Psychological Science Chapter 1 PDF

Gazzaniga Heatherton Halpern Psychological Science Chapter 1 The Science of Psychology A tip!!! When something is underlined and in bold like this... It means that it is a central concept (or an important person) which you have to understand/know  Wha...

Gazzaniga Heatherton Halpern Psychological Science Chapter 1 The Science of Psychology A tip!!! When something is underlined and in bold like this... It means that it is a central concept (or an important person) which you have to understand/know  What Is Psychological Science? What Are the ScienAfic FoundaAons of Psychology? What Are the Latest Developments in Psychology?  What Is Psychological Science? Learning ObjecAves Define psychological science. Define criAcal thinking, and describe what it means to be a criAcal thinker. IdenAfy the major biases in thinking, and explain why these biases result in faulty thinking.  1.1 Psychological Science Is the Study of Mind, Brain, and Behavior Psychological science: the study, through research, of mind, brain, and behavior – Mind refers to mental ac4vity. – Mental acAvity results from biological processes within the brain. – Behavior describes the totality of observable human (or animal) ac4ons.  1.2 Psychological Science Teaches CriAcal Thinking Cri4cal thinking: systemaAcally quesAoning and evaluaAng informaAon using well- supported evidence – A savvy (smart) consumer of scienAfic research is an amiable (friendly) skepAc. Insert Figure 1.1 here Insert Figure 1.2 here  1.2 Psychological Science Teaches CriAcal Thinking Psychological reasoning refers to using psychological research to examine how people typically think, to understand when and why they are likely to draw erroneous conclusions.  1.3 Psychological Science Helps Us Understand Biased or Inaccurate Thinking NoncriAcal thinking can lead to erroneous conclusions. – ignoring evidence (confirma4on bias) – seeing rela4onships that do not exist – accep4ng aAer-the-fact explana4ons – taking mental shortcuts Insert Figure 1.4 here 1.4 Why Are People Unaware of Their Weaknesses? Failing to see our own inadequacies: Why are people unaware of their weaknesses? – Fremdschämen: Ames when we experience embarrassment for other people in part because they do not realize that they should be embarrassed for themselves – People are o\en blissfully unaware of their weaknesses because they do not assess themselves objecAvely. 1.4 Why Are People Unaware of Their Weaknesses? – If people lack the skills to produce correct answers, they are also cursed with an inability to know when their answers, or anyone else’s, are right or wrong. – In studies of college students, Dunning and Kruger found that people with the lowest grades rate their mastery of academic skills much higher than evidenced by their performance. 1.4 Why Are People Unaware of Their Weaknesses? – To make ma^ers worse, people who are unaware of their weaknesses fail to make any efforts at self-improvements to overcome those weaknesses. – Kruger and Dunning have shown that teaching people specific skills helps them to be more accurate in judging their performance. – People might need help in idenAfying their weaknesses before they can fix those weaknesses. 1.4 Why Are People Unaware of Their Weaknesses? Why are people so inaccurate in the first place? – They generally start with extremely posiAve views about their abiliAes. – Most people believe they are be^er than average in many things. What Are the ScienAfic FoundaAons of Psychology? Learning ObjecAves Trace the development of psychology since its formal incepAon in 1879. Define the nature/nurture debate and the mind/body problem. IdenAfy the major schools of thought that have characterized the history of experimental psychology. What Are the ScienAfic FoundaAons of Psychology? Psychology originated in philosophy. – Chinese philosophers and scienAsts speculated about human behavior. – In nineteenth-century Europe, psychology emerged as a scienAfic discipline. Development of schools of thought  1.5 Many Psychological QuesAons Have a Long History Ancient Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato debated the source of human psychology (Nature or nurture). Culture: the beliefs, values, rules, and customs that exist within a group of people who share a common language and environment  1.5 Many Psychological QuesAons Have a Long History Nature/nurture debate: the arguments concerning whether psychological characterisAcs are biologically innate or acquired through educaAon, experience, and culture The view today is that nature and nurture influence each other and are inseparable.  1.5 Many Psychological QuesAons Have a Long History Mind/body problem: a fundamental psychological issue: Are mind and body separate and disAnct, or is the mind simply the physical brain’s subjecAve experience? – Early scholars: The mind is enArely separate from and in control of the body. – 1500s: Leonardo da Vinci challenged this doctrine. – 1600s: Cartesian dualism suggested body and mind were indeed separate but that some mental funcAons resulted from bodily funcAons. 