2. Welcome to AP Psychology!! Ms. Juretic

3. History of Psychology “Psychology has a long past, but only a short history.”  Hermann Ebbinghaus (1902?) Psychology (Ψ)  The scientific study of the behavior and mental processes of humans and other animals.

4. History of Psychology Humans have always thought about our thoughts and behavior.  Archaeologists have found evidence of trephination – Stone Age humans carving holes through skulls to release evil spirits.

5. Philosophical Influences on Psychology Socrates (469-399 BC) & Plato (428-348 BC)  These Greeks began to think about the ways in which the mind is separate from the body and how some knowledge can be innate (inborn)

6. Philosophical Influences on Psychology Aristotle (384-322 BC)  Aristotle theorized that the soul is not separable from the body, and that knowledge comes from experience

7. I. Philosophical Influences on Psychology Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650) Dualism: mind and body are separate Voluntary & Involuntary behavior  Reflexes (no more pigs on trial!) Nativism  We know certain stuff at birth Oui! Oui! I am a French philosopher!!

8. Philosophical Influences on Psychology John Locke (1632 – 1704) Tabula rasa  Latin for “blank slate” Empiricism  Knowledge comes from sensory experiences  Science should rely on observation and experimentation Empiricism is one of your vocab terms for this unit!

9. Early Milestones in Scientific Psychology  Wilhelm Wundt – Father of Ψ  First psych lab in Leipzig, Germany in 1879  G. Stanley Hall  First psych lab (1883) at Johns Hopkins University  E.B. Titchener  Was Wundt’s star student (and an American!)  Introduced structuralism: used introspection to discover the way the way the mind works  William James – Father of American Ψ  Functionalism: study how mental and behavioral processes function and enable the organism to adapt and survive

10. Wave 1: Introspection Psychology can be traced back to 1879  Wundt’s Lab was established Wundt trained subjects in introspection – the subjects were asked to record their cognitive (mental) reactions to stimuli Ideas eventually became the theory of structuralism – a Perspective based on Wundtian concept that sought to explain consciousness by analyzing its structural elements.

11. Wave 1: Introspection William James (1842-1910) Published The Principles of Psychology (1 st Ψ textbook) Examined how the structures identified by Wundt function in our lives  This theory was called functionalism, and also relied on introspection. N.B. Although introspection was key in the beginning of Ψ, it doesn’t influence current Ψ.

12. Wave 2: Gestalt Psychology Max Wertheimer (1880-1943) Argued against dividing human thought and behavior into structures Founded Gestalt Psychology  Gestalt means “whole” in German Gestalt Psychologists theorized that our whole experience of reality is more than just the sum of all its pieces. What does this mean?

13. Wave 2: Gestalt Psychology Like Introspective theories, other than contribution to some forms of therapy and the study of perception, Gestalt psychology has little influence on current psychology.

14. Wave 3: Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Believed he had discovered our unconscious mind – a part of our mind that we aren’t aware of that determines how we think/behave Sought to uncover the unconscious through dream analysis, etc. Many of Freud’s terms have entered everyday speech: Oedipal complex, defense mechanism, repression, id, ego, etc.

15. Wave 4: Behaviorism Can be viewed as a reaction against perceived negativity/subjectivity of psychoanalysis If psychology is to be a science, it must only focus on observable behavior. Behaviorism was the dominant school of thought in psychology from the 1920’s to the 1960’s.  Most famous behaviorists: John Watson and B.F. Skinner

16. Wave 4: Behaviorism  John Watson (1878- 1958)  Behaviorism  Conducts “Little Albert” study with Rosalie Reynolds and gets fired from Johns Hopkins University.  Why?

17. Wave 4: Behaviorism B. F. Skinner (1904 – 1990) You will learn more about me and my studies of rats in our unit on learning. BTW, I am also a behaviorist!

18. Wave 5: Multiple Perspectives No one way of thinking about human thought and behavior in current psychology. Most psychologists describe themselves as eclectic – drawing from many perspectives

19. Famous Firsts/Influential Thinkers: Margaret Washburn PhD 1894  First woman to get PhD in psychology from Cornell  Was a student of Titchener

20. Francis C. Sumner PhD 1920 Clark University Inez Beverly Prosser PhD 1933 Cincinnati University

21. Kenneth Clark PhD 1940 Mamie Clark PhD 1944  Their “doll studies” influenced the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.

22. Agree or Disagree? 1. People are born smart – the types of schools they attend and parents they have don’t really matter. 2. People are born with their personalities intact. You will have the same personality at 40 that you had at 5. 3. It’s perfectly fine to use animals in psychological research. 4. Homosexuality is biologically determined. 5. Media violence causes children to behave violently. 6. All humans are capable of extreme violence (such as in Rwanda and Nazi Germany) if they are placed in the “right” situations.