Psychology: An Exploration, 4th Edition

Saundra K Ciccarelli, J. Noland White

The Science of
Psychology
Chapter 1
The History
of Psychology
 The History of Psychology
Write down one idea that comes to
mind when you hear the word
“psychology.”
• Psychology is the scientific study of:
• Behavior
• Mental processes

Behavior includes all of our outward or overt actions and

reactions.
Mental processes refers to all the internal, covert (hidden)
activity of our minds, such as thinking, feeling, and
remembering.
In the Beginning: Wundt, Titchener, and James

Wilhelm Wundt
In 1879 psychology began
• First psychology lab in as a science of its own in
Germany (1879) Germany with the
establishment of Wundt’s
• Analyze the content of
psychology laboratory. He
one’s mind through
developed the technique of
objective introspection objective introspection.
Titchener and Structuralism in America

Edward Titchener
EXPERIENCE
• Structures of the mind
• Break experience into THOUGHT
emotions and sensations
• “Tell me about things that are
blue.”
Titchener, a student of Wundt, brought
psychology in the form of structuralism
to America. For example, Titchener EMOTION
might have asked his students to
introspect about things that are yellow
rather than actually giving them a
yellow object and asking for reactions
to it.
Titchener and Structuralism in America

Margaret Washburn:
• Titchener’s student
• First woman to receive a Ph.D. in psychology
(1894)
• Author of The Animal Mind
What Is Functionalism?

William James
William James proposed a
countering point of view called
• “Stream of thought” functionalism that stressed the
vs. elements of mind way the mind allows us to
• Focus on adaptation, adapt.
living, working,
playing – functioning Functionalism influenced the
in the real world modern fields of educational
psychology, evolutionary
psychology, and
industrial/organizational
psychology.
 Gestalt

Three
Influential
Approaches

Behaviorism Psychoanalysis
 Three Influential Approaches:
Gestalt

• “The whole is greater

than the sum of its parts.”
• Gestalt: “An organized
whole”
• Gestalt psychologists:
People naturally seek out
patterns (“wholes”) in
available sensory
information.
 Three Influential Approaches:
Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud

▪ Insight therapy treating

fear and anxiety
▪ Emphasis on
unconscious and early
childhood

Freud proposed that the unconscious mind controls much

of our conscious behavior in his theory of psychoanalysis.
 Three Influential Approaches:
Behaviorism

John B. Watson’s famous quote?

“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my
own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee
to take any one 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. I am going beyond
my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the
contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands
of years.”
Three Influential Approaches:
Behaviorism
Fear is learned when a neutral
stimulus is paired with an aversive
stimulus like a loud noise.
Watson believed
fears are learned via
experience.
 Three Influential Approaches:
Behaviorism
Watson proposed a science of behavior
called behaviorism, which focused only on
the study of observable stimuli and
responses.

J.B.Watson and Rosalie Rayner

demonstrated that a phobia could be
learned by conditioning a baby to be afraid
of a white rat.

Mary Cover Jones, one of Watson’s more

famous students in behaviorism and child
development, later demonstrated that a
learned phobia could be
counterconditioned.
The Field of
Psychology Today
Modern Perspectives

Seven Perspectives:
No single perspective is used alone Sociocultural
to explain all human behavior and
mental processes.

Evolutionary
Psychodynamic
Humanistic

Biopsychological
Behavioral
Cognitive
Psychodynamic Perspective

Focus on
Psychodynamic
unconscious, early
development
• Less emphasis
on sex
• More emphasis
on the self

Modern Freudians such as Anna Freud, Jung, and Adler

changed the emphasis in Freud’s original theory into a kind of
neo-Freudianism.
Behavioral Perspective Skinner’s operant conditioning
of voluntary behavior became a
major force in the twentieth
century. He introduced the
concept of reinforcement to
behaviorism.
• B.F. Skinner
Behavioral – Operant
conditioning
– Reinforcement
Humanistic Perspective
In contrast to the psychoanalytic focus on Humanistic
sexual development and behaviorism’s
focus on external forces in guiding
personality development, some
professionals began to develop a
perspective that would allow them to
focus on people’s ability to direct their
own lives.