1.6 Experimental Psychology IniAally Focused on the Structure, Not the FuncAon, of Mental AcAvity – Early 1800s: John Stuart Mill argued psychology should be a science of observaAon and of experimentaAon. – 1879: Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology laboratory. Wundt realized that psychological processes, the products of physiological acAons in the brain, take Ame to occur. Therefore, he used a method developed earlier, called reac0on 0me, to assess how quickly people can respond to events.  1.6 Experimental Psychology IniAally Focused on the Structure, Not the FuncAon, of Mental AcAvity Laboratories were established throughout Europe, Canada, and the United States. Introspec4on: a systemaAc examinaAon of subjecAve mental experiences that requires people to inspect and report on the content of their thoughts  Structuralism Edward Titchener pioneered a school of thought that became known as structuralism. Structuralism: an approach to psychology based on the idea that conscious experience can be broken down into its basic underlying components – used introspecAon to study consciousness – Problems with introspecAon: Experience is subjecAve. ReporAng of the experience changes the experience.  FuncAonalism William James: physiologist, philosopher – Principles of Psychology (1890) Mary Whiton Calkins: first woman to set up a psychological laboratory, and the first woman president of the American Psychological AssociaAon  FuncAonalism Func4onalism: an approach to psychology concerned with the adapAve purpose, or funcAon, of mind and behavior Stream of consciousness: a phrase coined by William James to describe each person’s conAnuous series of ever-changing thoughts  FuncAonalism The mind developed over the course of human evoluAon because it is useful for preserving life. – The mind helps humans adapt to environmental demands.  EvoluAon, AdaptaAon, and Behavior Evolu4onary theory: a theory presented by the naturalist Charles Darwin; it views the history of a species in terms of the inherited, adapAve value of physical characterisAcs, of mental acAvity, and of behavior Adapta4ons: the physical characterisAcs, skills, or abiliAes that increase the chances of reproducAon or survival and are therefore likely to be passed along to future generaAons – As randomly mutated genes are passed along from generaAon to generaAon, species change over Ame. Charles Darwin Introduced in On the Origin of Species, Darwin’s theory of evolution has had a huge impact on how psychologists think about the mind.  EvoluAon, AdaptaAon, and Behavior Natural selec4on: the idea that those who inherit characterisAcs that help them adapt to their parAcular environments have a selecAve advantage over those who do not – MutaAons that facilitate survival and reproducAon are passed along. – Survival of the fiQest: the idea that species that are be^er adapted to their environments will survive and reproduce  1.7 Different Schools of Thought Reflected Different PerspecAves on Mind, Brain, and Behavior As the discipline of psychology spread throughout the world and developed into a vital field of science and a vibrant profession, different ways of thinking about the content of psychology emerged. – These ways of thinking are called schools of thought. Insert Table 1.1 here  PsychoanalyAc Approach Sigmund Freud: Much of human behavior is determined by mental processes operaAng below the level of awareness. – Unconscious: the place where mental processes operate below the level of conscious awareness  PsychoanalyAc Approach Psychoanalysis: a method developed by Sigmund Freud that a^empts to bring the contents of the unconscious into conscious awareness so that conflicts can be revealed – Freud analyzed the apparent symbolic content in a paAent’s dreams in search of hidden conflicts. – He used free associaAon, in which a paAent would talk about whatever he or she wanted to for as long as he or she wanted to. Contemporary psychologists no longer accept much Freudian theory!!! Insert Figure 1.15 here  Behaviorism John B. Watson challenged psychology’s focus on conscious and unconscious mental processes. – Watson developed behaviorism. – Behaviorism: a psychological approach that emphasizes the role of environmental forces in producing observable behavior – The intellectual issue most central to Watson and his followers was the nature/nurture quesAon.  Behaviorism B. F. Skinner took up the mantle of behaviorism. – Research emphasized how behavior is shaped by the consequences that follow them. – Skinner argued that mental processes were of no scienAfic value in explaining behavior. – He wrote the controversial book Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971). Behaviorism dominated psychology into the 1960s.  Gestalt Movement The Gestalt Movement was founded by Max Wertheimer in 1912. Gestalt theory: a theory based on the idea that the whole of personal experience is different from the sum of its consAtuent elements – The percepAon of objects is subjecAve and dependent on context. – The theory influenced the study of vision and human personality. Insert Figure 1.17 here  HumanisAc Psychology Humanis4c psychology: an approach that focuses on the basic goodness of people and how they become happier and more fulfilled Carl Rogers  CogniAvism Studies showed that the simple laws of behaviorism could not explain all learning. In 1957, George A. Miller launched the cogniAve revoluAon. – Ten years later, Ulric Neisser integrated a wide range of cogniAve phenomena in his book Cogni0ve Psychology. Cogni4ve psychology: the study of mental funcAons such as intelligence, thinking, language, memory, and decision making Insert Figure 1.20 here  CogniAvism Computers led to informaAon processing theories. 