Introduction to Modern Psychology PDF

WEEK 1: Introduction to Modern Psychology Week Objective 1: Define psychology as a scientific discipline Psychology is the science that seeks to understand behaviour and mental processes, and to apply that understanding in the service of human welfare. Psychologists perform experiments and other sci...

WEEK 1: Introduction to Modern Psychology Week Objective 1: Define psychology as a scientific discipline Psychology is the science that seeks to understand behaviour and mental processes, and to apply that understanding in the service of human welfare. Psychologists perform experiments and other scientific procedures to systematically gather and analyse information about behaviour and mental processes to reach informed conclusions and generate new questions for study. Psychology relies on knowledge based on experience and observation rather than imagination or intuition. Using scientific methods to test their ideas, they reach informed conclusions and generate new questions. Even psychologists who don’t conduct research still benefit from it. They are constantly applying the results of their colleagues’ studies to improve the quality, accuracy, and effectiveness of their teaching, writing, or service to clients and organisations. In the developing field of performance psychology, for example, practicing clinical psychologists are combining their psychotherapy skills with research from cognitive, industrial and organisational, and sport psychology to help business executives, performing artists and athletes excel. Weekly Objective 2: Describe the historical philosophical and experimental foundations of the psychology discipline Early interest in behaviour and the mind was dominated by philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates. They believed that some knowledge was innate, but debated the source of human knowledge, the nature of mind and soul, the relationship of mind to body, and the possibility of scientifically studying these matters. In the 17th century, British philosophers John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume argued that human knowledge should be understood through empiricism. Empiricists argued that people are born as a tabula rasa – a ‘blank slate’, lacking innate knowledge, but on which experiences of life ‘write’ to give knowledge through direct sensation. Wundt and the Structuralism of Titchener Gustav Fechner studied mental processes by observing people’s reactions to changes in sensory stimuli. He developed psychophysics, the complex but predictable relationships between changes in the physical characteristics of stimuli and changes in people’s psychological experience of them. Wilhelm Wundt founded the first psychology research laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, in 1879. He attempted to use empirical research methods to study consciousness. Wundt used the technique of introspection (looking inward) in which trained participants tried to describe each aspect of their conscious sensory experiences. Wundt concluded that ‘quality’ and ‘intensity’ are the two essential elements of any sensation and that feelings can be described in terms of pleasure-displeasure, tension-relaxation, and excitement-depression. Under Wundt, psychology became the science of mental processes rather than the philosophy of mental processes. Edward Titchener also used introspection. He added ‘clarity’ as an element of sensation. Although associated with Wundt, structuralism is the name given solely to Titchener’s approach because of his efforts to define the structure of consciousness. Hermann Ebbinghaus concentrated on the capacities, limitations, and other characteristics of mental processes such as learning and memory. Ebbinghaus served as the participant in his memory experiments. Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Köhler, Gestalt psychologists from Germany, saw consciousness as a totality, arguing that it can best be understood by observing it as a whole, not piece by piece. An example from the text notes that movies are long strips of film containing thousands of still photographs, but describing those photographs would not capture a person’s experience of watching a movie. Freud and Psychoanalysis In Vienna, Austria, Sigmund Freud believed that all behaviour is motivated by psychological processes, especially unconscious conflicts within the mind. His work and ideas became the basis for psychoanalysis, including a theory of personality, mental disorder, and treatment methods. Freud’s ideas were and still are controversial, but they had a significant influence on psychology and many other fields. James and Functionalism William James founded the first US psychology lab at Harvard University. James was influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. James’ approach, which was called functionalism, focused on the role of consciousness guiding people’s ability to make decisions, solve problems, and the like. The emphasis was on how the ongoing ‘stream of consciousness’, an ever-changing pattern of images, sensations, memories and other mental events, helps people adapt to their environments. This approach also encouraged psychologists to measure individual differences in mental processes. • Stanley Hall founded the first psychology research lab in the US in 1883 at Johns Hopkins University. • James Mark Baldwin, a pioneer in research on child development, founded the first Canadian lab at the University of Toronto in 1889. Watson and Behaviourism Because of Darwin’s influence, psychologists began to study animals as well as humans. John B. Watson, an American psychologist, criticised making inferences about mental behaviour by observing external behaviour. Watson believed that consciousness existed, but that it would always be private and unobservable by scientific methods and therefore should be ignored. Watson’s approach, behaviourism, relied on observations of overt behaviour and responses to various stimuli. Watson believed that learning is the most important determinant of behaviour and that through learning organisms are able to adapt to their environments. Behaviourism was championed further by B. F. Skinner. His functional analysis of behaviour explained how rewards and punishments shape, maintain, and change behaviours through operant conditioning. An example from the text notes that a functional analysis of behaviour would explain that children’s tantrums may be unknowingly encouraged by the attention they attract from caregivers. Behaviourism was dominant from the 1920s through the 1960s. Weekly Objective 3: Describe the major theoretical perspectives and how they contribute to the understanding of modern psychology Computers have provided a new way to think about mental activity – as information processing – and enabled more accurate measurement of mental activity. Today psychologists are attempting to study mental processes with precision and scientific objectivity. Approaches to the Science of Psychology Each approach to psychology provides a different set of assumptions, questions and methods for understanding behaviour and mental processes. Most psychologists are eclectic, combining the features of several approaches. 1. The biological approach. The biological approach assumes that biological factors (for example hormones, genes and the activity of the central nervous system, especially the brain) affect behaviour and mental processes. 2. The evolutionary approach. The evolutionary approach emphasises how behaviour and mental processes emerge as generation-to-generation adaptations to help organisms survive and reproduce in their environments, in other words, through natural selection. 3. The psychodynamic approach. The psychodynamic approach, based on Freud’s theories, sees constant unconscious conflicts within each person as the main determinant of behaviour and mental life. The conflict is primarily between the impulse to satisfy personal desires and the need to live by the rules of society. 4. The behavioural approach, based on Watson’s ideas, sees behaviour as primarily the result of learning. A person’s learning history, especially the patterns of reward and punishment, influences behaviour. People can change problematic behaviours by unlearning old habits and developing new ones. Today, many behaviourists apply a learning-based approach to try to understand thoughts or cognitions as well as behaviours. A cognitive-behavioural or social-cognitive approach explores how learning affects the development of thoughts and beliefs and how, in turn, these learned cognitive patterns affect overt behaviour. 5. The cognitive approach emphasises the importance of thoughts and other mental processes. It also focuses on how people take in, mentally represent, and store information; how they perceive and process that information; and how cognitive processes are related to observable behaviour. science is an interdisciplinary field studying intelligent systems in humans and computers to attempt to discover the components of cognition and to determine how these components produce complex behaviours. 1. The humanistic approach (also called the phenomenological approach) sees behaviour as determined primarily by each person’s capacity to choose how to think and act based on each individual’s unique perceptions. Humanists believe that people control themselves, and that each person is essentially good, with an innate tendency to grow toward her/his highest potential. Humanists do not search for general laws but try to understand the perceptions and feelings of individuals. Today, the impact of this approach is limited because the concepts and predictions are too vague to be expressed and tested scientifically. However, positive psychology has its roots in the writings of humanistic psychologists such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow.