1. Intro to Psychology
History &
Approaches

2. Psychology….A short history and a long past.
Stand Alone discipline for 120 years.
Science of behavior and mental processes
Sickness is as old as humankind and methods of attempting to cure it are as old as human culture. Supernatural and natural healing methods have been used by all peoples, ancient and recent, but surgery in general is a product of Western culture. An exception to this is the operation called trephination, the oldest known surgery. Trephined human skull fossils date as far back as 10,000 years to the people of the European Neolithic era and in a limited way in the Canary Islands, North Africa, Russia, and in the New World before the discovery of the Americas. The most extensive and expert practice of the operation by American Indians was in Peru and Bolivia, where numerous trephined skulls have been found in ancient burial sites. Some show no signs of healing, indicating the death of the patient during or shortly after the operation, but many show extensive healing of the bone.

3. Prescientific Psychology
How are ideas formed?
Some ideas are inborn, innate
The mind is a blank slate, ideas grow from experience
Socrates ( B.C.)
Aristotle ( B.C.)
Plato ( B.C.)
Locke ( )
Most historians of Psych trace the roots of the discipline back to the ancient Greek philosophers. Plato/Socrates described human knowledge as being innate. Humans born with the ability to perform certain tasks.
Others disagreed- Aristotle- In order to understand something, you must directly observe the phenomenon. His ideas are an early example of what scientists call empiricism. Most psychologists believe this is an essential component of psych.

4. Psychological Science is Born
Wilhelm Wundt
Late 1800’s
1st Psychology Lab
Father of Modern
Psychology
Seeking to measure
reflexes vs. conscious awareness.
Late 1800’s
Wundt had been interested in understanding the biological causes of behavior. He realized however, that it would be difficult to study the brain of a human directly while the human was using it! He devised a technique that would allow him to indirectly observe causes of behavior. Wundt called his approach introspection. Wundt trained his subjects to record accurately their cognitive reactions to simple stimuli.

5. Early Schools of Thought Structuralism/Functionalism
What is consciousness?
Edward Titchener
Introspection
Functionalism
Why do we have consciousness?
William James
1s psych textbook
A rose:
Red
Silky
Aromatic
Soft
Wilhelm Wundt (late 1800’s)
1st Psychology Lab
Father of Modern Psychology
Structuralism (what is consciousness)
Titchener/
William James (Harvard)
1st Psychology Text
Functionalism (Why do we have consciousness? How does it help us live?
Structuralism was introduced by Edward Titchener and furthered the study of measuring the “atoms of the mind”, the discrete elements of consciousness.
Through introspection , Wundt believed, a psychologist would be able to distill the structure of consciousness. This theory became known as structuralism. Titchener (student of Wundt) was convinced that unless we teach students HOW to do psychology, psychology as a scientific discipline would never develop the way biology, physics, and chemistry had. Set up a lab at Cornell to teach students how psychology works.
Structuralism was the study of the most basic elements, primarily sensations and perceptions, that make up our conscious mental experience. An early school of psychology that used introspection to explore the elemental structure of the human mind.
While Wundt was developing his theory in Germany, James was developing his own at Harvard College. James believed that understand the structure of consciousness was useful, but it wasn’t enough. He felt that we needed to understand the purpose for consciousness.
Functionalism which was the study of the function of consciousness (rather than the structure). James was interested in how our minds adapt to our changing environment. Explores the “why” not the “what”
What are your
immediate sensations?

6. What the heck do you see?

7. Wave Two: Gestalt Gestalt Psychology Max Wertheimer (1880-1943)
Examine a person’s whole experience.
The whole is more than the sum of its individual parts.
Gestalt Therapy
While Wundt and James were experimenting with introspection, another group of early psychologists were explaining human thought and behavior in a very different way.
Gestalt psychologists tried to examine a person’s total experience because the way we experience the world is more than just an accumulation of various perceptual experiences.
Gestalt theorists demonstrated that the whole experience is often more than just the some of its parts of the experience. A painting can be represented as rows and columns of points of color, but the experience of the painting is much more than that.
Therapists later incorporated gestalt thinking by examining not just a client’s difficulty but the context in which the difficulty occurs. Like the introspective theories, other than the contribution to specific forms of therapy and the study of perception, Gestalt psychology has relatively little influence on current psychology

8. Wave Three: Psychoanalysis
Freud ( )
Psychoanalytic Theory
Critics
Unscientific
Unverifiable theories
If you ask a random person to name a psychologist they will most likely say Freud (Dr. Phil)
Freud revolutionized the field of psychology when he claimed that he discovered the unconscious mind, a part of our mind over which we do not have control that determines, in part, how we think and behave
While many therapists still use some of Freud’s basic ideas in helping clients, Freud has been criticized for being unscientific and creating unverifiable theories. Many of Freud’s terms moved from being exclusively used by psychologists to being used in day-to-day speech.

