Introduction to Psychology

Introduction to the Field of Psychology

Welcome!

To Do:

• Introductions with a special object (show and tell) :)

• Music for the rest of the semester/ Icebreakers?

• Syllabus

• Introduction to Psychology lecture

Open Ended

How would you define psychology?

Psychology Defined:

Psychology refers to the scientific study of mind and behavior.

How is Psychology studied?
Psychologist use the scientific method to acquire knowledge about a specific question.

a BIG debate
Is Psychology a Science?

Empirical Method

Science deals with matter and energy. Those things that can be measured, and it cannot arrive at knowledge about values and morality.

This is one reason why our scientific understanding of the mind is so limited, since thoughts, are neither matter nor energy. The scientific method is also a form of empiricism.

An empirical method for acquiring knowledge is one based on observation, including experimentation, rather than a method based only on forms of logical argument or previous authorities.

Multiple Choice

Define Psychology

• refers to the scientific study of mind and behavior.

• refers to the scientific study of animals.

• refers to the scientific study of interactions

• refers to the scientific study of the mind.

Poll

Is Psychology a science?

• Yes

• No

Major Schools of Psychology

Beginning of Structuralism

• Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) was a German scientist who was the first person to be referred to as a psychologist.

  • Wundt viewed psychology as a scientific study of conscious experience, and he believed that the goal of psychology was to identify components of consciousness and how those components combined to result in our conscious experience.

  • Wundt used introspection (he called it “internal perception”), a process by which someone examines their own conscious experience as objectively as possible, making the human mind like any other aspect of nature that a scientist observed. e.g. mountain

​Structuralism

• Edward Titchener, one of Wundt's students, went on to develop structuralism.

• Its focus was on the contents of mental processes rather than their function.

  • ​For example, the focus on the content might lead to studying the kinds of thoughts or memories people have, while focusing on the function could lead to exploring how those thoughts or memories help people make decisions or navigate challenges.

• Wundt established his psychology laboratory at the University at Leipzig in 1879

Functionalism

• William James, John Dewey, and Charles Sanders Peirce helped establish functional psychology.

• Key to functionalism is the idea that natural selection leads to organisms that are adapted to their environment, including their behavior.

• Functionalism focused on how mental activities helped an organism fit into its environment.

• functionalists were more interested in the operation of the whole mind rather than of its individual parts, which were the focus of structuralism.

Freud and Psychoanalytic Theory

• Freud (1856–1939) was an Austrian neurologist who was fascinated by patients suffering from “hysteria” and neurosis.

  • Hysteria was an ancient diagnosis for disorders, primarily of women with a wide variety of symptoms, including physical symptoms and emotional disturbances, none of which had an apparent physical cause.

• Freud theorized that many of his patients’ problems arose from the unconscious mind.

Psychoanalytic Theory

• According to Freud, the unconscious mind could be accessed through dream analysis, by examinations of the first words that came to people’s minds, and through seemingly innocent slips of the tongue.

• Psychoanalytic theory focuses on the role of a person’s unconscious, as well as early childhood experiences, and this particular perspective dominated clinical psychology for several decades

Gestalt Psychology

• Max Wertheimer (1880–1943), Kurt Koffka (1886–1941), and Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967) were three German psychologists who immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century to escape Nazi Germany.

• These scholars are credited with introducing psychologists in the United States to various Gestalt principles.

• Gestalt roughly translates to “whole;” a major emphasis of Gestalt psychology deals with the fact that although a sensory experience can be broken down into individual parts, how those parts relate to each other as a whole is often what the individual responds to in perception.

Gestalt Psychology

Gestalt theory centers around the idea that our perception of the world is based on how we put together and interpret individual elements as one whole rather than considering each element separately.

The key idea is that our minds naturally group pieces of information together to make sense of the world. So, instead of seeing random dots or shapes, we tend to organize them into a recognizable image or pattern.

Behaviorism

• Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936)studied a form of learning behavior called a conditioned reflex, in which an animal or human produced a reflex (unconscious) response to a stimulus and, over time, was conditioned to produce the response to a different stimulus that the experimenter associated with the original stimulus.

• John B. Watson (1878–1958) was a major proponent of shifting the focus of psychology from the mind to behavior, and this approach of observing and controlling behavior came to be known as behaviorism.

  • A major object of study by behaviorists was learned behavior and its interaction with inborn qualities of the organism.

Behaviorism

B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) spoke of reinforcement and punishment as major factors in driving behavior. As a part of his research, Skinner developed a chamber that allowed the careful study of the principles of modifying behavior through reinforcement and punishment. This device, known as an operant conditioning chamber (or more familiarly, a Skinner box), has remained a crucial resource for researchers studying behavior.

Humanism

• Humanism is a perspective within psychology that emphasizes the potential for good that is innate to all humans.

• Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) was an American psychologist who is best known for proposing a hierarchy of human needs in motivating behavior

Humanism

• Carl Rogers (1902–1987) was also an American psychologist who, like Maslow, emphasized the potential for good that exists within all people.

  • Rogers used a therapeutic technique known as client-centered therapy in helping his clients deal with problematic issues that resulted in their seeking psychotherapy.

  • Rogers believed that a therapist needed to display three features to maximize the effectiveness of this particular approach: unconditional positive regard, genuineness, and empathy.

Word Cloud

Give one word that you think describes how you're feeling at the start of this semester.