Chapter 1.docx

Chapter 1 Psychology: systemic study of behavior and experience Includes research on sensation, perception, learning, memory, hunger, thirst, sleep, attention, etc. Six General themes ?It Depends? Very few statements apply to all peoples behavior at all times Age is a factor in almost any statement Aspects of behavior includes being awake, being asleep, genetics, health, past experiences, gender, culture, time of day, how recently you ate, temperature of the room, how the question is worded, who is asking, etc ?It depends? depends on what it depends on No one reason can fully explain your behavior Research Progress Depends on Good Measurement Areas of psychology with less measurement have slow progress Correlation does not indicate Causation People assumes certain things about different kinds of observations A correlation between two things does not tell us which one caused the other Variations among individuals reflect both heredity and environment Experiences and opportunity don?t account for all the differences between people in a group, genes can affect it too such as a greater fear gene Best predictor of future behavior is past behavior in similar situations People are consistent with how they act Some Statements in psychology reflect stronger evidence than others Some have their own opinions without evidence, such as the best way to raise a child Philosophical Issues Free Will Versus Determinism Scientists act on a basis of determinism, the assumptions that everything that happens has a cause in the observable world Free will: belief that a persons behavior is caused by their independent decisions Your behavior still follows the laws of cause and effect Your ?will? is not free because it is not uncaused Weather changing is not ?free will?, it is just the weather has many influences Cannot predict the behavior, even with all the information about you including past behavior Mind-Brain Problem Everything we do depends on the chemistry and physics of the nervous system Mind brain problem: philosophical question of how experiences relates to the brain Dualism: Mind is separate from the brain but somehow controls the brain and the rest of the body Contradicts the law of conservation because the mind is not using matter or energy If the mind and brain are separate types of substances, how do they interact? Monism: view that conscious experience is inseparable from the physical brain Mind and brain activity are the same thing or that the brain produces the mind Mind is just an aspect of the brain, the mind is what the brain does How does mental experience emerge from brain activity? Nature-Nurture Issue How do differences in behavior relate to differences in heredity and environment? What in human behavior and mental life is genetically fixed (nature) and what is nurture? Psychologists in Teaching and Research Developmental Psychology: how behavior changes with age then try to explain those changes Learning and Motivation: how behavior depends on the outcomes of past behaviors and current motivations, how often we engage in any particular behavior depends on the results of the behavior in the past Cognitive Psychology: refers to thought and knowledge, study of processes Mind and behavior can be studied Objective measures (reaction times, error rates) can be used to make inferences about mental processes Legitimized by the computer, the human mind can be like a computer Mind can be viewed as running a program, programmed by experience and heredity Cognitive neuroscience relates to findings from studies of the brain to mental functions Dominant since the 70?s Biological Psychology: tires to explain behavior in terms of biological factors such as electrical and chemical activities in the nervous system, the effects of drugs and hormones, genetics, and evolutionary pressures Evolutionary Psychologist: tries to explain behavior in terms of the evolutionary history of the species, including why it might have favored a tendency to act in a certain way Social Psychology: how an individual influences other people and how the group influences a person Behavior, thoughts, and feelings are strongly influenced by the reactions and expectations of others Babies copy others Cross Cultural Psychology: compares the behavior of people from different cultures Culture is the influence of membership in a larger group such as a tribe or nation Myths, skills, social norms, roles, knowledge, etc. Service Providers Clinical Psychologists: advanced degree with a specialty in understanding and helping people Psychiatry: branch of medicine that deals with emotional disturbances, can prescribe drugs Psychoanalysts: therapy providers who rely heavily on the theories and methods pioneered by the early 20th century by Freud, find meaning behinds peoples words and actions Clinical social worker: almost the same as a psychologist but with different training Counseling psychologists: help people with educational, vocational, marriage, health-related, and other decisions Forensic: provide advice and consultation to police, lawyers, courts, and other parts of the criminal justice system (Wong from SVU) Service Providers to Organizations