History of Psychology: Structuralism to Behaviourism

• The notes summarize the history of psychology.
• The notes also discuss structuralism, functionalism, psychoanalysis, and behaviourism.

What is psychology?

• Psychology defined as scientific study of mind and behaviour.
• Mind includes sensations, thoughts, and emotions.
• Behaviour means actions.
• Only directly observable behaviours can be studied.
• One question in psychology tries to address the reasons why people do the things they do.
• Individual differences and multiply determined behaviours make answering this question not easy.

History of Psychology

• First psychology research lab was established in 1879 by William Wundt in Germany.
• The first North American lab was founded by G. Stanley Hall (1883).
• James Mark Baldwin founded the first Canadian lab (1891).
• Philosophers have always speculated about the mind and behavior.
• Early psychologists wanted to apply more empirical research methods to psychological concepts.
• Early psychologists were interested in pulling insights from other sciences, especially medicine.

Structuralism

• Explored the structural components of the mind.
• Used introspection as a tool to measure the structure of the mind.
• Ebbinghaus tested his ability to remember lists of nonsense words at different time intervals in the 1880’s, testing theories on the speed of forgetting.
• Researchers tested 350 people regarding their preference for the ideal proportions (golden ratio) in the 1870's,.
• Subsequent attempts to replicate this research failed, showing that the golden ratio is not necessarily universally aesthetically pleasing

Functionalism

• Functionalism states that psychology should investigate the function or purpose of mind and behavior.
• Functionalism was influenced by Darwin's natural/sexual selection theories.

Freud

• Freud thought behavior is governed by unconscious thoughts.
• Conscious and unconscious is compared to an iceberg, with the unconscious being the vast part of the iceberg that is submerged.
• Psychoanalysis involves "free association," hypnosis, dream interpretation, and interpretation of spoken language.
• Anxiety comes from conflict between unconscious urges and awareness of "moral standards”.
• Ways of dealing with anxiety include defence mechanisms (e.g., repression, sublimation).
• Ways of dealing with anxiety include art.
• Freud thought Leonardo sublimated forbidden feelings for lost mother in art.
• Freud believed two women in Leonardo's pieces were symbols for the artist's mother and stepmother.

Behaviourism

• Behaviourism suggests that psychology should study only observable behaviour.
• Most behavior (human and animal) explained as learned responses to stimuli in our environment.
• Pavlov demonstrated dogs could be trained to salivate (response) at the sound of a tone (stimulus).
• Classical conditioning involves training conditioned responses to certain stimulae.
• Skinner used the operant conditioning chamber (Skinner Box) to study how stimulus/response associations are formed.
• Watson said he could take healthy infants and train them to become any type of specialist he might select.

Contemporary: Cognitive

• "cognitive revolution" began in the 1950s.
• The "cognitive revolution" was by the introduction of the computer by IBM.
• Computers process information in series of well-defined steps.
• Cognitive psychologists assume that the mind works in similar ways to computers.
• One prominent cognitive approach says aesthetic appreciation related to processing fluency.
• Liking art and design is related to the ease with which we can figure out what's going on.

Neuroscience

• Focuses on renewed interest in the biological bases of behaviour.
• 1960s Nobel prize winning "split brain“ research.
• In 2001, Blood and Zatorre had participants listen to self-selected music in PET scanner.
• Intensity of "musical chills" ratings were associated with activity in the brain's "pleasure center”.

Evolutionary Psychology

• Evolutionary psychology gained momentum in the 1980s.
• Incorporates return to functionalism described earlier
• Evolutionary Psychology tailors psychological understanding to fit the environment of ancestral humans.
• Much of the work focuses on behaviours common to small, hunter-gatherer societies.
• It also suggests our behaviours, ways of thinking, are encoded in genes.
• Traits more likely to help with survival/reproduction are passed on.
• Art and music adaptations, and the positive effects of greenspace on well-being are areas of interest.
• Research into evolutionary psychology tries to answer how art and music helped our early ancestors to survive and produce offspring?
• Biophilia hypothesis states that humans have an inherit connection with nature, and studies whether being near nature has psychological benefits.

Great Debates

• A major debate involves free will vs determinism.
• It is debated as to whether behaviors are freely selected with full conscious control, or if they are caused by factors beyond our control.
• Libet's free will experiment explores the topic.
• Legal implications of free will vs. determinism debate is particularly important in the case of imprisonment.

Environmental Psychology

• Focuses the relationship between humans and the external world.
• One early example involves research showing that grades in a class varied as a function of where people sit.
• The term was first used by Brunswik in 1943.
• The area of study came into its own in 1980s.
• Its principles are: interdisciplinary, skepticism of field studies, problem oriented and values oriented.
• It is committed to sustainability, betterment of society.
• People recovering from surgery with a natural view through a window had a shorter stay and needed fewer drugs

Explore the origins of psychology, from Wundt's first lab to the rise of structuralism, functionalism, psychoanalysis, and behaviorism. Understand the challenges in studying the mind and behavior, including individual differences.