Introduction to Psychology

What is psychology?

Psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and

behavior. It seeks to understand how individuals think, feel, and
act in various situations and contexts.

What is behavior: Behavior is anything we do, overt actions and reactions.

examples: smiling, yelling, blinking, sweating talking.

What are mental processes: Our internal experiences, thoughts, feelings, memories…
etc.

examples: thoughts, dreams, perceptions, sensations, beliefs, or feelings.

Psychology is the exploration into and the scientific of behavior and meant
processes of all concerned species from the developmental stage to end of life cycle.

Psychology is a scientific enterprise that obtains knowledge through systematic and

objective methods of observation and experimentation. Psychologists study
behavior, which refers to any action or reaction that can be measured and observed.
 How does psychology relates to science?
Psychology is a social science, but still a science.

• Psychologists use scientific methods.

Scientific method: Process of gaining knowledge by identifying problems,
forming hypothesis and then testing hypothesis with observation, experiment
and analysis.

What are the origins of psychology?

Greek philosophers
• Socrates and Plato first conceive the mind as separate and
distinct from the body.

Enlightenment philosophers
• Rene Descartes came up with early ideas of the
nervous system.
• John Locke develops the Blank Slate Theory, which
states that men are shaped by experience, not predisposition
Locke with Francis Bacon come up with empiricism, which is the
idea that knowledge and science should rely on observation and
experimentation.
 How was psychology born?
• William Wundt, a German professor, created an experiment to measure the
difference between people hearing a ball drop and pressing a lever.

— The experiment was designed to measure a log in the nervous system.

Wundt is considered the father of psychology.

• Edward Bradford Titchener, Wundt’s student, develops the idea of

Structuralism.

— Structuralism: Theorized an elemental structure of human mind exists,

“building blocks” of human thoughts.

Used introspection (looking within)… subjects report elements of conscious

experience as they perceive them.

• William James, “the father of American psychology” Harvard professor,

develops functionalism and wrote the very first book of psychology.

Functionalism: School of psychology focused on how mental and

behavioral processes function and how they were adaptive. James theorized
that behaviors and thoughts must be useful and contribute to survival.
• Sigmund Freud, created the theory of Psychodynamic.

Psychodynamic focuses on personality development.

This behavior is determined by tensions generated by unconscious motives, current

conflicts and unresolved childhood conflict (many sexual). Most thought process
occur unconsciously.

Key terms
— Conscious: Thoughts and feelings we’re aware of.
— Preconscious: Area of the mind holding information that is not conscious, but is
retrievable.
— Unconscious: Region of the mind that is a reservoir of mostly unaccountable
thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories.

Freudian Defense Mechanisms

1. Repression: forgetting anxiety producing

feelings.
2. Regression: anxious person retreats to a more
comfortable stage of life.
3. Denial: anxious person refuses to admit
something is happening.
4. Reaction formation: reverses an unacceptable
impulse.
5. Projection: attributing anxiety causing
feelings to something else.
6. Rationalization: gives comfortable
explanations to anxiety causing actions.
7. Displacement: redirects an impulse onto a
substitute target.
8. Sublimation: transforms an unacceptable
impulse into a socially acceptable form.
 Learning and Conditioning
Memory: Is the cognitive process by which information is encoded, stored, and
retrieved in the brain. It involves the ability to retain and recall past experiences,
knowledge, skills, and sensory perceptions. Memory is a crucial component of
human cognition, as it influences our thoughts, behaviors, and decision-making.

Memory refers to what we remember and give human the capability to learn and
adopt from past experiences.

Memory follows these steps: Encoding —> Storing —> Retrieval.

Encoding: This is the initial step where information is acquired and converted into
a construct that can be stored in memory. It involves processing sensory inputs
and transforming them into a form that can be stored, such as converting visual or
auditory information into neural codes. Eg., listening to a song, learning the
melodies and the lyrics, information is stored, later you can sing the song and
memorize the lyrics.

• Acoustic encoding: input of sounds,words,and music.

• Semantic encoding: input of words and their meaning.
• Recoding: taking the information from the firm it is delivered to us and then
converting it in a way that can make sense of it.

Storing: After encoding, the information is stored in the brain for later neutral
retrieval. Storage involves placing encoded information in various memory
systems, such as sensory memory, short-term memory, or long-term memory,
based on factors like importance, repetition, and association. E.g., studying for
your exams, information is stored in your brain and you can tap into those
memories and use the acquired information.

Retrieval: This is the process of accessing and recalling stored information from
memory when needed. It involves bringing the stored information into conscious
awareness for use in cognitive processes or behavior.
Some key brain structures and processes that are known to be involved in the
biology of memory.

The hippocampus: Is a crucial structure located deep within the brain’s temporal
lobes. It pays a central role in the formation of new memories, particularly
episodic and spatial memories. The hippocampus helps consolidate information
from short-term memory to long-term memory.

The amygdala: Is involved in the

pro-
ccessing and storage of
emotional me-
mories.It plays a vital role in
attracting
emotional significance to events
which can enhance memory
formation.

Neurons and Synapses: Neurons are the basic

building blocks of the brain, communicate with
each other through synapses. Memory formation is
associated with changes in synaptic plasticity.
Long-term potentiation (LTP) is a well-studied
form of synaptic plasticity and is believed to be
fundamental mechanism of memory storage.

Neurotransmitters: Chemical messengers called

neurotransmitters, such as glutamate,
acetylcholine, and dopamine, play key roles in
transmitting signals between neurons during
memory formation and retrieval.
Learning: Is the process through which new information or knowledge is acquired
or existing knowledge is modified, leading to changes in behavior, thinking, or
understanding.

Learning is the acquisition of new behaviors. It is agreed that learning involves

changes in the behavior, that we practice in our daily lives.

There are three main theories which describes learning process; Behaviorist,
Cognitive and Social Learning theories.

Behavioral Theory of Learning

There are two main classification of the conditioning process, classical

conditioning, and operant conditioning.

Classical Conditioning: Proposed by a Russian Psychologist Ivan Pavlov.

According to him, behavior is learnt by repetitive association between response
and stimulus. Classical Conditioning is a form of learning whereby a conditioned
stimulus (CS) becomes associated with an unrelated unconditioned stimulus (US)
to produce behavioral response known as a conditioned responde (CR)

Operant Conditioning: Developed by B.F. Skinner, who believed that behavior is

voluntary and is determined, maintained, and controlled by its consequences.

This type of conditioning focuses on using either reinforcement or punishment to

increase or decrease a a behavior.

Classical conditioning vs Operant conditioning

One of the simplest ways to remember the differences between classical and
operant conditioning is to focus on whether the behavior is involuntary or
voluntary.

Classical conditioning involves associating an involuntary response and

stimulus,while operant is about associating a voluntary behavior and a
consequence.
Cognitive learning theory is a psychological perspective that focuses on how
people acquire, organize, and use knowledge. Unlike behaviorist theories that
emphasize observable behaviors,cognitive learning theory explores the mental
processes that underlie learning.

Edward Tolman has contributed significantly to the Cognitive Learning

Theory.According to him, individuals not only respond to stimuli but also act on
beliefs, thoughts, attitudes, feelings and strive towards goals.

This theory incorporates social aspects,suggesting that individuals can learn from
observing others. Observational learning, or learning through imitation and
modeling, is a key element of social cognitive learning.

Social Learning Theory, developed by Canadian-American psychologist Albert

Bandura, is a psychological; theory that emphasizes the importance of social
interaction and observational learning in the development f behaviors, beliefs,
and attitudes. This theory suggests that people learn not only through direct
personal experience but also by observing and imitating the actions and
behaviors of others.

By observing the other person’s behavior,attitude, and the outcome of that

behavior, and individual learns how to behave in each situation, depending on the
consequences observed.

Social learning theory asserts that learning takes place in two steps:

— person observes how others behave and then forms mental picture in his mind
along with the consequences of that behavior.

— person behaves, what he has learned and see the consequences of it, if it is
positive, he will repeat the behavior or will not do it again, in case the
consequence is negative.
There are three main types of learning.

Classical conditioning: Organisms learn to associate events or stimuli that

repeatedly happen together.
Operant conditioning: Organisms learn to associate events, a behavior, and its
consequence (reinforcement or punishment)
Observational learning: The process of watching others and then imitating what
they do.

Operant Conditioning: Reinforcement and Punishment

Positive Reinforcement: Something is added to increase the likely hood of a

behavior. E.g., A mother promises her daughter that if she does the house chores,
she’ll get a sweet of her preference after dinner.
Positive Punishment: Something is added to decrease the likelihood of a
behavior. E.g., A father tells his son that if he keeps avoiding the house chores,
he’ll get even more work to do.

