Founders of Psychology

Important Figures in Psychology

• Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology lab in 1879. Notable psychologists include William James (functionalism), John Watson (classical conditioning), Abraham Maslow (humanistic psychology), Jean Piaget ((field contributions), and Sigmund Freud (unconscious impulses).

Psychology Approaches and Concepts

• Introspection is the examination or observation of one's own mental and emotional processes
• Functionalism studies human thought, feelings, and behaviors
• Structuralism examines the structure of the mind
• Behaviorism is the study of observable behavior
• Freudian psychology emphasizes the role of unconscious thought processes and emotional responses to childhood experiences in shaping behavior
• Cognitive neuroscience is the science of the mind and brain, focusing on brain activity underlying mental activity

Theories and Debates

• The nature vs. nurture debate concerns the role of genetics (nature) versus life experience (nurture) in shaping human characteristics
• The cognitive perspective focuses on how internal thoughts and feelings influence behavior
• Hindsight bias is a psychological phenomenon where people convince themselves they accurately predicted an event after it occurred

Research Methods

• A theory is an explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and predicts behaviors or events
• An operational definition is a carefully worded statement of the exact procedures used in a research study
• A case study involves specifically studying someone, while naturalistic observation describes behavior in a natural environment
• Random sampling is important in research to ensure simplicity and lack of bias
• A correlation coefficient provides a statistical measure of how closely two things vary together and how well one predicts the other

Experimental Design

• An experiment involves an experimental group that receives treatment and a control group that does not
• Participants are randomly assigned, and the study may be single-blind (participant unaware of treatment) or double-blind (both participant and administrator unaware)
• The independent variable is manipulated, while a confounding variable may change when the independent variable is manipulated

Biology and Psychology

• A gene is the basic unit of heredity passed from parent to child
• The human genome is a complete set of nucleic acid sequences for humans, encoded as DNA within the 23 chromosome pairs in cell nuclei and in a small DNA molecule found within individual mitochondria
• Biological psychology studies the links between biology and behavior
• Dendrites receive messages from other cells, while axons pass messages away from the cell body to other neurons or to muscles or glands
• Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers that cross synaptic gaps between neurons