Psyc lecture Notes on first chapter, Lecture notes of Psychology

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Psychology

Bob Uttl

PSYC 1105 Mount Royal University

The Four Goals of Psychology

I (^) Describe behavior I (^) How does ability to remember list of words change with aging? I (^) Explain behavior I (^) Why does ability to remember words decline with aging? I (^) Prediction of behavior I (^) Which applicants are likely to succeed in a graduate school? I (^) Influence/Control of behavior I (^) How to decrease test anxiety?

Levels of Analysis

I (^) Biology/Brain I (^) Brain structure, brain activity, gene effects,... I (^) Individual/Person I (^) Intelligence, personality, motivation, experiences,... I (^) Environment/Group I (^) Social environment, culture, ...

The Early Days of Psychology

The Early Days of Psychology

Wilhelm Wundt

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) I (^) Father of psychology I (^) Established the first psychology lab in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany I (^) Focused on the study of consciousness – awareness of ongoing mental processes, behaviors, and environmental events I (^) Voluntarism: will is an ultimate agency in human behavior

The Early Days of Psychology

Wilhelm Wundt Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) I (^) Focus on experimental methods I (^) Exposed participants to simple, standardized, repeatable situations and asked them to make observations I (^) A clock and pendulum experiments: Participants were 1/10 of s off when determining the exact location of the pendulum I (^) Humans have limited attention and 1/10 s is required to shift attention (^) 8 / 35

Functionalism

The Flow of Consciousness

William James (1842-1910) I (^) Set up the first psychology lab in the US at Harward I (^) Wrote the first psychology textbook, Principles of Psychology (1890) I (^) Move away from the study of structure of mental contents I (^) Focus on study of the purpose and functions of the mental processes

Functionalism

The Flow of Consciousness

I (^) Functionalism studies how how mental processes function to adapt to changing environment I (^) Consciousness is viewed as an ever-changing stream of mental events rather than a set of fixed elements I (^) Functionalists used variety of methods to examine the causes and consequences of behavior I (^) Studies of how accurately individuals can locate sounds I (^) Studies of how quickly telegraph operators could learn typing skills I (^) Functionalist studied animals, children, individuals with mental disorders to understand both normal and abnormal behavior

Twentieth-Century Approaches

Psychoanalysis

The Psychology of the Unconscious

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) I (^) Assumes many thoughts and feelings exist below the level of consciousness I (^) The conscious mind is merely a tip of the intellectual and perceptual iceberg. I (^) The unconscious exerts enormous influence on behavior I (^) The behavior is the result of largely unconscious dynamic struggle between the impulses and the defenses (psychodynamic) I (^) Assumes inborn sexual desires and aggressive tendencies I (^) Early childhood experiences critical for adult personality

Behaviorism

Only The Observable Behavior Matters Behaviorism I (^) Psychological research should only focus on behavior you can observe. I (^) Study of the relationship between stimuli and responses. I (^) Study of the effect of reward and punishment Edward Thorndike (1874-1949) I (^) Proposed research findings from the study of animals could help explain human behavior Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) I (^) Found that dogs could learn to associate a bell with an automatic behavior, such as salivating for food. This is called classical conditioning. John B. Watson (1878-1958) I (^) Conducted the ”Little Albert” studies demonstrating that children (people ) could be classically conditioned.

Behaviorism

John B. Watson

John B. Watson (1878-1958) ”Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specialized world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one of them at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.” (Watson, 1924, p. 82)

Behaviorism

B. F. Skinner (1904-1990)

Reinforcement (increases behavior) I (^) Positive reinforcement = adding desirable/pleasant I (^) Negative reinforcement = taking away undesirable/unpleasant

Punishment (decreases behavior I (^) Positive punishment = adding undesirable/unpleasant I (^) Negative punishment = taking away desirable/pleasant

Cognitive Behaviorism

Albert Bandura

Albert Bandura (1925 -) I (^) We are not merely reacting to environment; we are thinking beings I (^) Environment affects our thinking by giving us information I (^) Learn new behaviors through observing actions of others I (^) Mental abilities allow us to control our behavior and therefore, to control environment I (^) Described learning by social observation in children