Negative Reinforcement: Something is removed to increase the likelihood of a

behavior. E.g., Taking away a child phones to get them to study more.
Negative Punishment: Something is removed to decrease the likelihood of a
behavior. E.g., A student keeps misbehaving in class, so the teacher takes away
his phone as punishment.
 Inteigence and Cognition
Definition: Cognition refers to the mental processes involved in gaining
knowledge and understating, which includes activities such as thinking,
reasoning, problem-solving, perception, memory, and decision-making. It
encompasses how we process information, make sense of the world, and guide
our behavior based on that under.

Cognition is the process of thought, including the processes of acquiring and

understating knowledge through experience and the senses.

The Process of Cognition

• The process of cognition involves several stages and components that
contribute to how individuals acquire, process, and utilize knowledge.
• Perception: The initial stage where sensory information is received and
interpreted. This involves recognizing and organizing stimuli from the
environment.
• Attention: Focusing mental resources on specific information while filtering
out distractions. Attention is crucial for effective processing of information.
- Memory: The storage and retrieval of information.This
includes encoding, storage, and retrieval.
- Thinking: The manipulation of information to form con
concepts,solve problems, and make decisions.This includes
reasoning,planning, and creative thinking.
- Language: The use of symbols and communication to
express thoughts and ideas, which is integral to cognitive
processes.

Schemas
There are cognitive structures that help individuals organize and interpret
information in the world around them. They represent out knowledge and
expectations about various aspects of life, including objects, events, people, and
situations. Schemas enable us to understand and predict behavior by providing
framework for interpreting experiences.

A schemas is a cognitive framework or concept that helps organize and interpret

information.
Schemas can be useful because they allow us to take shortcuts in interpreting the
vast amount of information that is available in our environment.

Types of schemas:
-Person schemas are focused on specific individuals. For example, your schemas
of your friend might include information about her appearance, behaviors, her
personality, and her preferences.
-Social schemas include general knowledge about how people behave in certain
social situations.
-Self-schemas are focused on your knowledge about yourself. This can include
both what you know about your current self as well as ideas about your idealized
future self.
-Event schemas are focused on patterns of behavior that should be followed for
certain events. This acts much like a script informing you of what you should do,
how you should act, and what you should say in a particular situation.

Language
Language plays a vital role in cognitive processes, acting as a key medium for
thought, communication, and the organization of knowledge. It influences how
we perceive, think, and understand the world around us.

Function of Language in cognition:

Communication: Language allows individuals to convey thoughts,ideas, and
emotions, facilitating social interaction and cooperation.
Memory: Language aids memory encoding and retrieval. Verbal labels can make
it easier to remember information and enhance recall through associative
connections.

Problem solving
Problem solving is a crucial cognitive process that involves identifying a
challenge or obstacle and generating solutions to overcome it. It encompasses
various mental activities and strategies that help individuals analyze situations,
evaluate options, and implement solutions.
Creativity
Creativity is a fundamental aspect of cognition that involves generating new
ideas, concepts, or solutions that are original and valuable. It is often
associated with divergent thinking, where individuals explore multiple
possibilities and think outside conventional boundaries.

Components of creativity:
1. Originality: Creativity involves producing ideas that are novel or unique.
This can mean thinking of something entirely new or finding new
connections between existing ideas.
2. Flexibility: Creative thinkers can shift their approach or perspective easily,
allowing them to explore various avenues and adapt to changing
circumstances.
3. Fluency: This refers to the ability to generate a large number of ideas or
solutions within a given time frame. High fluency can lead to a greater
variety of potential creative outcomes.
4. Elaboration: Creativity often requires developing and refining ideas into
more complex forms.This can involve adding details, making connections,
or building initial concepts.

Cognition: Concepts and Prototypes

Cognition: Thinking, including perception, learning, problem solving,

judgement, and memory.
Concept: Category or grouping of linguistic information, objects, ideas, or life
experiences.
Prototype: Best representation of a concept.
Schema: A mental construct consisting of cluster or collection of related
concepts.
 Intelligence

Definition: Intelligence is commonly as the ability to learn through experience,

adapt to new situations, understand and handle abstract concepts, and apply
reasoning to solve problems. It encompasses a range of cognitive abilities,
including problem-solving skills, memory, and the capacity for logical
reasoning.

