Prepare DISCOVERING PSYCHOLOGY: Program 1: Past, Present, and Promise.

Prepare

DISCOVERING PSYCHOLOGY:

Program 1: Past, Present, and Promise

AP PSYCHOLOGYScope, History, and

Methodology

--Schools of Thought

--Sources of Bias and Error

Unit 1:Psychology’s History and

Approaches

Myers Psy for AP, 2010

Psychology

• What does it mean?

Inner sensations- mental processes

Observable behavior

Psychology:The science of behavior (what we do)

and mental processes (sensations, perceptions, dreams, thoughts, beliefs,

and feelings….)

At all levels, psychologists examine how we process information--how we organize, interpret, store, and use it.

Psychology’s Big IssuesStability v. Change

How does age affect personality?

How does our personality change within the “stages?”

Continuity v. DiscontinuityDoes growth occur gradually or in stages?Nature v. Nurture

Ex) is a criminal born that way or did society make them that way?

Stability v. Change

• As the years pass, do we change or remain the same?

• Are we become adults or are we always just big kids?

• Personality traits, physical appearance, sense of humor, tastes, etc…

• Biology versus Experience• Am I the way I am because I was

born that way or because of my surroundings?

Nature v. Nurture

Can I ever be like these people, or does nature give me limitations?

Biology vs. Experience (nature/nurture)

Plato: character and intelligence inherited.

John Locke: mind is a “tabula rasa” (blank slate); experience writes

Rene Descartes: ideas are innate

Charles Darwin: natural selection; survival of the fittest

the relative contribution that genes and experience make to development of psychological traits and behaviors

Prologue: Contemporary Psychology

Natural selection principle that

those inherited trait variations contributing to survival will most likely be passed on to succeeding generations

SCHOOLS

OF PSYCHOLOGY

PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY

1) Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

2) John Locke (1632-1704)

Prescientific Psychology Is the mind

connected to the body or distinct?

Are ideas inborn or is the mind a blank slate filled by experience?

Prologue: Psychology’s Roots

Prologue: Psychology’s Roots

Psychological Science Is Born Empiricism

Knowledge comes from experience via the senses

Science flourishes through observation and experiment

Founding Psychologists:

2) Hermann von Helmholtz: physicist who

conducted simple experiments on perception

and the nervous system…..the first to

measure the speed of a nerve impulse.

1) William Wundt: (1879 Leipzig, Germany) Founded the first formal laboratory devoted to experimental psychology.

5) G. Stanley Hall: first psychology laboratory in US (1883) at John Hopkins Univ…………..first American Psychology Journal (1887)…….first president of American Psychological Association (1892)

4) Herman Ebbinghaus: 1885 published classic studies on memory

7) Francis Cecil Sumner: first African-American PhD in psychology

6) Margaret Floy Washburn: First woman to receive PhD in Psychology (1894)

8) Mary Whiton Calkins: first woman elected president of APA, 1905

Prologue: Psychology’s Roots

Figure 1- British Psychological Society membership

Historical Schools

STRUCTURALISMSTRUCTURALISM: using introspection, the systematic examination by individuals of their own thoughts and feelings about specific sensory experiences. Emphasized the structure of the mind and behavior.

Structuralism was attacked because (1) it reduced all complex human experience to sensations, (2) it

studied only verbal reports of human conscious awareness, ignoring the study of individuals who could not describe the introspections (animals,

children, mentally ill), and (3) it sought to combine parts into a whole rather than study complex

behaviors directly.

Predominant Psychologists Structuralism

Edward Titchener: (Cornell University) emphasized the “what” of mental illness rather than “why” or “how” of thinking.

FUNCTIONALISMFUNCTIONALISM: gives primary importance to learned habits that enable organisms to adapt to their environment and to function effectively. “What is the function or purpose of any behavioral act?”

The major opponent to Stucturalism was……

Predominant Psychologists Functionalism

John Dewey: provided impetus for progressive education.

ALSO: *Mary Calkins*Margaret Floy Washburn

William James: Felt that the study of consciousness was not limited to elements, contents, and structures. He believed the mind had an ongoing relationship with the environment. He published “Principles of Psychology” 1890

GESTALTISMGESTALTISM: The whole is greater than the sum of its’ parts.

Research Psychologists:

Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka, and Kurt Lewin

3) Max Wertheimer (1880-1943)University of Prague*psychiatric hospitals in Prague, Frankfurt, and Vienna*Professor of Psychology at the University of Frankfurt

Predominant Psychologists Gestaltism

The End