Industrial Organization: matching the person with the right job, training, salaries, bonuses, etc. Ergonomist: attempts to facilitate the operations of machinery so that ordinary people can use it efficiently and safely School Psychology: specialists in the psychological condition of students Educational needs 1.2 300?s BC Why do people act the way they do? General questions about psychology Believed you could approach it the same way as you do chemistry and biology Wundt (1897) Founder of modern psychology Established what he called a lab, organized things, started journals Became known as that because of what he organized and called psychology Studied the organs to cultural differences Believed your experience is partly under your control as you shift your attention People need 1/8th of a second to shift focus, as proved with the pendulum Used the method of introspection to examine mental processes Introspect- to look within themselves If you were introspecting, you broke down your experience and talked about it in terms of the elements The elements were sensations and feelings and would form the experience (compound) This approach did not work, too many basic elements Titchener (student of Wundt) Leading component of the first general perspective of psychology Structuralism: sought a psychological equivalent to the periodic table When looking at a lemon, you don?t say I look like a lemon, you describe it Maybe the shapes or colors are elements This thought dominated academic psychology?s first few decades Thought they could find the rules and laws of conscious experience William James Was a philosopher and he thought it was more then just understanding consciousness Founder of American Psychology Functionalism Advantage of having the kind of mind that we have Try to understand the functions of the mental apparatus Viewed consciousness and behavior as functional and serving a purpose Not the contents, but the functions, what consciousness does for us Added emotions and human experience to be studied Studied what the mind does instead of what the mind is How do people produce behaviors Published Principles of Psychology Early Psychologists Studied sensation Relationship between physical stimuli and psychological sensations They wanted to understand mental experience and these questions were easier to answer then other ideas Discovered that what we see, hear is not the same as the physical stimulus Example: A light that is twice as bright does not look twice as light Psychophysical function: mathematical description of the relationship between the physical properties of a stimulus and its perceived properties Darwin Origin of Species New species emerge as a result of the process of natural selection Changed scientific thinking Humans and other animals come from a common ancestor Comparative psychologists: specialists who compare different animal species Measured animal intelligence Thought they could rank animals Delayed response problem: an animal was given a signal showing them where food was and then the signal was taken away and they tested to see how long it could remember the signal Detour problem: they put a barrier in front of the food in order to see whether the animal would find a way around or not These tasks did not really work as different animals excelled for various reasons in different tasks Animals just have different intelligence in different areas Galton (late 1800?s, early to mid 1900s) Studied human intelligence Is it based on your genes? Wanted to measure everything (created the map, suggested finger printing) Determined that the sons of famous or well known people were more likely to become notable men themselves Also tried to measure intelligence with sensory and motor tasks Unsatisfactory John Watson Founder of behaviorism Behaviorist Perspective Only observable behavior is the proper subject matter of psychology Cannot observe mental events and cannot be studied scientifically Can only observe the behavior or what is going on in the event Types of learning called conditioning play the central role in acquiring and maintaining behaviors Dominated academic psychology for 50 years to 1970 Studies of Learning In the mid 1900?s people thought you find set laws about animals behavior The research declined as the behavior of animals (rates in a maze) was much more complicated then expected They continued to study animals, but in different ways Freud First clinical psychologist First person to purpose a general theory to explain abnormal psychology and human suffering Psychodynamic Perspective Behavior and emotions experience result from unconscious desires and fears These often have to do with socially forbidden topics such as sex and aggression Includes problems such as anxiety that results from the way these thoughts and feelings are dealt with If we were conscious of these thoughts then we would be unable to function Repression: kept the fears and anxiety out of consciousness The ?Freud Problem? Most psychologists work is unrelated to Freudian Psychoanalysis General public still thinks of psychology as his psychology Methods of Freud are unscientific Mary Calkins Studied memory Rejected a PhD from Harvard