Psychology 1001 Lecture 3 PDF

Psychology 1001 - Lecture 3 The History and Philosophical Foundations of Psychology By professor Frans Verstraten The School of Psychology acknowledges and pays respect to the traditional owners of the land, the Gadigal of the Eora Nation. It is upon their ancestral lands that the University of Sydn...

Psychology 1001 - Lecture 3 The History and Philosophical Foundations of Psychology By professor Frans Verstraten The School of Psychology acknowledges and pays respect to the traditional owners of the land, the Gadigal of the Eora Nation. It is upon their ancestral lands that the University of Sydney is built. Today: Psychology, good versus bad science, and early philosophy on how we acquire knowledge So what is Psychology? Psycho – Mind, mental (greek: Ψυχη = spirit, breath) mind mental processes. ~logy – from Lógos (greek: λόγος) – A ground An account To reason Psychology = study of the mind, mental processes Question: You are a psychology student. You come home and you meet your aunts and uncles: “So you are now at the university! And what is it that you study?” You answer: “Psychology” What do they think? For most lay persons: this is is Psychology? In a study in Austria, participants were asked to finish a sentence. “Psychologist can…” 68 % of the 300 participants answered this question with something along the lines of “read people’s mind” Different approaches… Show different roots/origins Brain: SO… Study of the brain, mind and behavior Neuro-biological processes that generate mental processes and states Mind: Individual sensations, perceptions, memories, thoughts, dreams, incentives, emotions and all subjective experiences. Behavior: A wide variety of actions by men (and animal) that can be observed. The many kinds of psychology The many kinds of Psychology with very different roots Biological Psychology Cultural Psychology Comparative Psychology Religion and Psychology Physiological Psychology Clinical Psychology Experimental Psychology Health Psychology Developmental Psychology Mathematical Psychology Industrial & Organizational Psychology Coaching Psychology Social Psychology Educational Psychology Personality Sport Psychology Forensic Psychology Economic Psychology Human Factors and Cognitive Ergonomics (see examples on next slides) Consumer Psychology And many more… Example of ‘psychologist are needed to make things understandable’ Cognitive ergonomics An example: is this Example on campus… psychology? You need to understand how people think, but also how creative they can be to solve problems that don’t have a good answer Wundt / First lab / introspection 1879 fMRI scanning Edwin Smith Papyrus - Imhotep Discovery of ventricles 3-cell doctrine Gall/Spurzheim: Phrenology Broca/Wernicke Fechner/Weber /Psychophysics 1860 Ibn al-Haytham Physics trepanation Timeline.. Psychology (as a science) 2000 1950 1900 1800 1000 0 Pre-hist. -3000 Which field? Medicine Some philosophy: How to do good psychological research A: What is good and what is bad science B: What are the ideas about knowledge acquisition. Good & bad science How does science work? The problem of demarcation Basically what is scientific and what is unscientific? Is this border strict? Attendance check Fact: The scientific method! Some terminology Based on direct observation. Theory: An idea as to how these facts can be explained. Given what we know already! Hypothesis: Given this, one can make predictions of so far unknown based on what we already know. Test (or experiment) How do we test this in a methodologically sound way An example: Clever (Kluger) Hans He probably made some money with this ‘entertainment’ So HOW is this possible? Trained by Mr. Von Osten 4 years of training Code by horse hoof Experiment 1. Was Mr. Von Osten a charlatan? Did he manipulate things? Give the horse signs or information? How can we test that? Solution: What did Oscar Pfungst do? So Fact or observation: Theory: Hypothesis: Test (or experiment) Horse can count and read. Animals can learn to read and do math Horses can’t read and count but use information unknown to us so far. A horse can read and do math. (can be tested). If we take the cues away, the horse must fail. Let’s make sure to do the task with blinkers Clever Hans failed dramatically We showed that there was something fishy going on by doing the right experiment. So… Would that convince everybody? Of course not, humans like weird stuff… Pick a number 1 2 3 4 An example: Subliminal Perception in advertising (Hidden Persuaders) Stimulus