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Class notes Week 2

Behaviourism (cont.)

• As psychoanalysis’ popularity grew, psychologists weren’t as hardcore about the “science-y” bits

• During the 1950’s B.F Skinner brought the focus back to observable behaviour

• Skinner didn’t deny the existence of an internal world of consciousness, but he did claim that there is no need to study it

B.F Skinner

• All that mattered was input/output

• Good behaviour is rewarded• Bad behaviour is punished

• Because these environmental inputs are beyond our control, free-will is an illusion of sorts

• People are controlled by their environment and not their own free-will

B.F Skinner

Organisms tend to repeat responses that lead topositive outcomes , and they tend not to repeat responses that lead to negative

outcomes

The Humanist Revolt

• Behaviourism and Psychoanalytic theory were very popular by the 1950’s

• But Behaviourism and Psychoanalytic theory happens to be very “dehumanising”.

• Both schools of thought entailed that human beings are slaves to the environment or unconscious forces and conflicts beyond their control

The Humanist Revolt

• At the beginning of the 1950’s a loose set of ideas, that sought to oppose the dehumanizing emphasis of behaviourism and psychoanalytic thought and became known as Humanism

• Humanism is a theoretical orientation that emphasises the unique qualities of humans, especially their freedom and their potential for personal growth

The Humanist Revolt

• Biggest proponents of this new humanist movement was Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow

• Carl Rogers argued that human beings have a sense of selfor a self-concept that governs human behaviour

• This sense of self involves a dimension of personal growth

• People have an innate drive to better themselves (animals do not have this)

• According to Rogers, psychological disturbances happen when this uniquely human need is blocked or thwarted

The Humanist Revolt

• The main difference between behaviourism, psychoanalytic though and humanism, is the fact that humanists take a more optimisticview of human beings

• Humanists conclude that animal research cannot tell us much about human beings, because animals do not have this innate drive toward personal growth

• Carl Rogers developed a unique approach to therapy called person-centred therapy

• Humanists focus on human capacity for freedom, happiness, and potential for growth

• True or False: Skinner would have trained his dog to fetch a stick by patting him on the head every time he brought the stick back

• True or False: Skinner denied the existence of consciousness

• True or False: According to Skinner children should never be punished as this will lead to disobedience

• True or False: Rogers believed that research on animals is critical in understanding the human mind

• Rogers believed that a person’s behaviour is governed by their _________________?

• True or False: Humanists believe that people are inherently evil and should be taught through self-actualization to be good

Psychology’s Modern History

• In the early days, the majority of psychologists were researchers

• World War II (1939-1945) changed the face of psychology

• Need for trained psychologists to help with selection of recruits and treat soldiers for psychological trauma. Thus many researchers became clinical psychologists

• Even after the war, many veterans needed psychological treatment

Types of Psychologists

• Applied psychologists: concerned with everyday applied problems (for example, mental testing of military recruits)

• Clinical psychologists: concerned with diagnosis and treatment of psychological problems and disorders (for example, treatment of anxiety)

• After World War II the APA was being dominated by clinical psychologists. This eventually lead to the establishment of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) that sought to represent all areas of psychology

Psychology return to its roots

• Since 1950’s and 1960’s psychologists have returned to the idea of studying consciousness or internal mental events

• Cognition refers to the mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge

• Behaviourism discouraged the study of consciousness because it was “un-scientific”

Cognitive psychology

• Possible to study mental events scientifically, albeit in a different way

• Cognitive psychology stared passing behaviourism as the dominant perspective in the 1970’s

Biological Perspective

• By 1950’s and 1960’s psychologists started to realise that there is a complex relationship between mind, body and behaviour

• This lead to an increase in the study of how biological or neurobiological factors influence behaviour

• James Olds showed that electrical stimulation of the brain caused emotional responses in animals ranging from pleasure to rage

• James Sperry showed that the two halves of the brain controlled different mental processes

Cultural Diversity

• Middle and upper class white males usually used for research

• Most research done in United States of America

• Recent decades focused on cultural determinants of behaviour as well

Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary Psychology examines behavioural processes in terms of their

adaptive value for members of a species over the course of many generations

Positive Psychology

• In the 1990’s Martin Seligman concluded that clinical psychology focused too much on psychological problems and the negative side of psychology

• Positive psychology uses theory and research to better understand the positive, adaptive, creative and fulfilling aspects of human existence

• Developmental psychology• Social psychology• Educational psychology• Health psychology• Physiological psychology• Experimental psychology• Cognitive psychology• Psychometrics• Personality

Seven unifying themes

Theme 1: Psychology is Empirical

• Empiricism means that knowledge should be acquired from observation

• Without testing theories, psychology is little more than the speculative philosophy of old

Theme 2: Psychology is Theoretically Diverse

• A theory is a system of interrelated ideas used to explain a set of observations (the bigger picture)

• Glass half empty or half full?

