Fact or Fiction?1. Most people with exceptionally high IQs are well adjusted in other

areas of their life.2. In romantic relationships, opposites usually attract.3. Overall, married adults are happier than adults who aren’t married.4. In general, we only use about 10 percent of our brain.5. A person who is innocent of a crime has nothing to fear from a lie

detector test.6. People who commit suicide usually have signaled to others their

intention to do so.7. If you feel that your initial answer on a multiple-choice test is wrong,

leave it alone; students usually lose points by changing answers.8. On some types of mental tasks, people perform better when they

are 70 years old than when they are 20 years old.9. Usually, it is safe to awaken someone who is sleepwalking.10.A schizophrenic is a person who has two or more distinct

personalities.

Fact or Fiction?1. Most people with exceptionally high IQs are well adjusted in other

areas of their life.2. In romantic relationships, opposites usually attract.3. Overall, married adults are happier than adults who aren’t married.4. In general, we only use about 10 percent of our brain.5. A person who is innocent of a crime has nothing to fear from a lie

detector test.6. People who commit suicide usually have signaled to others their

intention to do so.7. If you feel that your initial answer on a multiple-choice test is wrong,

leave it alone; students usually lose points by changing answers.8. On some types of mental tasks, people perform better when they

are 70 years old than when they are 20 years old.9. Usually, it is safe to awaken someone who is sleepwalking.10. A schizophrenic is a person who has two or more distinct

personalities.

History of Psychology:Level of Analysis Framework

Biological Level (micro): lesion on hypothalamus

causes rat to be unable to tell when it is full.

Psychological Level (molecular): mood, food preference, and

motives effect eating.

Environmental Level (macro): presence of a favored cultural food induces hunger (and vice versa)

History of Psychology:Pre-scientific

• Perspective: Mind-body dualism: the belief that the mind is a spiritual entity not subject to the physical laws that govern the body.

• Early Greek Philosophers: mind is located in the heart and interacts with the body through the body’s “humors”

• Rene Descartes: mind and body interact through pineal gland, thus the mind is located in the brain

• Perspective: Monism: mind and body are one and that the mind is not a separate spiritual entity

• Thomas Hobbes and John Locke: mental events are simply a product of physical events in the brain– British empiricism: all ideas

and knowledge are gained empirically, that is, through the senses

• Reason is fraught with the potential for error, so observation is the only reliable means of approaching knowledge

History of Psychology: Becoming Scientific

• Physiology and medicine become more refined

• European researchers (by 1870) begin electrically stimulating the brains of laboratory animals to map the surface areas of the brain that control body movement

• Medical reports begin to link damage to certain areas of the brain with various behavioral and mental impairments– EX: left-hemisphere trauma

linked to impaired speech

• By Mid-1800s German scientists were measuring people’s sensory responses to many types of physical stimuli– Ex: how the perceived loudness of

a sound changes as its physical intensity increases

• Establishes new science of psychophysics- the study of how psychologically experienced sensations depend on the characteristics of physical stimuli

• Around this time Darwin publishes his theory of evolution, supporting the idea that the human mind was the product of a biological continuity rather than a spiritual entity

History of Psychology:Introspection

• Founder: Wilhelm Wundt• Structuralism: The analysis of

the mind in terms of its basic elements– Used introspection to study

sensations, which they considered the basic elements of consciousness

– Experiments: exposed subjects to sensory stimuli, and asked them to describe their feelings

• Established Psychology as the science for studying cognitive processes

• Leader: William James• Functionalism: psychology

should study the functions of consciousness rather than its structure

• Responsible for much of the early research on learning and problem solving

• Heavily influenced by Darwin’s evolutionary theory– Stressed the importance of

adaptation in helping organisms survive

What’s the difference? An analogy: Structuralism is interested in the tendons, muscles, and bones that make up the hand. Functionalism asks why the hand

exists at all.

History of Psychology: Gestalt Psychology

• Perspective: Cognitive: examines the nature of the mind and how mental processes influence behavior.

• Gestalt: examines how elements of experience are organized into wholes.

• Founder: Max Wertheimer• Argued against trying to ‘break

down’ consciousness into its elements, favoring examination of a person’s total experience as a whole.

