1. An Introduction to the History, Perspectives, and the General Evolution of Psychology

2. WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY?
The official definition is: Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes.
* This leaves something to be desired, unfortunately. Scientific methodology requires that a phenomena be both observable and measureable to be studied scientifically. When studying human behavior, much of what motivates behavior cannot be observed. Studying mental processes involves the mind, which is not a physical thing, but is instead a metaphysical concept.
* As a result, many hard scientists (physicists, biologists, chemists, etc.) view psychology as a pseudoscience, or false science.
* While some areas of interest in psychology are not studied in a scientific manner, there are many areas in the field that are studied in a very scientific manner. Psychology may not be a hard science, but it should not be called a pseudoscience either.

3. The Roots of Psychological Thought
The field of psychology is mainly an outgrowth of two disciplines, physiology and philosophy. Physiology became much more influential later on, after the Renaissance, so for many centuries philosophy was the primary field involved with attempting to understand the human condition. The following is a brief overview of a few of the most important of these ancient scholars.

4. The Roots of Psychological Thought
Hippocrates determined that the origin of mental/emotional problems stemmed from organic, or biological issues. Therefore, the way to treat a mental illness, he believed, was through the use of a medicinal intervention. He was among the first people to discount the idea of superstition being a factor.
Galen, a Roman of Greek ancestry, gave us the first biological theory of personality with his theory of the four humors. He posited that there are four humors, or bodily fluids, that impact behavior and personality. An imbalance or contamination of one or more of these humors corresponded with a particular human temperament (blood-sanguine or extraverted, black bile-melancholic or creative and kind, yellow bile-choleric or energetic, and phlegm-phlegmatic or dependable and affectionate). Of course he was wrong, but the idea that bodily elements have a profound effect on behavior was right on the money. He just got the elements wrong!

5. The Roots of Psychological Thought
Plato believed that individual differences are based on the character of one’s soul, placing the emphasis on metaphysical factors which cannot be observed or measured (making his case inarguable, and who would dare argue with the great master?). He believed that most men had deeply flawed souls, so those with better, more intelligent souls should make up the ruling class, keeping lesser souls in check by force. Of course, he believed that brainiacs like himself were possessed of better souls, so he felt people like himself were more suited to tell others what to do. Many believe that his ideas form the philosophical basis for authoritarian government (Statist/Dictatorship).

6. The Roots of Psychological Thought
Aristotle believed that men were different because of the structure and content of their hearts and brains. He placed human differences within the physical realm, which set him apart from his mentor Plato. Aristotle posited that since our hearts/brains are all different, by necessity we think and behave differently from one another. This means that what individuals perceive as real is different, and so our versions of reality will always be at least slightly different. He believed that since all men are essentially equal, no one person’s reality can be construed as being any better or more meaningful than anyone else’s reality. (Relativism/Democracy)

7. The Roots of Psychological Thought
Relativism is the idea that truth is relative to the person perceiving events. This is often considered to be a dangerous position, because it states that there is no meaning or truth that is better than any other. The basis of law and order in society is the idea that the society places certain realities above others. I cannot do what the state tells me I cannot do despite the fact that I want to do it – the state’s version of right and wrong holds a higher status than the individual’s. Aristotle believed that instead of one man or small group of men determining the prevailing reality, all men should have a voice in that determination. (Democracy)

8. The Roots of Psychological Thought
In democratic cultures, Aristotle is celebrated in history and philosophy books as the greatest of the early philosophers. In dictatorships, scholars are taught that Plato was the greatest of the early thinkers.

9. Medieval Thinking
The Christian Church in Rome influenced and controlled society in Western and Eastern Europe for most of the 1000 years between 400 AD and 1400 AD. This control was iron-fisted, and any ideas that dissented from the Church’s ideology was quickly dismissed and many times violently dealt with. Therefore, almost all learning was relegated to church doctrine and attempting to rationalize the existence of a God (or in other words, attempting to prove what cannot be proven). This movement away from physical explanations of reality to metaphysical explanations led to a regressive parallel movement back to superstitious explanations of mental and emotional problems (demons, the Devil, magic, etc.), a mindset that hadn’t been dominant in Europe since before the ancient Greeks. This backward view kept the sciences from progressing in a meaningful manner until the early 16th century.