• More than one way of looking at things

Theme 3: Psychology Evolves in a Sociohistorical Context

• Psychology’s growth attributed to fascination with science, especially physics

• Freud’s ideas formed as reaction to suppression of sexuality. Reaction to conservative attitude towards sex

• Impact of World War II on development of clinical psychology

Theme 4: Behaviour is Determined by Multiple Causes

• As time went by, psychologists started to appreciate the complexity of behaviour

• Multifactorial causation of behaviour: Multiple factors cause behaviour (genetics, physical environment, social environment etc.)

Theme 5: Behaviour is Shaped by Cultural Heritage

• Culture refers to the widely shared customs, beliefs, values, norms, institutions, and other products of a community that are transmitted socially across generations

• Culture influences the way we see the world and behave in it

Theme 6: Heredity and Environment Jointly Influence Behaviour

• Genes and environment form very complex interactions to give rise to our behaviour

• Some aspects determined by heredity, some by environment, and some aspects are influenced by both at the same time

Theme 7:People’s Experience of the World is Highly Subjective

• Our perceptions are very subjective

• We often see what we “want” or “expect” to see

• Our motives and intentions colour our perception of the world

Test Preparation

Types of questions

1. Applied: can you apply knowledge to a real world situation?

2. Conceptual: How well do you understand the concepts?

3. Factual: How well do you know the work?

How to answer multiple choice

1. If you know the right answer, it’s obviously easy

2. If you are not entirely sure…go with your first instinct

3. …unless you know for a fact that your instinct is wrong

4. Read the question carefully anyway

If the answer is not apparent…

1. DON’T PANIC!

2. Use the process of elimination

3. Sometimes the answer to one question can be

found in a previous or subsequent question

4. Often certain options are highly implausible

5. Try the “True or False” approach

6. If you seriously don’t know…just guess

Factual

Who was the father of psychoanalysis:

A. Carl Rogers

B. Sigmund Freud

C. BF Skinner

D. Harry Hairyman

Factual

Psychology’s intellectual parents are:

A. Physiology and Chemistry

B. Genetics and Psychophysics

C. Physiology and Philology

D. Physiology and Philosophy

Factual

Who established America's first psychological research laboratory:

A. John Watson.

B. William James.

C. G. Stanley Hall.

D. Edward Titchener.

Factual

The “birth of psychology” is considered to have happened in:

A. 1897

B. 1879

C. 1869

D. 1997

Conceptual

Which of the following early psychologists would be MOST likely to endorse evolutionary psychology?

A. Carl Rogers

B. William James

C. G. Stanley Hall

D. Wilhelm Wundt

Conceptual

The idea that psychology is empirical suggests that:

A. Reason and logic are integral parts of psychology

B. Research should be rigorous

C. Theories should be testable

D. All of the above

Conceptual

A clinical psychologist would probably be MOST interested in:

A. Studying animal behaviour

B. Studying consciousness

C. Treating depression with person-centred therapy

D. Treating anxiety exclusively from a biological point of view

Conceptual

Which one of the following approaches in psychology is most similar to structuralism:

A. Behaviorism.

B. Humanism

C. Cognitive psychology

D. Positive psychology

Conceptual

Which one of the following would be considered empirically-based knowledge:

A. Introspection

B. Logic

C. Observation

D. Psychoanalytic analysis

AppliedJacob is a functionalist. Which one of the following will you MOST likely see in his laboratory:

A. Someone describing the contents of his/her consciousness

B. Introspection

C. Mental testing

D. Researchers training mice to press a button

Applied

Which of the following is MOST likely to be studied by a cognitive psychologist?

A. Strategies used by children to solve puzzles

B. How punishment affects conformity

C. Whether or not men eat more than women

D. Factors that determine group cohesiveness

The idea that psychology should use theory and research to understand under which conditions human beings flourish is:

A. Biological psychology.

B. Clinical psychology

C. Positive psychology

D. Applied psychology.

A multifactorial approach to explaining why a person has aggression problems will consider:

A. Personal factors more than situational factors

B. Situational factors more than personal factors

C. Both personal and situational factors

D. The conflict in the unconscious mind

Which of the following would be MOST likely to generalize from studies of animal subjects to human behavior?

A. a psychoanalyst

B. a behaviorist

C. a humanist

D. a cognitive psychologist

Which of the following takes the most positive view of human nature?

a. behaviorism.

b. functionalism.

c. humanism.

d. psychoanalysis.

According to Wilhelm Wundt, the focus of psychology was the scientific study of:

a. intentions

b. conscious experience.

c. unconscious motivation.

d. All of the above

When we say that people often see what they either "want to see" or "expect to see“, we are saying that:

A. People don’t have access to their conscious experience

B. Behavior is shaped by cultural factors

C. People's experience of the world is objective

D. People's experience of the world is subjective

The fact that Freud's ideas were based, in part, on prevailing values during his lifetime implies that psychology's development is influenced by:

A. social context.

B. subjective context.

C. historical context.

D. sociohistorical context.

Thank you very much

You’ve been a great class

Good luck with test and the rest of you studies!