Humanists held the view that people

have free will, the freedom to choose
their own destiny, and strive for self-
actualization, the achievement of one’s
full potential.

Today, humanism exists as a form of

psychotherapy
aimed at self-understanding and self-
improvement.
Cognitive Perspective

Emphasis:
• Memory
Cognitive • Intelligence
• Perception
• Thought processes
• Problem solving
• Language
• Learning
• Cognitive neuroscience
• Physical workings of brain

Cognitive psychology is the study of learning, memory,

language, and problem solving, and includes the field of
cognitive neuroscience.
Sociocultural Perspective

• Combines social
and cultural
Sociocultural psychology
• Cross-cultural
research

The sociocultural perspective

combines two areas of study:
social psychology and cultural
psychology.
Sociocultural Perspective

• Combines social
and cultural
Sociocultural
psychology
• Cross-cultural
research

The sociocultural perspective is important because it reminds

people that the way they and others behave (or even think) is
influenced not only by whether they are alone, with friends, in
a crowd, or part of a group but also by the social norms, fads,
class differences, and ethnic identity concerns of the particular
culture in which they live.
Sociocultural Perspective

• Combines social
and cultural
Sociocultural
psychology
• Cross-cultural
research

Cross-cultural research also fits within this perspective. In

cross-cultural research, the contrasts and comparisons of a
behavior or issue are studied in at least two or more cultures.
This type of research can help illustrate the different influences
of environment (culture and training) when compared to the
influence of heredity (genetics, or the influence of genes on
behavior).
Biopsychological Perspective

Attributes human and

Biopsychological animal behavior to
biological events

Biopsychology emerged as the

study of the biological bases of
behavior, such as hormones,
heredity, chemicals in the nervous
system, structural defects in the
brain, and the effects of physical
diseases.
Evolutionary Perspective
Evolutionary
The principles of evolution and the
knowledge we currently have
about evolution are used in this
perspective to look at the way the Biological bases of
mind works and why it works as it mental traits shared by
does. Behavior is seen as having all humans
an adaptive or survival value.

In this perspective, the mind is

seen as a set of information-
processing machines, designed by
the same process of natural
selection that Darwin (1859) first
theorized.
Psychological Professionals and Areas of
Specialization

• Psychologist
• Psychiatrist
• Social worker
Psychological Professionals and Areas of
Specialization

There are many different areas of specialization in psychology,

including clinical, counseling, developmental, social, and
personality as areas of work or study.

Psychiatrists are medical doctors who provide diagnosis and

therapy for persons with mental disorders.

Psychologists have academic degrees and can do counseling,

therapy, teaching, and research and may specialize in any one
of a large number of areas within psychology.

Social workers are social workers with special training in the

influences of the environment on mental illness.
 Work Settings and Subfields of Psychology

There are many different work

settings for psychologists. Although This pie chart shows the specialty
not obvious from the chart, many areas of psychologists who recently
psychologists work in more than one received their doctorates (American
setting. For example, a clinical Psychological Association, 2014).
psychologist may work in a hospital
setting and teach at a university or
college (Michalski et al., 2011).
Scientific Research
Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking

Critical thinking:
Making reasoned
judgments about claims
“Truths”
there are few concepts that do not need
to be tested,
Evidence
evidence can vary in quality
Authorities
claims by experts and authorities do
not automatically make something
true
Open minds
keeping an open mind is important.
 DESCRIPTION:
What is
happening?

CONTROL: EXPLANATION:
PSYCHOLOGY’S
How can it be GOALS Why is it
changed? happening?

PREDICTION:
When will it
happen again?
The Scientific Approach
The scientific method is a way to
determine facts and control the
Report Your Results
possibilities of error and bias when
observing behavior. The five steps
5
are perceiving the question,
forming a hypothesis, testing the
hypothesis, drawing conclusions, Drawing Conclusions 4
and reporting the results.

Testing the Hypothesis 3

Forming a Hypothesis
2

Perceiving the Question 1

Descriptive Methods
Naturalistic Observation Laboratory Observation

• Involves watching • Involves watching

animals or people in their animals or people in an
natural environments artificial but controlled
situation
• Advantage: realistic
behavior • Advantage: complete
control
• Disadvantage: lack of
control • Disadvantage: artificial
behavior
 Descriptive Methods

What is the advantage of naturalistic observation? It allows researchers to

get a realistic picture of how behavior occurs because they are actually
watching that behavior in its natural setting.