10. Regression Backward from Pre-Scientific Concepts: Medieval Thinking
Trephination was a Neolithic method of treatment involving the chiseling of a small hole in a disturbed person’s skull to let the evil spirits out. Primitive, certainly, and yet they had at least figured out that the locale of the mind was the head/brain and that mental illness was a physiological thing. Of course, Hippocrates and Galen were the first to attempt to use medicines (Hippocrates) or manipulation of bodily fluids (Galen) to try and affect changes in thinking and behavior. Unfortunately, their ideas were as far as psychiatric treatment advanced until the European Renaissance because of the Roman church’s dominance over the western world.

11. Regression Backward from Pre-Scientific Concepts: Medieval Thinking
In fact, starting around the 13th – 16th centuries, Europe actually saw a regression to ancient ideas of mental illness being some sort of satanic possession (or the doings of witches, vampires, or other mythical evil beings). Because women were seen as being temptresses to sin by many devout males, many of whom couldn’t keep their best friend in their pants, women were much more likely to be accused of evil supernatural possession or influence. This attitude was often used to persecute women and exonerate men.

12. Medieval Thinking
While the Inquisition in various forms began in the late 12th century, it wasn’t officially sanctioned until 1484 when a pair of Dominican monks wrote a book called Malleus Malificarum, which was an attempt to refute anti-witchcraft arguments while claiming that witches were mostly women, and to educate magistrates on the procedures that should be used to find, convict, and destroy them. The book included an letter of approval from the University of Cologne's Faculty of Theology and the Pope’s blessing by way of the papal bull (a stamped mark) attached as well, which really gave this book of horrors legitimacy. It served as the Inquisition manual for local officials all over Europe, and the end result was that women who were unpopular or seen as immoral (prostitutes, adulteresses, or mentally disturbed), or who were mentally ill, were first tortured by inquisitors and once they broke and confessed to acts they didn’t do, were burned at the stake.

13. Renaissance and Enlightenment Thinking
It wasn’t until the end of the 18th century that the idea of mental hospitals and rehabilitation replaced the idea of incarceration for people who were mentally disturbed. Approximately 100,000 people, mainly women and mentally ill people, were murdered during the time of the Inquisition.
Rene Descartes was a religious man who believed that there were two aspects of human existence that were separate but able to have an effect on one another. This concept became known as dualism, and it was the main foundation of philosophy and science for the next several centuries.

14. Renaissance Thinkers
Galileo Galilae provided the first movement toward a scientific perspective when he posited his idea that everything in the universe has a lawful and orderly explanation. Thus everything can be understood and explained if only a thinker could find a way to do so. This idea, known as mechanism, provided the idea that truth and knowledge can be gained by the use of proper methodology. This is the 1st foundation of modern science.

15. Renaissance Thinkers
Sir Francis Bacon has been called the creator of empiricism, though if John Locke could speak, he might beg to differ – many scholars posit that Bacon set the basic idea in motion, but that it was Locke who actually formalized it and titled it. Bacon’s works established and popularized the Baconian Method, (the 2nd foundation of modern science) which Locke distilled and formalized into what is today called the scientific method. Bacon demanded a planned procedure of investigating all things natural. In all actuality, they were both thieves; empiricism was actually created by Aristotle.

16. Enlightenment Thinkers
John Locke provided the next step toward a scientific approach to knowledge when he stated that truth and knowledge may only be attained through careful observation. This idea, Empiricism, provided the 3rd and final foundation of modern science. Locke took the ideas of mechanism and empiricism and combined them with Sir Francis Bacon’s research methodology to formulate what we know today as the scientific method. Locke was also responsible for the theory of Tabula Rasa, which states that humans are not born good or evil but instead are born neutral, or in his words, a blank slate. Our experiences, what we learn as we grow and develop, is what fills in the blank slate and makes us what and who we are. This is the foundational idea of psychological perspective known as behaviorism.
Thomas Hobbes disagreed with Locke. He believed that man is born no better than a wild animal. He believed that what set us apart from animals is the ability to develop controlling elements (government) that would contain our beast like natures and keep us from what he referred to as a state of nature. Without a statist ruling element, man beasts, and only the strongest would survive (survival of the fittest).

17. Synthesis
If you combine Locke and Aristotle’s work, you get the foundation for democracy and individual freedom, the least common government form found in today’s global society (but we believe it’s the best way). If you take Hobbes’ work and combine it with Plato’s, you get the foundation for dictatorship, the most common form of government in the world today (which we believe is the absolute worst way). Ironic, no?

