Introduction to Psychology

Definition of Psychology

• Psychology is the scientific study of behavior
• Psychology is a science that uses behavioral and other evidence like thoughts, feelings, and brain activation patterns to understand internal processes that lead people to behave as they do
• Understanding human behavior using different approaches is a challenging task

Psychological Research

• Psychological research is WEIRD, meaning most research comes from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies
• Studies must consider cross-cultural differences because of substantial differences in findings
• Culture means a relatively organized system of shared meanings that holds shared beliefs, attitudes, and practices

Cultural Differences

• Cultural differences must be taken into serious consideration
• The West cannot be generalized as a model for the rest of the world
• It is more accurate to say that all cultures are developed in some ways

Wilhelm Wundt

• Wundt viewed psychology as an experimental science with a two-fold goal
• Experiments aimed to study the basic processes of the mind
• Experiments also aimed to comprehend higher mental processes
• The basic processes are sensation and feelings
• Higher mental processes are deduced from naturalistic observation
• Learning about simple processes could provide insight on more complex ones

Wundt - Basic Mental Processes

• Thought consists of two types of basic mental experience
• Sensations: Occur when a sense organ is stimulated
• Sensations: The resulting impulse reaches the brain
• Sensations are described in terms of modality, so any sense organ like visual, auditory, and olfactory
• Within a modality, sensation can be further analysed to determine qualities like color, pitch, and sourness
• Sensations are described by intensity or strength
• Feelings are triggered within them and described in terms of degree
• Three attributes of feelings: Pleasant-unpleasant, excitement-calm, and strain-relax

Wundt - Basic Concepts

• Two foundational concepts from which basic elements emerge
• Immediate experiences are human experiences that occur including understanding psychological processes activated by the mind as it collects information from the senses
• Mediate experience is how the mind interprets and analyzes information including perception of events and using measuring devices to gather data that helps scientists analyze the physical world or past categories to understand ongoing events
• An understanding of basic mental processes helps determine the laws governing their combination into more complex experiences

Wundt - Main Goal

• Wundt's main goal in psychology was to discover the basic elements of thought
• Wundt also wanted to discover the laws by which mental elements combine into complex mental experiences
• Wundt used introspection to study the mind's basic processes by training individuals to carefully and objectively analyze the content of their own thoughts
• Analysis involved the ability to describe sensations and feelings in detail

Wundt - Technique

• Introspection led Wundt to mental chronometry, or using reaction time to collect data on a stimulus
• Wundt believed that measuring the time response could deduce the content and duration of mental operations
• Wundt abandoned writing a catalog of reaction times due to the inconsistency
• Wundt derived the conclusion that the physical cause reaches sense organs
• Wundt derived the conclusion that the psychological cause is determined by the human will to arrange the elements of thought and make creative synthesis
• Creative synthesis cannot be predicted because intentions are willfully created

Wundt - Main Theory

• Apprehension is the passive process of receiving information
• Apperception is when someone wants to see a stimulus and pays attention to it
• Apperception is within an individual's control of choice
• Voluntarism is an individual's choice to direct attention towards a chosen object
• In voluntarism, elements perceived can be arranged and rearranged therefore the experiencing is called creative synthesis

Wundt - Prediction Hard

• Throughout Wundt's investigations, the human will and its influence needed consideration and the question of what causes people to go in one direction of creative synthesis instead of another
• Two ideas were proposed as solutions:
• The heterogony of ends means an activity seldom attains its goals and often something unexpected happens that changes the motivation
• The principle of contrasts means the opposite experiences intensify one another
• The prolonged experience of one type increases the tendency to seek the opposite type of experience

Wundt - Determinist

• Wundt believed there is creative synthesis done by an act of will and that behind volitional acts there are mental laws at play
• These laws cannot be found by experimentation but can be deduced after the fact
• The higher mental processes that operate behind the will must be observed like a historian
• Psychologists observe past behavior and extract deductions

Wundt - Determinist

• Wundt used a historical observation approach to investigate higher processes called volkerpsychologie
• A psychologist observes cultural products like religion, social customs, myths, law, morals, art, and language in order to make deductions
• Wundt's final aim was to deduce how people are trying to make sense of information and retain meaning in their lives and express it back

Edward Titchener

• Titchener founded the first school of psychology called Structuralism
• Titchener agreed with Wundt on immediate experiences
• Sensations and feelings are immediate experiences, part of the thinking process, and therefore part of consciousness
• Titchener defined consciousness as the sum total of mental experience at any given moment
• The mind is the accumulated experiences of a lifetime

Titchener - Goals

• Titchener wanted to determine what the list of mental elements constituting immediate experiences are and how they combine
• Titchener strived to increase the detail in lab experiments and introspection
• Titchener searched for neurological pathways and correlations that made up mental events; psychology then started leaning towards biology