Intelligence refers to the mental abilities necessary for adaptation to, as well as
shaping and selecting environments.

Aspects of intelligence
• Learning Ability: Intelligence allows individuals to acquire new knowledge
and skills. It involves the capacity to understand concepts, remember
information, and apply learned material to new situations.
• Problem Solving: Intelligent individuals often exhibit effective problem-
solving skills. They can analyze complex situations, identify solutions, and
make decisions based on logical reasoning.
• Abstract thinking: Intelligence facilitates abstract reasoning, enabling
individuals to think beyond concrete situations and understand complex
ideas, patterns, and relationships.

Aspects of Intelligence.
Adaptation: Intelligence is crucial for adapting to new environments and
challenges. It helos individuals adjust their behaviors and strategies in response
to changing circumstances.
Creativity: While intelligence often relates to analytical thinking, it also plays a
role in creative thinking, allowing individuals to generate novel ideas and
solutions.
 Multiple Intelligence

Linguistic: Perceives different functions of language, sounds and words, may

easily learn languages.

Logical-mathematical: Capable of seeing numerical patterns, strong ability to use

reason and logic.

Musical: Understands and appreciates rhythm, pitch, and tone; may play
multiple instruments or sing.

Bodily kinesthetic: High capability to control the movements of the body and use
the body to perform various physical tasks.

Spatial: Ability to perceive the relationship between objects and how they move
in space.

Interpersonal: Ability to understand and be sensitive to the emotional state of

others.

Intrapersonal: Understand personal feelings and motivations, and use them to

reach personal goals.

Naturalist: High capacity to appreciate the natural world and interact with the
species within it.
 Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of Development

What makes your personality different from others?

Freud’s search for the answer to this led him to the discovery that the clues to
understanding the uniqueness of an individuals personality are found in infancy
and childhood.

According to Freud your unique character and quirks are products of how your
personality develops during childhood.

As a child and even as a teenager, you go through a series of stages in which you
grow and mature.
 The Oral Stage
• During the first year of life, the mouth is site of sexual and aggressive
gratification. An infant life centers on his mouth.

One of the first objects out there that provides an infant with oral satisfaction is
his mothers breast. The mother’s breast is a main source of connection and
satisfaction.

Could this ever be a problem?

When was the last time you saw a 10 year old breast feeding?

Eventually all infants have to be weaned from their mother’s breast. Weaning
presents the infant with his first conflict between his desire and reality.

If the infant fails to wean,or is weaned harshly or incompletely,he will become

fixated at the oral stage. He will develop an oral character in which he will feel
dominated by feelings o dependency and hopelessness.

Those who get stuck in the oral stage may find themselves preoccupied with oral
things, like talking, eating, smoking, and drinking. You’ll never outgrow the need
for constant oral stimulation.

The Anal Stage

• All babies have to outgrow up some time, and when they do they graduate to
the erogenous focus of the anal stage. The question at this age is poop, or not
to poop?

Freud emphasized the control over defecating as the pleasure center from 18
months to 3 years old. The central conflict for toddlers is control. Kids in this
stage want the ability to poop whenever they want and wherever they want.

Some of your adult characteristics may be the consequence of how your parents
handled your toilet training. Your creativity and productivity are indicators of
how well you’ve successfully navigated the anal stage.
If you’re messy, sloppy or careless, it speaks of an expulsive rebellion against
parental control.

If you’re withholding, obstinate, and obsessed with neatness,you’ve learned

control in reaction to your toilet training experience.

Early Anal Stage: Pleasure from delivering feces VS Late Anal stage pleasure
from withholding feces.

Maturity and success in the anal stage result in your ability to control yourself.
So let go, but make sure you’re in the right place and at the right time.

Phallic Stage
Begins during the third year of life and may last until the child is 6. The child in
this stage is focused on the stimulation of the genitals.

• In the Phallic stage, gratification begins with autoeroticism. That means

masturbation. But out need for satisfaction soon turns to our parents,
typically the parent of the opposite sex. As this happens, we find ourselves in
one of Freud’s most controversial and strange contributions to the study of
personality, the Oedipus complex.

As adults, most of us would cringe or feel disgust at the thought of marrying

someone like our mothers or fathers, least of all having sex with them, but we’ve
all known a little boy who wants to grow up and marry his or her parent.