18. Post- Enlightenment Thinkers
Paul Broca discovered the speech center of the brain that controls the muscles that move the vocal chords, jaw and tongue in the 19th century. This area, found on the border of the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes, is referred to as Broca’s Area. Broca was one of the first biological Gods of the post- enlightenment period, and his work with the brain was among the first meaningful physiological achievements to affect the field of psychology.
Charles Darwin never mentioned the idea of natural selection applying to behavioral traits, but later thinkers expanded his evolutionary theory to apply to all human factors, not just the physiological. Evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, and behavioral genetics are all psychological disciplines that are descended from Darwin’s original theory.

19. The Beginning of the Modern Era
Prior to 1879 physiology and philosophy scholars did study questions about the mind and human behavior. However, it was not until Wilhelm Wundt ( ), a professor at the University of Leipzig, in Germany came to the fore that psychology became an independent field of study.
Wundt campaigned throughout Europe to convince the leaders of universities and colleges to make psychology an independent discipline that students could major in. His success provided the field with its first step forward as a new science. One of the things that convinced European scholars to go along with Wundt’s vision was his creation of the first laboratory for the study of psychological phenomena in As a result, modern psychology is said to have begun at this point in time. As a result, Wundt has become known as “The Father of Psychology”.

20. Wilhelm Wundt’s Influence
Leipzig became the central focal point of this new and promising discipline for about years between 1879 and 1890, and Wundt became its de facto patriarch. Wundt provided a program of study that scholars from around the world clamored to become a part of. Graduates of Wundt’s program set up new labs and colleges of psychology all over Europe and North America. The two American graduates that had the most early influence over American psychology were G. Stanley Hall and Edward B. Titchner.

21. Hall & Titchener
The most famous and influential of Wundt’s protégés was an American scholar named G. Stanley Hall ( ), a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Hall had four major achievements:
He established the first psychology lab in the U.S. in 1883 at Johns Hopkins University; he founded the first scholarly journal for psychology in 1887 (The American Journal of Psychology); he was the founder and first president at prestigious Clark University in 1889, which became a haven for the study of psychology, and; in 1892 he founded and was the first president of the APA (American Psychological Association).
Under his guidance, 24 new psychology laboratories were formed in North America between 1883 and Hall is best known for helping to build and promote the field more than for any of his original theories or applications.

22. Structuralism vs. Functionalism
Edward B. Titchener was committed to Wundt’s teachings and attempted to create a new perspective of psychology based on Wundt's ideas. He called this new perspective Structuralism, and it required the psychologist to analyze consciousness by breaking down the conscious mind into its most elemental parts, or structures. The technique Wundt and Titchener used to study and break down consciousness was called Introspection , a careful, systematic observation and recording of one’s own conscious experience.
Functionalism – It wasn’t long before a competitor arrived to challenge the limited brand of psychology that Titchener was promoting. William James asked the question, “What use is it to study conscious structures if one doesn’t attempt to analyze the human functions these structures control?” This idea became the foundation of James’ own perspective, which he named Functionalism , a perspective that would rival and soon defeat Titchener’s Structuralism in the ideological debate.

23. Figure 1.1 Early Research Laboratories in North America

24. Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalytic Theory
Sigmund Freud ( ) was an Austrian physician who devoted most of his time between to studying human behavior, especially a trait he called neuroticism. Neurotic people are anxious and fearful, and he was determined to provide a theory that explained the reasons behind this condition. Freud’s theories, referred to collectively as psychoanalytic theory, claimed that unconscious mental processes are what directly influences the way we feel, think, and act rather than the conscious processes, which was up to that point considered conventional wisdom. Freud believed that the unconscious mind is outside of our awareness and control, and is filled with primarily sexual and aggressive conflicts that stem from parental interactions during the first 5-7 years of life.
“The unconscious is the true psychic reality; in its innermost nature it is as much unknown to us as the reality of the external world is known.”
- Sigmund Freud -

25. Freud’s Controversy and Influence
Why the controversy?
* Behavior is influenced by the unconscious, a deterministic theory that places our behavior beyond our control and therefore is dehumanizing. Further, he posited that this unconscious conflict relates to directly to sexuality and that sexuality is the primary factor in behavior, an idea that is obsolete in modern psychology.
So…what influence did he really have?
* His controversial notions caused resistance and drove the debate that led to the birth of new perspectives in psychology.
* His ideas regarding the importance of early childhood on personality development as well as his ideas regarding using psychology as an interventional therapy (he was the first person to apply psychology to therapy) provided a significant influence on the field of psychology.