is registered and processed but without subject’s awareness. Research has repeatedly shown that subliminal messages can affect mood and bias memory retrieval but cannot trigger complex behavior Subliminal Perception Eat Popcorn Drink Coke James Vicary :”Drink Coke” and “eat popcorn” flashed these messages between frames in a movie, too briefly to reach consciousness Coke sales up by 18.1% Popcorn by 57.8% Raised a storm of controversy, fear and loathing Bans on subliminal advertising Vicary later confessed it was a fraud. Still some use it as an example… (see also ‘democRats’) subliminal: USA- Republican ad, 2000 Bush presidential campaign, shows Al Gore then “RATS” appears for one frame (1/30 of a second, but slowed down by half here) Republican ad, 2000 Bush campaign, shows Al Gore then “RATS” appears for one frame (1/30 of a second, but slowed to 1/15th in clip here) So, how do we do things in science Karl Popper (1902- 1994) Book: The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934/1959) Thomas Kuhn Book: The structure of scientific revolutions (1962, 2nd edition 1970) Karl Popper (1902 – 1994) Falsifiability or refutability = a statement, hypothesis, theory needs to be open to be tested in the sense that it potentially can be proven to be false. “show it to be false” An example Popper’s Swans By looking at the world you can induce that all swans are white. So, if your hypothesis/theory states “all swans are white”, it is a good one because it can be tested (falsified), but how… By showing it to be wrong! if you find one black swan you can actually be sure for 100% that not all swans are white. So Sigmund Freud: Pseudoscience? Thomas Kuhn (1922 – 1996) No obvious science/non-science demarcation Not just progress like Karl Popper suggested. Paradigm shifts Paradigms not just a common theory but part of a world view. Hard to change, and only changes if anomalies show up that are hard to explain by the current paradigm. Kuhn’s Revolution: A new paradigm emerges Old Theory: well established, many followers, politically powerful, well understood, many anomalies New Theory: few followers, untested, new concepts/techniques, accounts for anomalies, asks new questions Some examples of massive changes in the history of Psychology. Often based on big discoveries, change of ‘Zeitgeist’. However, often key players don’t change (see later the example of B.F. Skinner, he always remained a behaviorist). “A new scientific theory does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die , and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it” (Max Planck) Popper / Kuhn – how science works Wundt / First lab / introspection 1879 fMRI scanning Edwin Smith Papyrus - Imhotep Discovery of ventricles 3-cell doctrine Gall/Spurzheim: Phrenology Broca/Wernicke Fechner/Weber /Psychophysics 1860 Ibn al-Haytham Physics trepanation Timeline.. Psychology (as a science) 2000 1950 1900 1800 1000 0 Pre-hist. -3000 philosophy Medicine So how do we acquire knowledge? Molyneux question Nature versus Nurture. Present at Birth (Nativism) versus learned in time (Empiricism) One of the most famous Empiricists was John Locke All knowledge is delivered by our senses, so experience derived from perception. “Nothing is in the mind whic h was not first in the senses” John Locke (1632-1704) One of the first British empiricists One is born without innate ideas. An issue … William Molyneux’s Problem/Question (1688) “the question Molyneux asked John Locke was whether a man who has been born blind and who has learnt to distinguish and name a globe and a cube by touch, would be able to distinguish and name these objects simply by sight, once he had been enabled to see” See Also Pawan Sinha (MIT, Cambridge, USA) project in India. https://www.ted.com/talks/pawan_sinha_on_how_brains_learn_to_see?lang uage=en https://www.wbur.org/news/2015/04/10/visionaries-blind-project-prakash Let’s try: What do you see here? Can you find the Dalmatian dog? Knowing one = knowing them all? Is this knowledge present at birth? How do we represent that information (canonical view?) A canonical view is an image of an object that is the most representative, comes to mind first when associating a name, and gives rise to the most accurate and fastest recognition performance. Summary, already… Nature versus Nurture (what is in there (inborn) and what needs to be learned (through experience) Nativism vs Empiricism (philosophical views: how dependent we are on experience when acquiring knowledge (where rationalism sees a role for ‘reasoning’ as a source to gain knowledge with parts being innate) How do we gain knowledge of the world? More specifically: how do we gain consciousness. Nature versus Nurture Nature: Most knowledge is present at birth. Nurture: You learn (in your environment in time) and that is how it gets into your brain. Keep in mind: these are extremes of a continuum Tabula Rasa (Latin) = blank slate When we are born: Is our brain empty? No knowledge No ideas No concepts No canonical Dalmatian dog :-) And we have to learn everything? (like John Locke said. But there are earlier philosophers… The ‘Tabula rasa’ idea Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) Greek philosopher Knowledge through ‘perception’ Student of Plato but…. Rationalism of Plato (nativism) It is not just passive registering but an act! Some information is innate and we can ‘reason’ on it. So, can’t be empiricism as such. Perception actually doesn’t help to find ‘real’ knowledge about the world. Plato’s cave: What is real: do the senses give a few of the real world? Read it if you are interested. Plato’s triangle: It can’t be only perception: rationalism – Thinking and Reasoning – it is in the brain but we have to get it out using our ratio. (see also the Dalmatian dogs..) reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge Back to Tabula rasa idea… Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) Greek philosopher Pupil of Plato but very much an empiricist Knowledge through ‘perception’ That idea lasted long… Keep in mind we are NOT talking about for example ’reflexes’. But what about tool use in Otters? Popper / Kuhn – how science works Wundt / First lab / introspection 1879 fMRI scanning Edwin Smith Papyrus - Imhotep Discovery of ventricles 3-cell doctrine Gall/Spurzheim: Phrenology Broca/Wernicke Fechner/Weber /Psychophysics 1860 Ibn al-Haytham Greeks Plato/Aristotle Physics trepanation Time line.. Psychology (as a science) 2000 1950 1900 1800 1000 0 Pre-hist. -3000 philosophy Medicine Practice questions What is psychology in the eyes of many lay persons? How would you define Psychology? Why does psychology study principles, general laws, rather than individual cases? What is meant by Nature and Nurture? What is the Nature-Nurture debate about? What was Molyneux’s question to John Locke? Why was Locke the right person to ask? What do philosophers mean when they talk about Nativism and Empiricism What is the Tabula Rasa idea and which Greek Philosopher was a big fan to this idea? Aristotle’s teacher Plato was a nativist. What made him a nativist? Why is a reflex, which is often innate, not part of the philosophical discussion? What did John Locke mean when he said “Nothing is in the mind which was not first in the senses”? Practice questions What do we mean by ‘the problem of demarcation’ from a philosophy of science point of view? Come up with a few reasons why the story of Clever Hans is so striking in terms of ‘doing the right experiment’ What do we mean by ‘subliminal’. For example, in the domain of advertising. What is Popper’s central idea in one sentence? And Kuhn’s (although it was Max Planck who really made that point)? What did Popper mean by falsifiability and what is so crucial about the Popper’s Swans example. What is meant in Kuhn’s terminology ‘old and new theory’ B. F. Skinner never changed his mind, even when most evidence was against his ideas (see also lecture 5). Who would like this fact better in terms of the predictions of their ideas, Popper or Kuhn? Who is this? I started academic psychology” “ Who is this? “Can you feel the bump?” Who is this? “Tan was my patient and the Brain area named after me was damaged?” What does Popper’s example with the black swans tell us. A. Science should focus on proving that a theory is wrong B. Theories only change when you proof it to be wrong C. Theories only change when the most famous scientists belief that it wrong or die. D. White swans are as significant as black swans E. All the above are correct. A. The classification of brain processes by using hands What is true for phrenology? B. Phrenologists were very good at Maths or Language and had highly developed brain areas for that. C. The classification of mental faculties/abilities based on how well specific brain areas were developed D. They were looking for the building blocks of thought by using introspection. E. Phrenology was based on the ventricles and they defined 3 chambers in the brain, one for the senses, one for the equivalent of working memory and one for long term memory.