Intro to Psychology: History and Research

Introduction to Psychology

Road Map

• Fundamentals of Psychological Research, APA Style, and a Brief History of Psychology are key topics.

A Brief History of Psychology

• Dates/years are not to be memorized.

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

• Wundt is considered the founder of psychology and was a German Professor.
• In 1879, the first formal psychological lab was created in Leipzig.
• In 1881, the first journal devoted to research in Psychology was established.
• Wundt emphasized the existence of consciousness.
• He trained many scholars who then spread out across the globe, to America.

Psychology in America, G. Stanley Hall

• G. Stanley Hall, a student of Wundt's, established the first US psychology research facility at Johns Hopkins University.
• In 1887, the first psychology journal in America was launched.
• Hall spearheaded the establishment of the APA (American Psychological Association) and was its first president.

Structuralism and Edward Titchener (1867-1927)

• Structuralism is based on the notion that psychology's task is to analyze consciousness into its basic elements and investigate how these elements are related.
• Edward Titchener, an immigrant to the US, led structuralism.
  • It focused on Sensation and Perception.
  • Introspection was used as a tool.

Functionalism and William James (1842-1910)

• Functionalism investigates the function or purpose of consciousness, rather than its structure.
• There is an emphasis on how psychology directly drives behavior in an applied sense opposed to in a laboratory.
• William James, an American Scholar, was formally trained in medicine and lead Functionalism.
• He wrote Principles of Psychology (1890).
• The focus was on Learning and Personality.

Structuralism Versus Functionalism

• Structuralism analyzes consciousness into its basic elements to investigate how the elements are related.
  • It aims to understand why we think in a certain way.
  • It asks how to describe the basic parts of something, such as describing an orange as cold, juicy, and orange.
  • Structuralism relies heavily on introspection instead of the scientific method.
• Functionalism investigates the purpose and function of consciousness.
  • It asks what the results or outcomes of thinking are.
  • Understands how environment affects thoughts.
  • It relies heavily on the scientific method.
• While both are still involved in psychology to some extent, structuralism is a largely outdated approach.

The Unconscious and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

• Sigmund Freud was an Austrian Physician.
• Freud was attempting to treat hysteria (irrational fears, obsessions, and anxieties) in his medical practice.
• The unconscious contains thoughts, memories, and desires below the surface of conscious awareness that exert great influence on behavior.
• Freud developed the Psychoanalytical approach to Therapy.
  • It deals with personality, motivation, and abnormal behavior.

John B. Watson (1878 - 1958)

• John B. Watson founded Behaviorism and urged psychology to abandon the study of consciousness altogether.
• It is a theoretical orientation based on the premise that scientific psychology should study only observable behavior.
• This caused debate and rivalry with psychoanalysis and cognitive psychology.

B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)

• An influential advocate of behaviorism.
• Even though internal mental events occur, there was no need to study them.
• It emphasized how environmental factors influence and control behavior.
• Organisms repeat responses that lead to positive outcomes and do not repeat those that lead to neutral or negative outcomes.
• All behavior is predictable by external events; free will is said to be an illusion.

Humanism

• Is a theoretical orientation that emphasizes the unique qualities of humans, especially their freedom and their potential for personal growth.
• Psychoanalytic and behaviorism theory were dehumanizing.
• Humans are fundamentally different than animals and research involving them has little relevance to human behavior.
• Carl Rogers (1902-1987) and Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) are the architects of the humanistic movement.

Cognition and Jean Piaget (1954)

• Cognition refers to the mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge.
• It focuses on thinking and conscious experience.
• Jean Piaget is a Swiss psychologist who brought a lot of attention to the study of children's cognitive development.
• Psychology must include the study of internal mental events to fully understand behavior.

Biological and Neuroscientific Perspective

• Focuses on the Physiological bases of behavior in humans and animals.
• An organism's functioning can be explained in terms of the bodily structure and bio-chemical processes that underlie behavior.
• Advancement in technology has brought this about and is still considered new.

APA Style

• APA style creates a uniform style and format in which scientific papers in psychology are published.

APA STYLE: General Formatting

• Papers should be double-spaced using Times New Roman font, size 12.
• Sections should be in a specific order to increase readability.

