1. Psychology (9th edition) David Myers
PowerPoint Slides
Aneeq Ahmad
Henderson State University
Worth Publishers, © 2010

2. The Story of Psychology Prologue

3. The Story of Psychology
What is Psychology?
Psychology’s Roots
Psychological Science Develops

4. Contemporary Psychology
Psychology’s Biggest Question
Psychology’s Three Main Levels of Analysis
Psychology’s Subfields
CLOSE UP: Tips for Studying Psychology

5. Psychology
With hopes of satisfying curiosity, many people listen to talk-radio counselors and psychics to learn about others and themselves.
Dr. Crane (radio-shrink)
Psychic (Ball gazing)

6. Psychology’s Roots Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
“The soul is not separable from the body, and the same holds good of particular parts of the soul.” Aristotle, De Anima, 350 B.C.
Aristotle, a naturalist and philosopher, theorized about psychology’s concepts. He suggested that the soul and body are not separate and that knowledge grows from experience.

7. Developed early theories
Aristotle ( B.C.)
Developed early theories
Learning
Memory
Motivation
Emotion
Perception
Personality

8. Psychological Science is Born
Wilhelm Wundt and psychology’s first graduate students studied the “atoms of the mind” by conducting experiments at Leipzig, Germany, in This work is considered the birth of psychology as we know it today.
Wundt ( )
Preview Question 1: When and how did psychological science begin?

9. Psychological Science is Born
Wundt’s student, Edward Bradford Titchener, pioneered the school of structuralism, which aimed to discover the structural elements of the mind by using self-reflective introspection*.
*not always reliable

10. Psychological Science is Born
James ( )
Mary Calkins
Margaret Floy Washburn
American philosopher William James wrote an important 1890 psychology textbook. Mary Calkins, James’s student, became the APA’s first female president. Margaret Floy Washburn was the first woman to earn a Ph.D in psychology.

11. Psychological Science is Born
Influenced by Darwin, James considered the evolved functions of our thoughts and feelings. James believed that thinking developed because it was adaptive. He introduced functionalism, which focuses on how our mental processes and behaviors enable us to adapt, survive, and flourish.

12. Psychological Science is Born
Psychology originated in many disciplines and countries. It was, until the 1920s, defined as the science of mental life.
From the 1920s through the 1960s, psychology was redefined as the science of observable behavior.

13. Psychological Science is Born
Freud ( )
Sigmund Freud, an Austrian physician, and his followers emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind and its effects on human behavior.
Freud developed an influential theory of personality that described how personality is set at a young age and is considered the founder of psychoanalysis.

14. Psychological Science is Born
Jean Piaget ( ), a Swiss biologist, was the last century’s most influential observer of children.

15. Psychological Science Develops
Behaviorists
Rosalie Rayner
and Little Albert
Watson ( )
Skinner ( )
Preview Question 2: How did psychology continue to develop from the 1920s through today?
Watson and later Skinner emphasized the study of overt behavior as the subject matter of scientific psychology.

16. Psychological Science Develops
Humanistic Psychology
Maslow ( )
Rogers ( )
Maslow and Rogers emphasized current environmental influences on the growth potential of healthy individuals and our need for love and acceptance.

17. Psychological Science Develops
In the 1960s, psychology began to recapture its initial interest in mental processes. A cognitive revolution took place as psychologists sought explanations of how our mind processes and retains information.
The field of cognitive neuroscience, or the study of brain activity linked with mental activity, began to develop more recently.

18. Psychology Today
We define psychology today as the scientific study of behavior (what we do) and mental processes (inner thoughts and feelings). “Behavior” refers to any action we can observe and record. And “mental processes” refers to the internal, subjective experiences we infer from behavior.
You will find that psychology is less a set of findings than a way of asking and answering questions.

19. Psychological Associations & Societies
The American Psychological Association is the largest organization of psychology with 160,000 members world-wide, followed by the British Psychological Society with 34,000 members.

20. Contemporary Psychology
Psychology’s Biggest Question
Psychology’s Three Main Levels of Analysis
Psychology’s Subfields
CLOSE-UP: Tips for Studying Psychology
Preview Question 3: What is psychology’s historic big issue?

21. Nature or nurture?
The controversy continues over the relative contributions of biology and experience.
Aristotle believed that all knowledge comes from sensory experience.
Plato argued that character and intelligence are inherited.
John Locke believed that knowledge comes in through the senses.
Rene Descartes believed that some ideas are innate.

22. Nature or nurture?
Charles Darwin’s 1859 Origin of Species proposed the process of evolution which works through the principle of natural selection.
The debate continues, but most psychologists believe that nurture works on what nature endows and that every psychological event is simultaneously a biological event.

23. Psychology’s Three Main Levels of Analysis
Preview Question 4: What are psychology’s levels of analysis and related perspectives?

24. Psychology’s Current Perspectives
Focus
Sample Questions
Neuroscience
How the body and brain enables emotions?
How are messages transmitted in the body? How is blood chemistry linked with moods and motives?
Evolutionary
How the natural selection of traits the promotes the perpetuation of one’s genes?
How does evolution influence behavior tendencies?
Behavior genetics
How much our genes and our environments influence our individual differences?
To what extent are psychological traits such as intelligence, personality, sexual orientation, and vulnerability to depression attributable to our genes? To our environment?

25. Psychology’s Current Perspectives
Focus
Sample Questions
Psychodynamic
How behavior springs from unconscious drives and conflicts?
How can someone’s personality traits and disorders be explained in terms of sexual and aggressive drives or as disguised effects of unfulfilled wishes and childhood traumas?
Behavioral
How we learn observable responses?
How do we learn to fear particular objects or situations? What is the most effective way to alter our behavior, say to lose weight or quit smoking?

26. Psychology’s Current Perspectives
Focus
Sample Questions
Cognitive
How we encode, process, store and retrieve information?
How do we use information in remembering? Reasoning? Problem solving?
Social-cultural
How behavior and thinking vary across situations and cultures?
How are we — as Africans, Asians, Australians or North Americans – alike as members of human family? As products of different environmental contexts, how do we differ?

27. Psychology’s Subfields: Research
Psychologist
What she does
Biological
Explore the links between brain and mind.
Developmental
Study changing abilities from womb to tomb.
Cognitive
Study how we perceive, think, and solve problems.
Personality
Investigate our persistent traits.
Social
Explore how we view and affect one another.
Preview Question 5: What are psychology’s main subfields?

28. Psychology’s Subfields: Research
Data: APA 1997

29. Psychology’s Subfields: Applied
Psychologist
What she does
Clinical
Studies, assesses, and treats people with psychological disorders
Counseling
Helps people cope with academic, vocational, and marital challenges.
Educational
Studies and helps individuals in school and educational settings
Industrial/
Organizational
Studies and advises on behavior in the workplace.

30. Psychology’s Subfields: Applied
Data: APA 1997

31. Clinical Psychology vs. Psychiatry
A clinical psychologist (Ph.D.) studies, assesses, and treats troubled people with psychotherapy.
Psychiatrists on the other hand are medical professionals (M.D.) who use treatments like drugs and psychotherapy to treat psychologically diseased patients.