26. Behaviorism’s Redefinition of Psychology
Ivan Pavlov's famous “drooling dogs” experiment that provided the world with classical conditioning also provided John B. Watson with the foundation for a new perspective of psychology. Watson rejected all mentalism and insisted that for psychology to be truly scientific, the field had to limit all inquiry to observable phenomena, i.e. overt behaviors. Rejecting the study of cognition and emotion as being inconsistent with scientific study formed the basis of Watson's new school of psychology, which he called behaviorism. Today we define psychology as the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes, so while Watson was very influential, it should be obvious that modern psychology does not reject the study of the mind as Watson proposed. Watson defined psychology simply as the study of human behavior. This constituted a radical reorientation of psychology as the study of the mind, both the conscious and, if you believed Freud, the unconscious mind, was mostly abandoned until the 1950’s. Behaviorism quickly overtook psychoanalysis as the dominant perspective in the field, and held that dominance until the 1950’s rolled around.

27. John Watson and the Nature-Nurture Debate
He was all about nurture, and rejected nature. Watson’s behaviorist perspective emphasized the environment (nurture) and de-emphasized the forces of cognition and emotion by saying that psychology should not be concerned with anything that was mentalistic in nature. Anything mental cannot be observed or measured, therefore its study has no place in a scientific field such as psychology.
If you were to give me a dozen healthy infants, well- formed, and my own special world to bring them up in, I’ll guarantee that I could take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and yes, even beggar-man and thief.”
- John B. Watson -

28. Are People Free? B.F. Skinner
B.F. Skinner ( ): As Watson before him, Skinner didn’t deny that mental events existed, nor did he deny their importance. He believed that they couldn’t be studied scientifically and therefore had no place in a true science. The fundamental principle of Skinner’s operant conditioning is that organisms tend to repeat responses that lead to positive outcomes and discontinue responses that lead to negative outcomes. This idea, which Edward Thorndike had 40 years previously named ‘The Law of Effect’, became the cornerstone of operant conditioning. Skinner trained animals using this principle with much success; later on he and his adherents showed that his theories of learning and training also apply to humans.
“Beyond Freedom and Dignity” was a book written by Skinner where he asserted that behavior is governed by external stimuli. This is a deterministic theory as well, in that one has no control over their own behavior. He concluded in this book that free will is an illusion.

29. The 1950’s:Opposition to Psychoanalysis and Behaviorism Begins to Grow
While Behaviorism and Psychoanalytic theory dominated mainstream psychology, many people had a hard time believing that people are not masters of their own fate.
Some of the anti-Freud/Skinner intellectuals formed a loose alliance that eventually became a new school of thought - humanistic theory - led by Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.
The humanistic approach focused on the unique positive qualities of humans, especially free will and the potential for personal growth. It is a very optimistic view of human nature as opposed to the grim and deterministic psychoanalysts and behaviorists.
Maslow and Rogers asserted that any deterministic theories must be considered to be dehumanizing (any theory that states that external and uncontrollable forces are what dictates human behavior is deterministic – for Freud it was the unconscious mind, while for Skinner, it was environmental stimuli).

30. The Return of Cognitive Psychology
Cognition refers to the mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge. This involves and requires thought or conscious experience, which is antithetical to the behaviorist perspective. However, the dominance of behaviorism significantly decreased with the advent of humanistic psychology first and then, in the late 1950’s, the return of cognitive psychology. Theorists such as George Miller, whose experiments on short term memory revolutionized the concept of the capacity of short term memory, Jean Piaget, who studied the development of cognition in children, Noam Chomsky, who studied the biological and cognitive aspects of language acquisition, and Herbert Simon, who studied problem solving, revolutionized psychology by using scientific methods to study cognitive processes. No longer could the Watson’s and Skinner’s of the world claim that cognitive factors couldn’t be studied scientifically. Many psychologists argue that cognitive psychology has now become the dominant perspective in psychology today.

31. Positive Psychology
Martin Seligman’s famous “Epiphany” occurred in He had just been elected president of the APA, and his life was filled with time consuming work with the APA as well as his usual work with battered women and the concept of learned helplessness (a very depressing thing to have to work on). One day he came home and was greeted by his 5 year old daughter, who took one look at his face and began to cry. When he asked her what was wrong, she told him she was tired of him always coming home from work all sad and grumpy. Seligman suddenly realized that he too was studying what was wrong, and that pretty much everyone else was too. This negativity was affecting his work, and his home life as well. These concerns were similar to those raised by humanist psychologists some 50 years earlier.