One of the disadvantages of naturalistic observation is the possibility of

observer bias. That happens when the person doing the observing has a
particular opinion about what he or she expects to see.

Another disadvantage is that each naturalistic setting is unique and unlike any
other. Observations that are made at one time in one setting may not hold true
for another time.

Laboratory settings have the disadvantage of being an artificial situation that

might result in artificial behavior—both animals and people often react
differently in the laboratory than they would in the real world. The main
advantage of this method is the degree of control that it gives to the observer.
Descriptive Methods

Case Studies Surveys

• Detailed investigations of • Ask standardized questions of

large groups of people that
one subject
represent a sample of the
• Advantage: Tremendous population of interest
amount of detailed • Advantage: Ability to get large
information amount of data; ability to query
sensitive topics
• Disadvantage: • Disadvantage: Potential
Information gained respondents have to be
cannot be applied to carefully selected; respondents
other cases may not always tell the truth or
remember information correctly
Descriptive Methods

Surveys
• Ask standardized questions of large
groups of people that represent a
sample of the population of interest
• Advantage: Ability to get large
amount of data; ability to query
sensitive topics
• Disadvantage: Potential
respondents have to be carefully
selected; respondents may not
always tell the truth or remember
information correctly
Correlations: Finding Relationships

Correlation:
A measure
Variable
Income1
Smoking
of the relationship
Variable
Health2
Education
between two variables

Correlation is a statistical technique that allows

researchers to discover and predict relationships
between variables of interest.
Correlations: Finding Relationships

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Positive correlation:
Variables related in
same direction

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Correlations: Finding Relationships

Positive correlations exist when increases in one

variable are matched by increases in the other
variable, whereas negative correlations exist
when increases in one variable are matched by
decreases in the other variable.

Correlations cannot be used to prove cause-

and-effect relationships.
Correlations: Finding Relationships

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Negative correlation:
Variables related in
opposite direction
Show graph
Perfect Correlations and Non-Correlations
The Experiment

• Independent and Dependent Variables

• Experimental and control groups
The Experiment An operational definition is the definition of a
variable of interest that allows it to be directly
measured.

Experiments are tightly controlled manipulations

of variables that allow researchers to determine
cause-and-effect relationships.

The independent variable in an experiment is

the variable that is deliberately manipulated by
the experimenter to see if related changes occur
in the behavior or responses of the participants
and is given to the experimental group.

aggressive behavior The dependent variable in an experiment is the

measured behavior or responses of the
participants.

The control group receives either a placebo

treatment or nothing.

Random assignment of participants to

experimental groups helps to control for
individual differences both within and between
the groups that might otherwise interfere with the
experiment’s outcome.
Experimental Hazards and Controlling for Effects

• Placebo effect
• The placebo effect is the
phenomenon in which the
expectations of the participants
in a study can influence their
behavior.
• Experimenter effect
• Single-blind
• Double-blind
Experimental Hazards and Controlling for Effects

• Placebo effect
• Experimenter effect
• The experimenter effect is the
tendency of the experimenter’s
expectations for a study to
unintentionally influence the
results of the study
• Single-blind
• Double-blind
Experimental Hazards and Controlling for Effects
1.9 Recall two common sources of problems in an experiment and some ways to control for
these effects.

• Placebo effect
• Experimenter effect
• Single-blind
• Double-blind
• Experiments in which the subjects do
not know if they are in the experimental
or control groups are single-blind
studies, whereas experiments in which
neither the experimenters nor the
subjects know this information are
called double-blind studies.
Quasi-experimental designs

It is considered true experiments because of the inability to

randomly assign participants to the experimental and control
groups.

Population

Males Females
 Psychological Research: Ethics
The Guidelines for Doing Research with People

1 Protection of rights and well-being of participants

2 Informed consent

3 Deception must be justified

4 Right of participants to withdraw at any time

5 Protection of participants from harm

6 Debriefing participants at the end of the study

7 Data must remain confidential

8 Correcting any undesirable consequences that may result

https://www.purdue.edu/research/dimensions/important-considerations-for-protecting-human-research-participants/