1980s: CogniAve psychologists joined forces with neuroscienAsts, computer scienAsts, and philosophers. – Cogni4ve neuroscience: the study of the neural mechanisms underlying thought, learning, percepAon, language, and memory Michael Gazzaniga What Are the Latest Developments in Psychology? Learning ObjecAves IdenAfy recent developments in psychological science. DisAnguish between subfields of psychology.  1.8 Biology Is Increasingly Emphasized in Explaining Psychological Phenomena The last four decades have seen remarkable growth in our understanding of the biological bases of mental acAviAes. Three major advances that have helped further the scienAfic understanding of psychological phenomena: – progress in understanding brain chemistry – developments in neuroscience – advances in decoding the human genome  Brain Chemistry Tremendous progress has been made in understanding brain chemistry. – Hundreds of substances play criAcal roles in mental acAvity and behavior.  Brain Imaging Since the late 1980s, researchers have been able to study the working brain as it performs its vital psychological funcAons. – brain imaging methods, such as funcAonal magneAc resonance imaging (fMRI) LocalizaAon of funcAon: Some brain areas are important for specific feelings, thoughts, and acAons.  Brain Imaging Many brain regions work together to produce behavior and mental acAvity. – The Human Connectome Project was launched in 2010 as a major internaAonal research effort involving collaborators at a number of universiAes.  The Human Genome ScienAsts have made enormous progress in understanding the human genome: the basic geneAc code, or blueprint, for the human body. – For psychologists, this map represents the foundaAonal knowledge for studying how specific genes affect thoughts, acAons, feelings, and disorders.  The Human Genome By idenAfying the genes underpinning mental acAvity and disorders, researchers may be able to develop therapies based on geneAc manipulaAon. – The scienAfic study of geneAc influences has made clear that very few single genes cause specific behaviors.  1.9 EvoluAonary Thinking Is Increasingly InfluenAal As William James and his fellow funcAonalists knew, the human mind has been shaped by evoluAon. – The field of evoluAonary psychology a^empts to explain mental traits as products of natural selecAon. – While the brain adapts biologically, some of the contents of the mind adapt to cultural influences.  Our EvoluAonary Heritage Knowledge of the challenges our early ancestors faced helps us understand our current behavior. – Modern humans (Homo sapiens) can be traced back 100,000 years, to the Pleistocene era. – Many of our current behaviors reflect our evoluAonary heritage, some of which may now be maladapAve (e.g., the preference for sweet, fa^y foods). – Some behaviors do not reflect our evoluAonary heritage (e.g., driving, texAng, reading books). Insert Figure 1.22 here  1.10 Culture Provides AdapAve SoluAons The complexity of living in groups gives rise to culture, and culture’s various aspects are transmi^ed from one generaAon to the next through learning. – Culture affects thought and behavior (e.g., music and food preferences, ways of expressing emoAon, tolerance of body odors). – Human cultural evoluAon has occurred much faster than human biological evoluAon.  1.11 Psychology Science Now Crosses Levels of Analysis Researchers can explain behavior at many levels of analysis. There are four broadly defined levels of analysis that reflect the most common research methods for studying mind and behavior: – Biological – Individual – Social – Cultural Example: Listening to music can be studied at all levels. Insert Figure 1.24 here  1.12 Subfields In Psychology Focus On Different Levels of Analysis Psychologists work in many different sepngs. – The sepng o\en depends on whether the psychologist’s primary focus is on research, teaching, or applying scienAfic findings to improving the quality of daily living. A scienAst will choose to study at a parAcular level of analysis—or more than one level—based on his or her research interests, general theoreAcal approaches, and training. Insert Table 1.2 here Taken together – when you read this chapter you could think of the following questions. You are going to discuss these in small groups during the seminar. 1. How studying psychology can help us to understand other people? 2. How can it help us to understand ourselves? 3. How can it help us to develop our own thinking? 4. Think examples of the Dunning – Kruger effect from your own experience. 5. Why do you think that Freud’s theories are starting to become difficult to use today? 6. Why many findings that behaviorists made are still useful? 7. Why understanding the evolutionary theory can help us to understand our own behavior? 8. Are there subfields in psychology that you are especially interested.