32. Seligman’s Humanistic/Cognitive Combo
Seligman also noticed, now in his early 40’s, that he was overweight, had high blood pressure, he drank too much, and was constantly fighting with his wife and obviously he was negatively affecting his daughter. He decided to do research to investigate whether there is a connection between negativity/pessimism and decreased mental and physical health as well as if the opposite were true. His research found a striking correlation. He decided to completely reinvent his career in psychology by working on a brand new approach that would combine cognitive and humanistic theories. He called this new approach Positive Psychology. Positive psychology focuses on those things that make life worth living, including (1) positive subjective experiences (e.g., happiness, love, gratitude), (2) positive individual traits (e.g., strengths and virtues), and (3) positive institutions and communities (e.g., strong families, healthy work environments).

33. The Biological Basis of Behavior
The Biological Perspective is interested in the interrelationship between mind, body, and behavior. It maintains that human and animal behavior can be explained in terms of the physiological/biological processes that underlie the behavior. In 1956, James Olds demonstrated that animals could be made to experience emotions, such as pleasure and rage, through electrical brain stimulation. In 1980 Roger Sperry showed that the each half of the brain has specialized functions and handles different mental tasks. He also believed that each hemisphere was independently conscious. In his own words, each hemisphere is, “…indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and both the left and the right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run parallel to one another.”
- Roger Wolcott Sperry -

34. Socio-Cultural Psychology
The vast majority of psychological research has been conducted in the United States. Unfortunately, most of this research was conducted by white middle and upper class males studying white middle and upper class males. Little attention was paid historically to how this research might apply to non-Western cultures, ethnic minorities, or women, or even if it applied at all.
In the 1980’s, however, the sociocultural movement began to advocate incorporating cultural factors into research and theory. This was in part due to sociopolitical forces (civil rights movement, women’s movement, liberal social and educational theories such political correctness, etc.), but mostly due to the advances increased global communication and interdependence, as well as the increasingly diverse multicultural make-up of the Western world. Ethnocentrism – viewing one’s own group as superior and as the standard for judging

35. Socio-Cultural Psychology
The work of early 20th century Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky was very influential to the growing sociocultural model. His perspective was known as the Cultural-Historical perspective. Among the more important positions in Vygotsky's main work was in developmental psychology, where he proposed a theory of socio-cognitive development which claimed that the reasoning emerges from practical activity in social environments. He also argued that the development of reasoning was mediated by and contingent on cultural practices and language as well as on universal cognitive processes.

36. Figure 1.5 Increased cultural diversity in the United States

37. Evolutionary Psychology: Human Adaptations
Evolutionary Psychology posits that natural selection occurs for behavioral as well as physical traits. The 60’s and 70’s brought breakthroughs in evolutionary biology that began to impact psychology in the late 80’s. Some young researchers led by David Buss met in the late 90’s to set an ambitious agenda for evolutionary psychology, meetings which gave life to this new theoretical perspective. While it is gaining in influence and is still relatively new, many critics hold that the theory is untestable and based on post hoc accounts for obvious behavioral phenomena (“Post hoc ergo propter hoc” is Latin for "after this, therefore because of this”). In other words, since one event follows another event, the second event must have been caused by the first, which is obviously a fallacious way to argue a point. The focus of this new discipline seems to primarily be on the study of how natural selection affects mating preferences, sexual behavior, jealousy, aggression, language, decision making, personality, and development.

38. Table 1.1 Overview of Six Contemporary Theoretical Perspectives in Psychology

39. Psychology Today: A Thriving Science and Profession
Psychology is the science that studies behavior and the physiological and cognitive processes that underlie it, and it is the professionals in the field that apply the accumulated knowledge of psychology to solving real world practical problems. This dichotomy of the conceptual (research psychology) and the practical (applied psychology) represent the two aspects of the psychological profession.
The seven major research areas in psychology are:
Developmental psychology
Social psychology
Experimental psychology
Physiological psychology
Cognitive psychology
Personality psychology
Psychometric psychology

40. Psychology Today: Thriving Science and Profession
The four major applied areas of specialization are:
Clinical
Counseling
Educational/School
Industrial/Organizational
Make sure you know the basics of all the research disciplines on the previous slide as well as the applied disciplines on this slide.

41. Figure 1.6 Membership in the American Psychological Association, 1900–2004

42. Figure 1.7 Employment of psychologists by setting

43. Figure 1.8 Major research areas in contemporary psychology

44. Figure 1.9 Principal professional specialties in contemporary psychology