9. Wave Four: Behaviorism
John Watson ( ) (founder)
B.F. Skinner (reinforcement)
Limit studies to what can be observed
Watson studied the pioneering conditioning experiments of Ivan Pavlov.
Watson declared that if psychology is to be a science than if must limit itself to only observable behaviors.
Watson and colleagues wanted to establish behaviorism as the dominant paradigm of psychology
B.F. Skinner expanded the ideas of behaviorism with ideas on reinforcement.

10. Modern Approaches/Perspectives
Evolutionary
Biological
Cognitive
Behavioral
Psychoanalytical
Humanistic Approach
Cross-Cultural

11. Evolutionary Approach
Focus: How nature selects traits that promote the perpetuation of one’s genes.
Influenced by Charles Darwin
Evolutionary Approach focuses on how nature selects traits that promote the perpetuation of one’s genes. Evolutionary Psychologists want to learn how evolution influences behavior tendencies.
Example: Someone working from this perspective might analyze how test anxiety or amount of stress experienced facilitated the survival of our ancestors’ genes.

12. Psychoanalytical Approach
Focus: How behavior springs from unconscious drives and conflicts
Early Childhood
Dreams
Sigmund Freud
The psychoanalytical approach is based on the belief that childhood experiences greatly influence the development of later personality traits and psychological problems. It also stresses the influence of unconscious fears, desires, and motivations on thoughts and behaviors.
Example: Is test anxiety related to procrastination? Obvious reasons for why some may procrastinate are laziness, lacking motivation, lack of organization skills….etc.
Psychoanalysts would want to look beyond the obvious and delve into possible unconscious reasons such as …low self esteem, too dependent on others, a strong fear of failure.

13. Biological Approach
Focus: How the body and brain create emotion, memories, and sensory experiences.
Brain structures, blood chemistry, neural communication.
Roger Sperry, Michael Gazzaniga, Paul Broca
The biological approach examines how our genes, hormones, and nervous system interact with our environments to influence learning, personality, memory, motivation, emotions, coping techniques, and other traits and abilities.
Example: Why do my hands sweat? Sweaty hands often indicate stress. Stressful thoughts can trigger palmar sweating, which is one measure of the emotional component of test anxiety.

14. Cognitive Approach
Focus: How we encode, process, store, and retrieve information.
Jean Piaget, Elizabeth Loftus, Hermann Ebbinghaus
The Cognitive approach focuses on how we process, store, and use information and how this information influences what we attend to, perceive, learn, remember, believe, and feel.
Example: Can you worry too much? How will my test performance be affected if I worry too much ? Cognitive psychologists have identified a second component, the cognitive component, which is excessive worrying, (usually about doing poorly on a test)
Too much worrying can interfere with reading comprehension, and accuracy.

15. Behavioral Approach
Focus: Learning based on how a behavior is rewarded or punished.
John Watson, B.F. Skinner, Ivan Pavlov
Behavioral approach analyzes how organisms learn new behaviors or modify existing ones depending on whether events in their environments reward or punish these behaviors.
Example: Can I redirect my worrying? Can one learn how to channel worry into studying for exams? Self-Management practices (Select time and place for studying, reward yourself for studying, keep records of time spent studying, establish priorities, complete one task before moving on.

16. Humanistic Approach
Focus: Emphasizes that we have great freedom in directing our future, a large capacity for growth, intrinsic worth, and self-actualization.
Abraham Maslow
Carl Rogers
Humanistic approach emphasizes that each individual has great freedom in directing his or her future, a large capacity for achieving personal growth, a considerable amount of intrinsic worth, and enormous potential for self-fulfillment. Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow are associated with this perspective.
Example: How can students reach their potential? We get tests back…look at the grade.. Researchers want to know if you would give different reasons for earning high scores than for earning low scores. External/Internal Locus of Control, Intrinsic/Extrinsic Motivations, Self Efficacy.

17. Social-Cultural Approach
Focus: How behavior and thinking vary across situations and cultures.
Albert Bandura, Phillip Zimbardo
Cross Cultural approach studies the influence of cultural and ethnic similarities and differences on psychological and social functioning.
Example: How do other cultures deal with test anxiety? Culture plays an important rolw in determining the intensity and expression of anxiety.
For example, the highest test anxiety scores were reported by students in Egypt, Jordan, and Hungary. Lowest in China, Japan, Italy and Netherlands. US lies somewhere in the middle.
Cultural factors that play a role in determining levels of test anxiety include importance of academic success, career opportunities, parental expectations, perceptions of being evaluated, and student’s expectations.

18. Cultural Influence
How do we learn a culture’s accepted and expected behaviors/norms?

20. Goals of Psychology

21. Where Do Psychologists Work?
49% Private Practice-Therapy Setting-Clinical Psychologist
28% Academic Setting- Research (Basic/Applied, Professor)
13% Variety –(Social Work, Group Home Coordinator)
6% Industrial/Organization Setting (Production Manager)
4% Secondary Schools-(School Psychologist/Counselor)