Introduction to Psychology PDF

Introduction to Psychology Instructor: Ms. Danielle Fuertes Atkinson & Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology (15th Ed.) Psychology can be defined as the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Atkinson & Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology (15th Ed.)  History and Origins of Psychology...

Introduction to Psychology Instructor: Ms. Danielle Fuertes Atkinson & Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology (15th Ed.) Psychology can be defined as the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Atkinson & Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology (15th Ed.)  History and Origins of Psychology The roots of psychology can be traced to the great philosophers of ancient Greece. The most famous of them, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, posed fundamental questions about mental life: What is consciousness? Are people inherently rational or irrational? Is there really such a thing as free choice? They deal with the nature of the mind and mental processes, which are the key elements of the cognitive perspective in psychology. Atkinson & Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology (15th Ed.) History and Origins of Psychology Hippocrates, often called the ‘father of medicine’, lived around the same time as Socrates. He was deeply interested in physiology, the study of the functions of the living organism and its parts. He made many important observations about how the brain controls various organs of the body. These observations set the stage for what became the biological perspective in psychology. Atkinson & Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology (15th Ed.) Nature v Nurture This nature–nurture debate centers on the question of whether human capabilities are inborn or acquired through experience. The nature view holds that human beings enter the world with an inborn store of knowledge and understanding of reality. In the seventeenth century, Descartes supported the nature view by arguing that some ideas (such as God, the self, geometric axioms, perfection, and infinity) are innate. Atkinson & Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology (15th Ed.)  Nature v Nurture The nurture view holds that knowledge is acquired through experiences and interactions with the world. It is most strongly associated with the seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke. According to Locke, at birth the human mind is a tabula rasa, a blank slate on which experience ‘writes’ knowledge and understanding as the individual matures. This perspective gave birth to associationist psychology. Atkinson & Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology (15th Ed.)  Nature v Nurture Associationists denied that there were inborn ideas or capabilities. Instead, they argued that the mind is filled with ideas that enter by way of the senses and then become associated through principles such as similarity and contrast. some psychologists still argue that human thought and behavior result primarily from biology or primarily from experience, most psychologists take a more integrated approach. Atkinson & Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology (15th Ed.) The beginnings of scientific psychology Scientific psychology is usually considered to have begun in the late nineteenth century, when Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychological laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany in 1879. The impetus for the establishment of Wundt’s lab was the belief that mind and behavior, like planets or chemicals or human organs, could be the subject of scientific analysis. Atkinson & Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology (15th Ed.) The beginnings of scientific psychology Wundt relied on introspection to study mental processes. Introspection refers to observing and recording the nature of one’s own perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. The introspective method was inherited from philosophy, but Wundt added a new dimension to the concept. Pure self-observation was not sufficient; it had to be supplemented by experiments. Atkinson & Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology (15th Ed.)  Structuralism and Functionalism Just as chemists analyzed water into hydrogen and oxygen, perhaps psychologists could analyze the taste of lemonade (perception) into elements such as sweet, bitter, and cold (sensations).was not sufficient; it had to be supplemented by experiments. Edward Titchener introduced the term structuralism – the analysis of mental structures – to describe this branch of psychology. William James, a distinguished psychologist at Harvard University, felt that analyzing the elements of consciousness was less important than understanding its fluid, personal nature. His approach was named functionalism, studying how the mind works to enable an organism to adapt to and function in its environment. Both structuralists and functionalists still regarded psychology as the science of conscious experience. Atkinson & Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology (15th Ed.)  Behaviorism Structuralism and functionalism played important roles in the early development of twentieth- century psychology. By 1920, however, both were being displaced by three newer schools: behaviorism, Gestalt psychology, and psychoanalysis. Of the three, behaviorism had the greatest influence on scientific psychology in North America. Its founder, John B. Watson. For psychology to be a science, Watson believed, psychological data must be open to public inspection like the data of any other science. Behavior is public; consciousness is private. Science should deal only with public facts. Because psychologists were growing impatient with introspection, the new behaviorism caught on rapidly, and many younger psychologists in the United States called themselves ‘behaviorists’. Atkinson & Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology (15th Ed.)  Behaviorism Watson, and others ascribing to behaviorism, argued that nearly all behavior is a result of conditioning and the environment shapes behavior by reinforcing specific habits. Behaviorists tended to discuss psychological phenomena in terms of stimuli and responses, giving rise to the term stimulus–response (S–R) psychology. Atkinson & Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology (15th Ed.)