INTRO TO

PSYCHOLOGY
HSSF 0344
Introducing Psychology
What is Psychology?
• Psychology - scientific study of behavior and
mental processes.
– Behavior - outward or overt actions and reactions
such as talking, facial expressions and movement.
– Mental processes - internal, covert (hidden) activity
of our minds such as thinking, feeling and
remembering.
• Psychology is a science
– Prevent possible biases from leading to faulty
observations
– Precise and careful measurement
PSYCHOLOGY
THEN: THE
HISTORY OF
PSYCHOLOGY
 In the beginning...
Wilhelm Wundt’s 1832-1920
 Psychology laboratory established in Leipzig, Germany in 1879.
 A physiologist, attempted to apply scientific principles to the study of
the human mind.
 Believed that consciousness, the state of being aware of external
events, could be broken down into thoughts, experiences, emotions,
and other basic elements.
 Developed the technique of objective introspection – process of
objectively examining and measuring one’s thoughts and mental
activities.
 Objectivity: expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as they really
are without allowing the influence of personal feelings, prejudices, or
interpretations.
 Known as the father of Psychology.
Structuralism
Edward Titchener 1867-1927
 Wundt’s student; brought structuralism to America.
 focused on structure or basic elements of the mind.
 Believed that every experience could be broken down
into its basic elements.
 Believed that objective introspection could be used on
thoughts as well as physical sensations.
 Structuralism died out in early 1900s as the structuralists were
busily fighting among themselves over just which key elements
of experience were the most important.
 Functionalism
• William James 1842-1910
• More interested in the importance of consciousness to everyday life
than just its analysis.
• Focused on how the mind allows people to function in the real world.
How the mind allows people to live, work, play and adapt to their
surroundings.
• For example, a behavior such as avoiding the eyes of others in an
elevator can be seen as a way of protecting one’s personal space.
• Influenced the modern fields of:
– Educational psychology
– Evolutionary psychology
– Industrial/organizational psychology
• While the Structuralists and Functionalists argued with
each other and among themselves, other Psychologists
were looking at Psychology in several other ways.
• Gestalt
• Psychoanalysis
• Behaviorism
 Gestalt
• Max Wertheimer
• Gestalt (German word meaning “an organised whole”).
• Believed that psychological events such as sensing and perceiving could
not be broken down into smaller elements and still be properly
understood.
• For example, a melody is made up of individual notes that can only be
understood if the notes are in the correct relationship to one another, so
perception can only be understood as a whole, entire event.
• Slogan: “ the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.
• Today, Gestalt ideas are part of the study of cognitive psychology, a
field focussing not only on perception but also on learning, ,memory,
thought processes and problem solving.
 Psychoanalysis
• The theory and therapy based on the work of Sigmund Freud.
• Freud was a neurologist, a medical doctor who specializes in disorders of the nervous
system.
• Freud’s patients suffered from nervous disorders with no found physical cause.
• Therefore, it was thought, the cause must be in the mind, and that is where Freud
began to explore.
– Freud proposed that there is an unconscious (unaware) mind into which we push, or
repress, all of our threatening urges and desires.
– He believed that these repressed urges, in trying to surface, created nervous
disorders.
– Freud stressed the importance of early childhood experiences.
• Freudian psychoanalysis, the theory and therapy based on Freud’s ideas, has been the
basis of much modern psychotherapy ( a process in which trained psychological
professional helps a person gain insight into and change his or her behavior).
 Behaviorism
• The science of behavior that focuses on observable behavior only.
– Must be directly seen and measured.
• Proposed by John B. Watson.
– Based much from work of Ivan Pavlov who demonstrated that a
reflex could be conditioned (learned).
– Watson believed that all behavior is learned.
– Watson believed that phobias are learned through the process of
conditioning.
• Case of “Little Albert” – taught to fear a white rat.
-Watson wanted to prove that all behavior was a result of a
stimulus-response relationship.
PSYCHOLOGY
NOW:
MODERN
PERSPECTIVES
PSYCHODYNAMIC perspective - modern version
of psychoanalysis.
– More focused on the development of a sense of
self and the discovery of other motivations
behind a person’s behavior than sexual
motivations.

BEHAVIORAL perspective – B. F. Skinner

studied operant conditioning of voluntary behavior.
– Behaviorism became a major force in the
twentieth century.
– Skinner introduced the concept of reinforcement
to behaviorism.
BIOPSYCHOLOGICAL perspective
- attributes human and animal behavior to biological
events occurring in the body, such as genetic
influences, hormones, and the activity of the
nervous system.

EVOLUTIONARY perspective
- focuses on the biological bases of universal mental
characteristics that all humans share.
– Looks at the way the mind works and why it
works as it does.
– Behavior is seen as having an adaptive or
survival value.
SOCIOCULTURAL perspective – focuses
on the relationship between social behavior
and culture.