Titchener - Structuralist

• Titchener was after describing the structure of the mind in careful language as possible
• This description provided understanding of the basic physiological parts, the neurophysiological events that occur, how they combine into complex experiences, and the laws governing the brain

Titchener- Basic Theory

• Elements making up consciousness are sensations involving elements of perception
• Elements making up consciousness are images involving elements of ideas
• Elements making up consciousness are affections involving elements of emotions
• Elements are recognized by attributes describing them through introspection
• The mental process happens when the law of contiguity is favored as the basic law
• This law states that when two ideas or events occur in close association, they trigger a neurophysiological connection elicited in other similar cases

Titchener- Introspection

• Titchener used a more complex and lab-like form of introspection
• Introspectors had to avoid stating the meaning of a stimulus and describe the raw experiential elements or spatial and organic characteristics
• Describing the immediate meaning would be stimulus error
• Titchener wanted sensations which are information from the senses and are immediate processes rather than perceptions which are mediate processes and how the mind organizes information

Titchener - Extinction

• All past philosophical schools dealt with how the mind relates to the body and took the line that senses are gateways to the mind
• Structuralism was studying what was already known but presented it in a scientific way
• Introspection was already used in old philosophical schools
• The scientific use of Titchener's discoveries were questionable because results varied

Titchener - Extinction

• Structuralism excluded key developments like abnormal behavior and comparative psychology
• Titchener wanted psychology confined within a lab and was unwilling to seek practical knowledge or apply findings to problems
• Titchener refused to assimilate Darwin's doctrine of evolution
• Needed a shift in methods and questions from "what is the mind" to "what is the mind for"

William James

• William James is considered the biggest contributor to functionalism
• James read Wundt's work but the readings led to a depressive state in which James believed events were predetermined and beyond control
• James accepted Darwin's ideas on natural selection and survival of the fittest, which led him to conclude that he was unlikely to survive and that there was no hope, freedom, or choice

William James

• James read an essay by Renouvier as a turning point and handled his depressive mood and became productive
• Renouvier believed in pragmatism, meaning if an idea works then it is valid and the criterion for judging an idea is usefulness
• James ended up in a conflict because he was taught determinism but found practical ways to survive through freedom of will

William James

• James embraced psychology that embraced both pragmatism and radical empiricism, which means experience is derived from the senses and accurate experiments can be performed
• James' works do not follow one organized theory
• James' works are criticisms of Wundt in his experimental phase of life
• Regular themes found in his writings are pragmatism, empiricism, and freewill

James - Key Theories

• Consciousness is a stream that is not limited by laws
• Consciousness is personal and made of individual experiences
• Consciousness is continuous and cannot be divided for analysis
• Consciousness is constantly changing and one never has the same idea twice
• Consciousness is selective and some ideas are chosen for consideration while others are left out
• Consciousness is functional and its aim is to help the individual adapt to the environment
• These five points are opposed to Wundt's experimentalism and Titchener's structuralism

James - Key Theories

• Human behavior is governed by instincts, which develop as life patterns, modified by one's experience
• If repeated, instincts become habits
• Habits are functional because they simplify movements to achieve results
• A foundational principle emerging from habit formation is to act in ways that are compatible with the type of person one wants to become

James - Key Theories

• The self is the empirical self including the body, mind, and sum total that one can call his/her own (like clothes, wife, work, etc)
• Empirical self divided into three parts with material self being everything material possessed
• Empirical self divided into three parts with social self being image one has in mind and his roles
• Empirical self divided into three parts with spiritual self being how one experiences his subjective reality
• A person's self-esteem is determined by the ratio of attempted achievements

James - Key Theories

• James had an ideo-motor theory of behavior as a reply to determinism
• In our mind there are a variety of thoughts needing attention and selection so selected actions will push a person to bahaviour
• Holding attention defines ones actions
• There is a free will involved to consent selection, attention, and behavior
• People are what they think and what they do determines what they feel
• James was an interactionist because people interact with the environment

James - Key Theories

• James' theory of personality divides it into two parts known as tenderminded and tough-minded
• Tenderminded personalities are rational, intellectual, religious, and optimistic
• Tough-minded personalities are materialistic, pessimistic, and skeptical
• A good personality needs elements from each list in order to function at one's best in circumstances

James - Contributions

• James incorporated evolutionary theory to psychology
• James helped psychology become applied
• James expanded research methods
• James expanded the subject matter of psychology
• Functionalism was absorbed into mainstream psychology because it led to helping areas develop
• Functionalism contributed to eclectic studies of human behavior
• This eclectic way rose to the fact that there was not one systemic theory but many