Psychology Chapter 1: What is Psychology?

1. Psychology Chapter 1: What is Psychology? Section 1: The Science of Psychology

2. Psychologists take as their subjects the entire spectrum of human beings as well as animals • Want to know why people do things • Want to know how people and animals solve problems, learn, remember, perceive, feel, & get along or don’t get along with others

3. Study child rearing, gossiping, remembering a shopping list, daydreaming, etc • What makes people tick

4. Definition- the discipline concerned with behavior & mental processes & how they are affected by an organism’s physical & mental state & external environment

5. Psychology, Pseudoscience, & Common Sense • What Psychology is NOT • “pop psych” • Self help books & talk shows • A pseudoscience promising a quick fix to life’s problems

6. Serious psych is more complex, more informative & based on rigorous research & empirical evidence • Evidence gathered by careful observation, experimentation, and measurement.

7. Not handwriting analysis, fortune telling, numerology, or astrology • Psychology is not just a fancy name for common sense • Psychological research often produces findings that contradict popular beliefs

8. The Birth of Modern Psychology • Like today’s psychologists they wanted to describe, predict, understand, & modify behavior in order to add to human knowledge & increase human happiness • Didn’t rely on empirical evidence

9. Hippocrates • Father of modern medicine • Observed patients with head injuries & inferred that the brain must be the source of our pleasures, joys, laughter, sorrows, pains, grief, & tears

10. Bumpy Logic • Phrenology “Study of the mind” • Popular in the early 1800s • Argued that different areas of the brain accounted for specific character & personality traits & could be determined by the bumps on the head

11. 1879- First psychology lab was officially established in Leipzig, Germany by Wilhelm Wundt • Trained introspection- volunteers were taught to carefully observe, analyze, & describe their own sensations, mental images, & emotional reactions

12. Goal is to break down behavior into its most basic elements • Later rejected for being too subjective • Still important to making psychology a science

13. Functionalism- emphasized the function of behavior • William James • Looked at the causes & consequences of behavior

14. Psychotherapy • Sigmund Freud • Psychoanalysis- emphasized unconscious motives & conflicts • Psychology eventually grew into a complex discipline encompassing many different specialties, perspectives, & methods

15. Psychology’s Present • Five Major Theoretical Perspectives • Reflecting the different assumptions about how the mind works, different questions that psychologists ask about human behavior, & different ways of explaining why people do what they do

16. 1. Biological Perspective • Emphasizes bodily events and changes associated with actions, feelings, and thoughts • Study how physical events interact with events in the external environment to produce perceptions, memories, emotions, etc

17. Investigate the contribution of genes & other biological factors to the development of abilities & personality traits • Evolutionary psychology- focuses on how genetically influenced behavior that was functional or adaptive during our evolutionary past may be reflected in our present behavior, mental processes, & traits

18. 2. Learning Perspective • Emphasizes how the environment and experience affect a person's or animal's actions • Behaviorists focus on the environmental rewards & punishers that maintain or discourage specific behavior • Look at what they can observe & measure directly

19. Social Cognitive learning theorists combine behaviorism with research on thoughts, values, & intentions • People learning by adapting their behavior to the environment & by imitating others, & by thinking about the events happening around them

20. 3. Cognitive Perspective • Emphasizes mental processes in perception, memory, language, problem solving, and other areas of behavior • What goes on in people’s heads, how they reason, explain experiences, acquire moral standards, & form beliefs

21. Infer mental processes from observed behavior • Show how our thoughts & explanations of events affect what we feel & do

22. 4. Sociocultural Perspective • Emphasizes social and cultural forces outside the individual, forces that shape every aspect of behavior • Most of us underestimate the impact of other people, the social context, & cultural rules on nearly everything we do

23. 5. Psychodynamic Perspective • Emphasizes unconscious dynamics within the individual, such as inner forces, conflicts, or the movement of instinctual energy • Says that psychologists should focus in what really matter to most people- their hopes & aspirations

24. “positive psychology”- focuses on the qualities that enable people to be happy, optimistic, & resilient in times of stress