1. Psychology 1 Wednesdays 6:30 – 9:40 Diana Rader, M.A., MFT
Welcome
Psychology 1
Wednesdays 6:30 – 9:40
Diana Rader, M.A., MFT

2. Class Rules Bring your name plate
No cell phones, loud typewriters, texting, gardening or power tools
Respect others – one speaker at a time
Questions during lectures are fine
Take care of yourself – take a Bio break if needed
Pay attention
No live animals

3. YOUR COURSE MATERIALS Kalat, Introduction to Psychology, 8th edition
You will…
be tested
receive homework assignments
have reading assignments
…from these materials

4. WHAT IS THOMSONNOW?
ThomsonNOW is an easy-to-use online resource that helps you study in less time to get the grade you want!
Personalized Study Plan
Videos
Animations
Tutorials
Games
Practice Quizzes
Simulations
Integrated ebook

5. Who are YOU?! Groups of 2 Name Where are you from or what do you do?
Have you taken a college-level course before?
Special talent?
Name a person on TV involved with some aspect of psychology and what background do you think they have?

6. Course Format Syllabus
Weekly in-class quiz or writing
Best of 11 for 200 Points
10 short written assignments
10 Points Each for 100 Points
3 Exams
100 Points Each for 300 Points
1 Final
200 Points

7. How are you feeling?
Are you stressed yet?

8. Chapter 1 What is Psychology?

9. PSYCHOLOGY
What is Psychology?
Psychology is a word deriving from Greek roots:
Psyche – “soul” or “mind,” Logos – “word”
Psychology is the systematic study of behavior and experience

10. Psychologists’ Goals
Psychologists engage in the study of psychology in order to understand, explain, and predict behavior
What are the major philosophical issues that are relevant to this study?
Mind / Brain
Free will / Determinism

11. Psychologists’ Goals
General Points about Psychology
“It Depends” (Few Things are True of All People all the Time)
Research Progress Depends on Good Measurement
Correlation Does Not Indicate Causation

12. The Major Philosophical Issues
Free will versus determinism – are the causes of behavior knowable, and is behavior predictable?
Free will is the belief that behavior is caused by an individual’s independent decision making
Determinism is the assumption that everything that happens has a cause or determinant in the observable world

13. Major Philosophical Issues
Which perspective holds that behavior is fully predictable?
A determinist assumes everything that happens has a cause that can be known
A believer in free will assumes that even with complete information regarding causes and conditions, predictions regarding human behavior can never be fully accurate

14. Major Philosophical Issues
The mind-brain problem: How is experience related to the organ system called the brain?
Dualism is the belief that the mind is separate from the brain but somehow controls the brain and through it also the rest of the body
Monism is the view that conscious experience is generated by and therefore is inseparable from the brain
The mind-brain problem
Data from brain imaging research such as PET (positron emission tomography) suggests that brain activity and mental activity are two aspects of the same thing
Yet the question is far from resolved

15. Major Philosophical Issues
The nature-nurture issue
How do differences in behavior relate to differences in heredity and environment?
Some scientists assume the larger proportion of differences in potential and behavior are due to the influence of genes
Others assume that most differences are a result of aspects of the environment such as culture, expectations, and resources

16. What Psychologists Do
Psychology is an academic, non-medical discipline that includes many branches and specialties
The educational requirements can vary, but generally involve study beyond the bachelor’s degree
A master’s degree, or a Ph.D./Psy.D. (doctor of psychology) are common terminal degrees in the discipline

17. Discussion topic My mother is a college professor.
Make a case for if I am a college instructor due to nature or nurture.

18. Figure 1.2 Teaching and research Service providers to individuals
specialty in 3 main areas:
Teaching and research
Service providers to individuals
Service providers to organizations
Figure 1.2 More than one-third of psychologists work in academic settings. The remainder find positions in a variety of settings (based on the data of Chamberlain, 2000).

19. Major categories of psychological research: Developmental psychology
What Psychologists Do
Major categories of psychological research: Developmental psychology
A Developmental Psychologist studies the behavioral capacities typical of different ages and how behavior changes with age
Sample questions: What do people do or know as adults that they do not know as children? Was the change due to biological changes, increased experience, or a combination of these?

20. Major categories of psychological research: Learning and motivation
What Psychologists Do
Major categories of psychological research: Learning and motivation
A psychologist who studies and does research in this area is interested in how behavior depends on outcomes of past behaviors and on current motivations
Sample question: Do frequent or consistent rewards for desired behaviors produce better learning than less frequent or less predictable rewards?

