Psychology is the Scientific study of behavior and mental processes. It seeks to describe, explain, predict, and control behavior and mental processes.
The word psychology is derived from two Greek roots: psyche, meaning “mind,” and logos, meaning “study” or “knowledge.”
History and Foundations of Psychology
Aristotle: argued human behavior was subject to rules and laws
Democritus: think of behavior as terms of body and mind. Behavior is influenced by external stimulation.
Socrates: rely on rational thought and introspection or examination of one's own thoughts and emotions to gain self knowledge. People are social creatures and influence each other.
Gustav Theodor Fechner: published book Elements of Psychophysics which showed how physical events stimulate psychological sensations and perception.
The founding of psychology as an experimental science is generally credited to a German scientist, Wilhelm Wundt. He studied mental experiences and used a method known as introspection, which is an attempt to directly study consciousness by having people report on what they are consciously experiencing. He also established the world’s first scientific laboratory dedicated to the study of psychology in Germany.
Edward Titchener, Wundt's disciple, brought Wundt's ideas to the United States and the rest of the world. The school of psychology that attempts to understand the structure of the mind by breaking it down into its component parts is known as structuralism. Structuralism: attempted to break conscious experience down into objective sensations
The first American to work in Wundt’s experimental laboratory was the psychologist G. Stanley Hall. Hall founded the American Psychological Association (APA).
William James, recognized as the father of American psychology, founded functionalism, the school of psychology that focused on how behavior helps individuals adapt to demands placed upon them in the environment.
Charles Darwin: theory of evolution
In the early 1900s, a new force in psychology came about called behaviorism. The founder of behaviorism was the American psychologist John Broadus Watson. Behaviorism was based on the belief that psychology would advance as a science only if it turned away from the study of mental processes and limited itself to the study of observable behaviors that could be recorded and measured.
Early work in the field of behavior was conducted by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov studied a form of learning behavior called a conditioned reflex, in which an animal or human produced a reflex (unconscious) response to a stimulus and, over time, was conditioned to produce the response to a different stimulus that the experimenter associated with the original stimulus. The reflex Pavlov worked with was salivation in response to the presence of food.
Behaviorism became popular due to psychologist B. F. Skinner. Skinner studied how behavior is shaped by rewards and punishments. Skinner showed he could train animals, such as pigeons or rats, to perform simple behaviors by rewarding particular responses. Skinner also showed how advanced behaviors could be learned and maintained by adding the idea of rewards, which he called reinforcers. As a part of his research, Skinner developed a chamber that allowed the careful study of the principles of modifying behavior through reinforcement and punishment. This device, known as an operant conditioning chamber or more familiarly, a Skinner box.
Gestalt psychology, the school of psychology that studies ways in which the brain organizes and structures our perceptions of the world was established by Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Kohler.
Wolfgang Kohler: Research with chimpanzee: Flash of Insight in other wards we rearrange the situation in order to come up with a solution to the problem.
Austrian physician named Sigmund Freud, studied the region of the mind known as unconscious. Freud’s model of therapy, called psychoanalysis, is based on the belief that therapeutic change comes from uncovering and working through unconscious conflicts within the personality.
Psychoanalysis: theory of personality and the method of psychotherapy. Most of our ideas are governed by unconscious ideas and impulses that originate in childhood conflicts
During the early 20th century, American psychology was dominated by behaviorism and psychoanalysis. However, some psychologists were uncomfortable with what they viewed as limited perspectives being so influential to the field. Thus, humanism emerged. Humanism is a perspective within psychology that emphasizes the potential for good that is innate to all humans. Two of the most well-known proponents of humanistic psychology are Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers
By the 1950s, new disciplinary perspectives in linguistics, neuroscience, and computer science were emerging, and these areas revived interest in the mind as a focus of scientific inquiry. This particular perspective has come to be known as the cognitive revolution
Clinical Psychologists: Helps individuals with psychological disorders adjust to demands of life.
Counseling Psychologists: Helps individuals with adjustment issues
School Psychologists: Identify and assist students in school that have problems that interfere with their learning
Educational Psychologists: facilitates learning by focusing on course planning and instructional methods for a school rather then an individual
Developmental Psychologists: Study changes in physical, cognitive, social, and emotional aspects that occur throughout a life span
Personality Psychologists: identify and measure human traits and determines influences on human thought processes, feelings, and behavior.
Social Psychologists: concerned with nature and causes of individuals' thoughts, feelings, and behavior in social situations
Environmental Psychologists: study the ways that people and the environment influence one another
Experimental Psychologists: specialize in basic processes such as nervous system, sensation and perception, learning and memory. thought, motivation, and emotion.
Industrial Psychologists: the relationships between people and work.
Organizational Psychologist: study the behavior of people in organizations such as businesses
Human Factor Psychologists: make technical systems more user friendly
Consumer Psychologists: study the behavior of shoppers in an effort to predict and influence their behavior
Health Psychologists: Study the effects of stress on health problems.
Forensic Psychologists: apply psychology to the criminal justice system
Sport Psychologists: help athletes concentrate on their performance and not the crowd.
Perspectives
Behavioral perspective: is the belief that environmental influences determine behavior and that psychology should restrict itself to the study of observable behavior.
Biological: the approach to psychology that seeks to understand the nature of the links between biological processes and structures such as functioning of the brain, the endocrine system, ans heredity on the one hand and behavior and mental processes, on the other.
Cognitive: having to do with the mental processes such as sensation and perception, memory, intelligence, language, thought, and problem solving
In the 1950s, another force began to achieve prominence in psychology known as humanistic psychology. humanistic psychology is the school of psychology that believes that free will and conscious choice are essential aspects of the human experience. Humanistic perspective believes that psychology should focus on conscious experiences, even if those experiences are subjective and cannot be directly observed and scientifically measured.
Humanistic-Existential: emphasizes on role of subjective experiences.
Psychodynamic: Call themselves neoanalysts in today's comptemporary world.
Social Cognitive theorists: A school of psychology in the behaviorist tradition that includes cognitive factors in the explanation and prediction of behavior. They believe that personality comprises not only learned behavior but also ways in which individuals think about themselves and the world around them.
Sociocultural: The view that focuses on the roles of ethnicity, gender, culture, and socioeconomic status in behavior and mental processes
Physiological perspective: An approach to the study of psychology that focuses on the relationships between biological processes and behavior
Evolutionary psychology is a branch of psychology that focuses on the role of evolutionary processes in shaping behavior.
Positive psychology is a contemporary movement within psychology that emphasizes the study of human virtues and assets, rather than weaknesses and deficits