Sections of an APA style paper

• Abstract: A 150 to 250 word summary of the paper.
• Introduction: Summarizes the experiment's purpose and past literature on the topic.
• Method: Offers experimental details so other researchers can understand and replicate the experiment.
• Results: The statistical tests used determine the answer.
• Discussion/Conclusion: How to interpret the findings, their relation to past studies, implications, and limitations.
• References: A bibliography that provides details to locate cited articles or past findings.

APA STYLE: In-text Citations

• If using a direct quote, give credit for their words.
• If paraphrasing, credit the author(s) for the ideas used.
• If referring to a primary source you read about in a secondary source credit both.
• Use an ampersand, &, between authors when names are within parentheses.
• Use the word "and" between authors when their names are not in parentheses.
• Instead of listing names of three or more authors, use "et al."

APA Style: Reference Section

• APA-style references answer:
  • Who wrote the work?
  • When was it written?
  • What is the title?
  • Where was it published?
• It is important to note that each aspect of the format of a reference is very specific with the use of punctuation, capitalization, and italics.

Fundamentals of Psychological Research

• Psychologists conduct research to:
  • Identify, describe, explain, predict, and control.
• Psychologists accomplish these goals through the Scientific Method!

Scientific Method

• Observation
• Define a problem/formulate a question
• Create a Hypothesis: An educated guess about relationships or the causes of behavior. A set of testable assumptions.
• Test Hypothesis: Collect and Analyze Data
• Conclusions/Report Results (Publish)
• Revise/Replicate

Research Methods

• Naturalistic Observation, Laboratory Observations, Case Studies, Surveys, Correlations, and Experiments are all research methods.

Naturalistic Observation

• Involves observing subjects in their natural environment.
  • It allows testing things that would be unethical to manipulate in the lab.
  • The external validity shows how the results are likely to apply to a real-world setting.
• It's limitations are:
  • Lack of control.
  • The "observer effect" means behavior changes when subjects know they are watched.
  • "Observer Bias" is where the observer only writes what they want to see.

Laboratory Observations

• Based on observing behaviors, but the observations occur in a lab instead of a natural setting.
• The biggest strength is control but there can be a lack of external validity.
• There can be a risk for observer effects and bias.

Case Studies

• Detailed consideration is given to the development of a particular person, group, or situation over a period of time.
• Advantages are can provide an in-depth look at a person's mind and can be used to investigate abnormal brain functioning (such as amnesia).
  • Disadvantages are generalizability.
  • Generalized Freud's early theories from cases, hence why their popularity has decreased.

Surveys

• Sampling a population of people to know something about them and their experience through interviews, questionnaires, and phone interviews.
• A small group of people that accurately reflect a larger population is a representative sample.
• A survey samples populations because it could be impossible to survey an entire population.
• Limitations include biased sample.
  • A Convenience Sample is a sample that is easy to get and use but may not be representative.
  • A Social Desirability Bias means there is tendency to under-report socially undesirable attributes and over-report more desirable attributes.

Correlations

• Uncovering "relationships/patterns" between 2 variables with a scale of -1 to +1 in range.
• Positive Correlation - Increases in one variable are matched by increases in the other variable.
• Negative Correlations - Increases in one variable are matched by decreases in the other variable.
• The limitations of correlations include that correlation does not equal causation.
  • "Spurious Correlations" occur when two or more variables are associated but not causally related, due to either coincidence or the presence of a certain third factor.

Experiments

• "Gold Standard" of psychological research allows for the measurement of causality and control.
• Experiments demonstrate that one variable caused a change in another while holding as many factors consistent as possible.

Experimental Factors: Variables

• A variable is any condition that can change and might affect the outcome of the experiment.
  • Independent Variables are what is being manipulated.
  • Dependent Variables are what is being measured.
  • Extraneous/Confounding Variables can change the outcome of the experiment and make determining causality more difficult.

Variables: Examples

• Phone usage before bedtime can affect sleep.
  • Independent Variable – Phone Usage
  • Dependent Variable – Sleep Quality
• Operational definitions define a concept or X; this is what is exactly meant.
  • It indicates how many minutes a person spends on the phone before bed, and how many hours a person sleeps at night.