21. Major categories of psychological research: Cognitive psychology
What Psychologists Do
Major categories of psychological research: Cognitive psychology
A Cognitive Psychologist studies the processes of thinking and acquiring knowledge
Sample question: What do “experts” in a field know or do that sets them apart from other people?

22. What Psychologists Do
Major categories of psychological research: Biological psychology or neuroscience
A Bio-psychologist tries to explain behavior in terms of biological factors, such as anatomy, electrical and chemical activities in the nervous system, and the effects of drugs, hormones, genetics and evolutionary pressures
Sample question: How does brain damage from drug abuse change nervous system functioning (and, by extension, behavior)?

23. Major categories of psychological research: Evolutionary psychology
What Psychologists Do
Major categories of psychological research: Evolutionary psychology
An Evolutionary Psychologist tries to explain behavior in terms of natural selection pressures promoting behaviors that lead to success in reproduction and survival
Sample question: What forces led to selection for human language abilities?

24. Major categories of psychological research: Social psychology
What Psychologists Do
Major categories of psychological research: Social psychology
A Social Psychologist studies how an individual influences and is influenced by other people
Sample questions: To what degree do the demands and expectations of authority figures influence our behavior? How strong is the human tendency to conform? 

25. What Psychologists Do
Major categories of psychological research: Cross-Cultural psychology
A Cross-Cultural psychologist compares the behavior of people from different cultures

26. Sample questions: How does culture affect taste preferences
Sample questions: How does culture affect taste preferences? Which cultures place more emphasis on group interests and how does that affect behavior? 

27. Service Providers to Individuals
Psychotherapists
Clinical Psychologists
Psychiatrists
Psychiatric Nurses
Psychiatric and Clinical Social Workers
Psychoanalysts
Counseling Psychologists

28. Concept Check
Which psychotherapist would help a middle-aged woman trying to transition from work as a homemaker to resuming her college education?
Which psychotherapist would prescribe a mood stabilizing medication to a patient who shows signs of bipolar disorder?
Counseling psychologist
Psychiatrist

29. Concept Check
Which psychotherapist might provide ongoing counseling and support for residents of a halfway house for recovering addicts?
Which psychotherapist might be part of the staff of a hospital emergency room, and manage the intake of a patient admitted with acute suicidal thoughts and feelings?
Clinical social worker
Psychiatric nurse

30. Concept Check
Which psychotherapist might be employed in an inpatient facility for developmentally delayed children and adolescents, doing assessment and psychotherapy?
Which psychotherapist would try to help a patient discover his or her hidden motivations for a distressing and unacceptable behavior or thought?
Clinical psychologist
Psychoanalyst

31. Service providers to organizations
What Psychologists Do
Service providers to organizations
Industrial/Organizational psychologists
Ergonomist or Human Factor Specialist
study people’s behavior in the workplace using a combination of social, cognitive, and motivational psychology principles, and often employ psychological tests
attempts to facilitate the use of machinery and appliances so that the average user can operate them as efficiently and as safely as possible

32. Service providers to organizations A school psychologist
What Psychologists Do
Service providers to organizations
A school psychologist
specializes in the psychological condition of the students, usually at the kindergarten through secondary school levels
School psychologists draw upon a combination of developmental, learning, and motivational principles, and often use educational and psychological tests to assist with educational planning for individual students
School psychologists
Sample question: Does a fourth-grade student whose grades have been declining over the past two years have an identifiable learning disability, or is there an issue related to the student’s emotional well-being affecting his performance?

33. Concept Check
Which psychologist would consult in the design of an airplane cockpit to maximize crew efficiency and safety?
Which psychologist would evaluate a student for possible placement in a school’s program for gifted children?
Ergonomist
School psychologist

34. Concept Check
Which psychologist would work with supervisors at a software development company to improve communication between departments and levels of management?
Industrial/organizational psychologist

35. Majoring in Psychology
Should you major in psychology?
Although psychology is a popular major, few jobs are listed specifically for people with bachelor’s degrees, even if psychology applies to the job. Examples:
Personnel or human resources specialist
Halfway or transitional home staff or supervisor
Community or social services outreach worker

36. Psychology Then and Now
The early era and the roots of psychology
In all cultures, and for thousands of years, people have wondered about the nature of human thought, action and experience
The great writers of every civilization are widely read because they provide us with compelling descriptions and make profound observations of human behavior

37. Psychology Then and Now
The early era and the roots of psychology
William Wundt, a physician who did research on the workings of the senses, established the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, in 1879
Although other psychology experiments had been done, this was the first laboratory devoted exclusively to the activities of psychological research

