History of Psychology

• Archaeologists and historians find evidence that humans have always thought about our thoughts and behavior, so, in a way, the study of psychology is as old as our species.

• Greek philosophers such as Plato and Democritus theorized about the relationship between thought and behavior.

Introspection

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920)

• First psychological laboratory is established at a residence close to the university in Leipzig, Germany.

• Wundt trained subjects in introspection—the subjects were asked to record accurately their cognitive reactions to simple stimuli.

• Wundt hoped to examine basic cognitive structures.

• His theory of structuralism—the idea that the mind operates by combining subjective emotions and objective sensations.

William James (1842–1910)

• Published The Principles of Psychology, the science’s first textbook.

• James examined how these structures Wundt identified function in our lives (James’s theory is called functionalism)

• Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930)- who studied with William James and went on to become president of the American Psychological Association.

• Margaret Floy Washburn (1871–1939)- was the first woman to earn a PhD in psychology.

  • Another student of William James

• G. Stanley Hall (1844–1924)- pioneered the study of child development and was the first president of the American Psychological Association.

Gestalt Psychology

• Examined a person's whole experience because the way we perceive the world is more than the sum of our individual perceptual experiences.

• Gestalt theorists demonstrated that whole experience is often more than just the sum of the parts of the experience.

• Max Wertheimer (1880–1943)- argued against dividing human thought and behavior into discrete structures.

Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)

• Freud believed he discovered the unconscious mind—a part of our mind over which we do not have conscious control that determines, in part, how we think and behave.

• Freud believed that this hidden part of ourselves builds up over the years through repression—the pushing down into the unconscious events and feelings that cause so much anxiety and tension that our conscious mind cannot deal with them.

• Many of Freud’s terms moved from being exclusively used by psychologists to being used in day-to-day speech (e.g., defense mechanism).

Behaviorism

John B. Watson (1878–1958)

• Watson along with others wanted to establish behaviorism as the dominant paradigm of psychology.

• Behaviorists maintain that psychologists should look at only behavior and causes of behavior—stimuli (environmental events) and responses (physical reactions)—and not concern themselves with describing elements of consciousness.

• B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) - expanded the basic ideas of behaviorism to include the idea of reinforcement—environmental stimuli that either encourage or discourage certain responses

• Multiple Perspective - Many psychologists describe themselves as eclectic—drawing from multiple perspectives.

Psychological Perspective

Humanist Perspective

Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) and Carl Rogers (1902–1987)

• Humanists

• Stressed individual choice and free will.

• This contrasts with the deterministic behaviorists, who theorized that all behaviors are caused by past conditioning.

• Humanists believe that we choose most of our behaviors and these choices are guided by physiological, emotional, or spiritual needs.

Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Psychologists using this perspective believe that the unconscious mind—a part of our mind that we do not have conscious control over or access to—controls much of our thought and action.

• Psychoanalysts would look for impulses or memories pushed into the unconscious mind through repression.

• This perspective thinks that to understand human thought and behavior, we must examine our unconscious mind through dream analysis, word association, and other psychoanalytic therapy techniques.

Biopsychology (or Neuroscience) Perspective

• Biopsychologists explain human thought and behavior strictly in terms of biological processes.

• Human cognition and reactions might be caused by effects of our genes, hormones, and neurotransmitters in the brain or by a combination of all three.

• A biopsychologist might explain a person’s tendency to be extroverted as caused by genes inherited from their parents and the genes’ effects on the abundance of certain neurotransmitters in the brain.

Evolutionary (or Darwinian) Perspective

• Evolutionary psychologists (also sometimes called sociobiologists) examine human thoughts and actions in terms of natural selection.

• A psychologist using the evolutionary perspective (based on Charles Darwin’s (1809–1882) theory of natural selection) might explain a person’s tendency to be extroverted as a survival advantage.

Behavioral Perspective

• Behaviorists explain human thought and behavior in terms of conditioning.

• A behaviorist might explain a person’s tendency to be extroverted in terms of reward and punishment.

Cognitive Perspective

• Cognitive psychologists examine human thought and behavior in terms of how we interpret, process, and remember environmental events.

• A cognitive psychologist might explain a person’s tendency to be extroverted in terms of how he or she interprets social situations.

Social-Cultural (or Sociocultural) Perspective

• Social-cultural psychologists look at how our thoughts and behaviors vary between cultures.

• A social-cultural psychologist might explain a person’s tendency to be extroverted by examining his or her culture’s rules about social interaction.

Biopsychosocial Perspective

• This modern perspective acknowledges that human thinking and behavior results from combinations of biological (“bio”), psychological (“psycho”), and social (“social”) factors.

• Psychologists who emphasize the biopsychosocial perspective view other perspectives as too focused on specific influences on thinking and behavior (sometimes called “being reductionistic”).