COGNITIVE perspective - focuses on

memory, intelligence, perception, problem
solving,
and learning.
HUMANISTIC perspective
 Owes far more to the early roots of psychology in
the field of philosophy.
 Humanists held the view that people have free will,
the freedom to choose their own destiny.
 Early founders:
Abraham Maslow
Carl Rogers
 Emphasized the human potential, the ability of each
person to become the best person he or she could
be.
Self-actualization - achieving one’s full potential or
actual self.
 Types of Psychological
Professionals
• Psychiatrist - a medical doctor who has specialized
in the diagnosis and treatment of psychological
disorders.
• Psychiatric social worker - a social worker with
some training in therapy methods in the area of social
work and focuses on the environmental conditions
that can have an impact on mental disorders, such as
poverty, overcrowding, stress, and drug abuse.
• Psychologist - a professional with an academic
degree and specialized training in one or more
areas of psychology.
– Can do counseling, teaching, and research
and may specialize in any one of a large
number of areas within psychology.
– Areas of specialization in psychology include
clinical, counseling, developmental, social,
and personality, among others.
Areas of specialisation
Subfields of Psychology
• Clinical
• Counseling
• Developmental
• Experimental
• Social and personality
• Cognitive
• Industrial and Organisational
• School
THE
SCIENTIFIC
METHOD
• A system of gathering data so that bias
and error in measurement are reduced.
Psychology’s Four Goals
1. Description
– What is happening?
2. Explanation
– Why is it happening?
3. Prediction
– Will it happen again?
4. Control
– How can it be changed?
Steps in the Scientific Approach
1. Perceiving the question.
2. Forming a Hypothesis
3. Testing the hypothesis
4. Drawing conclusions
5. Report your results
NATURALISTIC OBSERVATION

• watching animals or humans behave in their

normal environment.

Major Advantage:
 Realistic picture of behavior.

Disadvantages:
 Observer effect - tendency of people or
animals to behave differently from normal when
they know they are being observed.
oParticipant observation - a naturalistic
observation in which the observer becomes a
participant in the group being observed
(to reduce observer effect).

▪ Observer bias - tendency of observers to see

what they expect to see.
oBlind observers – people who do not know
what the research question is (to reduce
observer bias).
CASE STUDIES

• study of one individual in great detail.

– Advantage: tremendous amount of detail.
– Disadvantage: cannot apply to others.
– Famous case study: Phineas Gage.
SURVEYS

• Researchers will ask a series of questions

about the topic under study.
• Given to a representative sample - randomly
selected sample of subjects from a larger
population of subjects.
Population - the entire group of people or
animals in which the researcher is
interested.
Advantages:
 Data from large numbers of people.
 Study covert behaviors.
Disadvantages:
 Have to ensure representative sample (or
results not meaningful).
 People are not always accurate (courtesy
bias).
 THE EXPERIMENT
• A deliberate manipulation of a variable to see if
corresponding changes in behavior result, allowing
the determination of cause-and-effect
relationships.

• Independent variable (IV) - variable in an experiment

that is manipulated by the experimenter.

• Dependent variable (DV) - variable in an experiment

that represents the measurable response or behavior of
the subjects in the experiment.
• Experimental group - subjects in an experiment who
are subjected to the independent variable.

• Control group - subjects in an experiment who are not

subjected to the independent variable and who may
receive a placebo treatment (controls for confounding
variables).

• Random assignment - process of assigning subjects to

the experimental or control groups randomly, so that
each subject has an equal chance of being in either
group.
 Controls for confounding (extraneous, interfering)
variables.
The Experiment
 Ethics in Psychological Research
• Ethics committees - groups of psychologists or other professionals who look over
each proposed research study and judge it according to its safety and consideration
for the participants in the study.
• Common ethical guidelines:
1. Rights and well-being of participants must be weighed against the study’s value
to science.
2. Participants must be allowed to make an informed decision about participation.
3. Deception must be justified.
4. Participants may withdraw from the study at any time.
5. Participants must be protected from risks or told explicitly of risks.
6. Investigator must debrief participants, telling the true nature of the study and
expectations of results.
7. Data must remain confidential.
8. If for any reason a study results in undesirable consequences for the participant,
the researcher is responsible for detecting and removing or correcting these
consequences.
• Animal research – answers questions we could never do
with human research.
• Focus is on avoiding exposing them to unnecessary pain or
suffering.
• Animals are used in approximately 7% of psychological
studies.
These rabbits are part of a drug-testing
study. Their bodies are enclosed in the metal
cases to prevent movement during the test.
What steps might the researchers using these
animals take to
treat the animals ethically?