38. Psychology Then and Now
The early era and the roots of psychology
Edward Titchener was a student of Wundt who immigrated to the United States in 1892
He developed the approach he called structuralism
In structuralism, the researcher attempts to describe the structures that compose the mind and its sensations, feelings and images
Titchener presented a stimulus to his subjects and asked them to analyze its separate features
There was no feasible way to check the accuracy of his subjects’ observations – his methods were eventually abandoned
Researchers eventually became more interested in describing and analyzing readily observable behaviors

39. Psychology Then and Now
The early era and the roots of psychology
William James wrote The Principles of Psychology (1890) FUNCTIONALISM
He was keenly interested in what the mind does, rather than the elements of mind
He rejected the methods of Wundt and Titchener
He investigated how the mind produces behaviors. He called his approach functionalism
The early era and the roots of psychology
Typical questions from a functionalist perspective include:
How does a person recall the answer to a question?
How does a person inhibit an undesirable impulse?
Can a person attend to more than one task at a time?

40. Psychology Then and Now
The early era and the roots of psychology
Psychophysics is a term created by early psychologists working on sensation and sensory experience
They noticed interesting aspects of the functioning of the senses
For example, the perception of a stimulus’ intensity is not directly proportional to the actual physical intensity of the stimulus
Psychophysics attempts to provide a mathematical description of the relationship between the actual physical properties of the stimulus and its perceived properties
A sound that is half as loud (in physical terms, in decibels) as another sound may not sound that way to the listener

41. Psychology Then and Now
The early era and the roots of psychology
The works of Darwin had an enormous impact: The Origin of Species (1859); The Descent of Man (1871) 
Charles Darwin forced scientists and thoughtful people working in many disciplines to consider the basic features held in common by many or all animals, such as thinking and intelligence
Comparative psychologists, who use this perspective, are specialists who compare different animal species
The early era and the roots of psychology
Early comparative psychologists devised a number of experiments to try to measure animal intelligence, such as:
The delayed-response problem
The detour problem
Pattern recognition

42. Figure 1.7
Figure 1.7 Early comparative psychologists assessed animal intelligence with the delayed response
problem. A stimulus was presented and a delay ensued; then the animal was expected to respond to the
remembered stimulus. Variations on this delayed-response task are still used today.

43. Figure 1.8
Figure 1.8 Another task popular among early comparative psychologists was the detour problem. An animal needed to first go away from the food in order to move toward it.

44. Figure 1.9
The early era and the roots of psychology
According to the research of comparative psychologists, some species appeared to be gifted in one set of tasks and highly deficient in another
Eventually the inconsistencies in performance between different tasks across a single species suggested to comparative psychologists that questions about animal intelligence might be meaningless
This issue is similar to problems that we now encounter in the controversial area of measuring human intelligence
Figure 1.9 Zebras learn rapidly when they have to compare stripe patters (Giebel 1958). How “smart” a species is perceived to be depends on what ability or skill is being tested

45. Psychology Then and Now Human Intelligence and IQ testing
The early era and the roots of psychology
Francis Galton investigated to what extent heredity influenced variations in human cognitive abilities
He found that sons of famous and talented men were more likely to be accomplished and explained this as due to the influence of heredity
He tried (but failed) to develop an intelligence test

46. Psychology Then and Now
The early era and the roots of psychology
Alfred Binet devised the first useful intelligence test in 1905, at the behest of the French government, for use in identifying children in the public school system who might be in need of special services
His test was imported to the United States after his death, and was the “template” for the development of many IQ and other psychological tests

47. Psychology Then and Now
The early era and the roots of psychology
While structuralism was eventually abandoned, behaviorism is a field of psychology that concentrates on observable, measurable behaviors and not mental processes
Behaviorists seek to study observable behaviors associated with what is generally referred to as learning – John Watson
Little Albert
The earliest researchers in the field of behaviorism and learning expected to find that it operated using simple, basic, and predictable laws, comparable to Newton’s physical laws of the universe

48. Psychology Then and Now
The early era and the roots of psychology
In presenting psychoanalytic theory, Sigmund Freud proposed the existence of an “unconscious mind” rooted in our animal origins
Although much of psychoanalytic theory has been rejected as unscientific, psychology is still heavily influenced by Freud’s ideas about treatment of psychological distress

49. Recent Trends in Psychology
Modern clinical psychology
The trauma experienced by so many soldiers in World War II provided ample opportunity for the further development of psychoanalysis and innovation in new methods of psychotherapy

50. Figure 1.10
At first, women’s roles were limited
Mary Calkins was one of the pioneering women in the field, doing graduate-level study at Harvard
Calkins never received the Ph.D that she earned from Harvard, but went on to do research, study memory, and become the president of the American Psychological Association .
Figure 1.10: Mary Calkins, one of the first prominent women in U.S. psychology.