• “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

• Cognitive psychology: focuses on the study of mental processes

• Cognitive Neuroscience: uses sophisticated electrical recording and brain-imaging techniques to examine brain activity

• Social constructivism: maintains that what we consider “reality” is largely our own mental creation

History of Psychology: Psychodynamic

• Perspective: Psychodynamic: searches for the causes of behavior within the inner workings of our personality.

• Founder: Sigmund Freud• Tenets: unconscious mind controls

much of what we do; to understand human thought and behavior, we must examine our unconscious mind

• Techniques: dream analysis, word association, psychoanalytic therapy in an effort to find impulses or memories pushed into the unconscious through repression

History of Psychology:Behaviorism

• Perspective: Behavioral: emphasizes environmental control of behavior through learning.

• Pioneers: John Watson, Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner

• Tenets: must limit study of the human mind to directly observable phenomena– stimuli (environmental events)– responses (physical reactions) – reinforcement (environmental

stimuli that encourage or discourage responses)

• Cognitive Behaviorism: proposes that learning experiences and the environment influence our expectations and other thoughts, and in turn our thoughts influence how we behave

History of Psychology: Cognitive

• Perspective: Cognitive: focuses on “Higher functioning” (encoding, processing, storing and retrieving memory)

• Pioneers: Noam Chomsky, Jean Piaget

• Tenets: – attention on the ‘unobservable’

mental processes to fully understand behavior

– Not all of what we do is directly observable, but can be studied scientifically

• Has become a dominant (if not the dominant) perspective in psychology

History of Psychology: Humanism

• Humanist: stresses individual choice and free will

• Pioneers: Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers

• Tenets: all behaviors are caused by past conditioning; behaviors are chosen, and are guided by physiological, spiritual, and emotional needs

• Not easily tested by the scientific method.

• Focuses on self-actualization and ‘positive psychology’

History of Psychology:Evolutionary

• Evolutionary (Darwinian): examines human thoughts and actions in terms of natural selection.– Natural selection: if an inherited trait gives certain members of a species

an advantage, it is more likely to be passed down – Behavior genetics: the study of how behavioral tendencies are

influenced by genetic factors • Influences: Charles Darwin• Tenets: some psychological traits are advantageous for survival,

and are passed down to the next generation. • Subset of Neuroscience.

History of Psychology:Biological

• Biological perspective (Neuroscience): explains human thought and behavior strictly in terms of biological processes.

• Pioneers: Karl Lashley• Tenets: changes in the

connections between neurons, or the amount of neurotransmitter (chemicals released by nerve cells that allow them to communicate) effects a person’s emotions and cognition, and therefore their behavior

History of Psychology:Sociocultural

• Socio-cultural: examines how the social environment and cultural learning influence our behavior, thoughts, and feelings.

• Tenets: social norms (rules that specify what behavior is acceptable for members of a group) tell us how to behave, how to dress, how to respond to others, how to act as a man or woman, etc. Norms are transmitted via socialization (the process by which culture is transmitted to new members)– Cultural psychology: explores how culture is

transmitted to its members and examines similarities and differences among people from different cultures

– Individualism: an emphasis on personal goals and self-identity based primarily on one’s attributes and achievements

– Collectivism: individual goals are subordinated to those of the group and personal identity is defined largely by the ties that bind one to the extended family and other social groups

The Condensed Version

Activity!

• Perspectives:– Behavioral– Biological– Cognitive– Humanistic– Psychodynamic– Sociocultural

• Scenario: • Stephen is going

through his second divorce. He recently told his therapist that he refuses to begin dating again, stating “No woman will ever love me again!”

Vocabulary

• Behavioral Neuroscience

• Behavioral perspective• Behavior genetics• Behaviorism• Biological perspective• Cognitive behaviorism• Cognitive

neuroscience• Cognitive perspective• Cognitive psychology

• Collectivism• Cultural psychology• Culture• Defense mechanism• Evolutionary

psychology• Functionalism• Gestalt psychology• Humanism• Individualism• Introspection• Mind-body dualism

• Monism• Natural selection• Neurotransmitters• Norms• Object-relations theory• Positive psychology• Psychodynamic

perspective• Psychology• Self-actualization• Socialization• Socio-cultural perspective• Structuralism