toward a view advocated by Margaret Floy Wa shburn (1871-1939) early in the debate over behaviourism Washburn (1922), although advocating her own version of structuralism, suggested to behaviourists that they regard introspection as a form of behaviour itself o ne that could help us understand the inaccessible processes of mental life A psychologist who studies private mental events realizes that these events can be studied only indirectly, by means of behaviour verbal reports of inner experi ences Unlike Wundt, present-day psychologists realize that these reports are not pure reflections of these mental events; like other behaviours, these responses can b e affected by many factors Consequently, they strive to maintain an objective stance to ensure that their r esearch findings will be valid and capable of being verified Humanistic Psychology Humanistic Psychology - An approach to the study of human behaviour that emphasi zes human experience, choice and creativity, self-realization, and positive grow th Humanistic psychologists insist that human nature goes beyond environmental infl uences, and that psychologists should study conscious processes, not unconscious ones Humanistic psychologists emphasize the positive sides of human nature and the po tential we all share for personal growth Humanistic psychologists do not believe that we will understand human consciousn ess and behaviour through scientific research Its greatest impact has been on the development of methods of psychotherapy base d on a positive and optimistic view of human potential Reaction Against Behaviourism: The Emphasis on Cognition A new movement began when a German psychologist, Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), bou ght a toy that presented a series of pictures in rapid succession Wertheimer and his colleagues suggested that psychological processes provided th e continuity Gestalt psychology - A movement in psychology that emphasized that cognitive pro cesses could be understood by studying their organization, not their elements The Gestalt school of psychology no longer exists, but it was very influential These organizational processes are not directly observable, yet they still deter mine behaviour Much of cognitive psychology uses an approach called information processing Information Processing - An approach used by cognitive psychologists to explain the workings of the brain; information received through the senses is processed by systems of neurons in the brain Cognitive psychologists use objective research methods, just as behaviourists do Reaction Against Behaviourism: The Emphasis on Neurobiology

During the early and mid-twentieth century, the dominance of behaviourism led to a de-emphasis of biological factors in the study of behaviour Behaviourists acknowledged that the brain controlled behaviour, but argued that because we could not see what was happening inside the brain, we should refrain from inventing physiological explanations that could not be verified Canadian psychologist, Donald Hebb (1904-1985) argued that behavioural and menta l phenomena could be related directly to brain activity He suggested several simple principles by which the nervous system organized its elf into special circuits that could represent mental activity Neurobiologists and scientists and engineers in allied fields have developed way s to study the brain that were unthinkable just a few decades ago.

You might also like