Freud observed that children in the phallic stage of personality shifted from self-
gratification to seeking gratification from the opposite sex parent. There is one
problem, the parent of the same sex. And a resentment or childhood hate
sometimes grows towards the parent of the same sex.
For the male child the attention to the mother continues to develop into what
Freud called the Oedipus Complex. The male child father blocks him from his
mother. This gets frustrating for the boy, so frustrating that it sometimes grows
into a full blown hatred for his father. Boys find themselves afraid of their fathers.
Freud called this Castration Anxiety, as the boy fears the father might cut off their
genitals. Because of this fear the male child takes another way out, as they soon
realize they cannot beat their father (a bigger, stronger and more authoritarian
individual) they apply “if you can’t beat them, join them” and the boys separate
from their mothers and become closer to their fathers.The child learns to identify
with the dad, adopting his masculinity and seeking his own equivalent of mother,
a wife/partner.

For the female child, their attraction shifts to their fathers because they come to
resent their mothers for a strange reason, penis envy. According to Freud, little
girls stop desiring their mothers because they become more aware of gender, they
realize they lack a penis like their fathers. So, like little boys, girls can’t identify
with their fathers because they lack male genitalia. Essentially, they spend the rest
of their lives looking for a man to make them complete.

Freud was often criticized for his neglect of female sexuality, so he consulted the
Greeks again, finding a similar Oedipal tale about a woman named Electra, who
gets someone to kill her mother to avenge her father’s death.

Failure to graduate this stage:

If a man finds himself fixated because he failed to join forces with dad, he’s been
successfully emasculated. He becomes a failure at life, unable to strive for
achievement because of his disabling guilt generated from competing with his
father for his mother’s attention.

With successful resolution of the Electra complex, a girl finds herself equipped to
deal with her adult sexual and intimate relationships. She turns her penis envy into
a healthy search for a fatherly husband. But, if she fails, she becomes fixated and
may be overly seductive and flirtatious.
 Latency
• During this stage, no new significant conflict or impulses are assumed to
arise. This lasts from about 7 years to puberty. The primary personality
development during this time is that of the superego.

Things cool down, so to speak. There’s no rivalry with the opposite sex parent.
There’s no battle for control over satisfaction. It’s a time for a basic social
exploration like making friends and forming little social cliques.

Genital Stage
• During this time the person directs sexual impulses toward someone of the
opposite sex. Adolescence brings about a reawakening of Oedipal or Electra
conflicts and a reworking of earlier childhood identifications. The child is
now open to learning how to engage in mutually satisfying sexual
relationships.

(!) Keep in mind that Freud never stated that all people reach this point of full
maturity. The point is more like an ideal,something to strive for, a lifelong
project.

But if somebody doesn’t make it he could easily fall back into phallicism. This
seems to conjure up images of the selfish lover who doesn’t care about the
pleasure of the other partner.

As long as he gets what he wants he’s fine.If you make it, you’ll be attentive and
actually care if the other person in the interaction is enjoying his or herself.
Schools of Psychology

Psychodynamic Psychology: Focuses on the role of the unconscious and

childhood experiences in affecting conscious behavior.

Behaviorism: Focuses on observing and controlling behavior through what is

observable. Puts an emphasis on learning and conditioning.

Cognitive Psychology: Focuses not just on behavior, but on mental processes and
internal mental states.

Humanistic Psychology: Emphasizes the potential for good that innate to all
humans and rejects that psychology should focus on problems and disorders.

The 5 Pillars of Psychology

• Biological psychology: Explores how our biology influences behavior. The

fields of behavioral neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and
neuropsychology are all subfields of biological psychology.
• Cognitive psychology: Focuses on thoughts, and their relationship to
experience and actions. Studies language, cognition, memory, intelligence,
and more.
• Developmental psychology: Includes behavioral psychology, learning/
conditioning. (Classical and operant conditioning) Developmental
psychology is the scientific study of development across a lifespan.
• Social and personality Psychology: Social is the scientific study of how
people’s thoughts feelings and behaviors are influenced by actual, or implied
presence of others.
Personality is the study of patterns of thoughts and behaviors that make each
individual unique.
• The Mental Physical Health Psychology:
Abnormal psychology focuses on abnormal thoughts and behaviors.
Clinical psychology focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of psychological
disorders and other problematic patterns of behavior.
Health psychology focuses on how health is affected by the interaction of
biological psychological and sociocultural factors.
 Piaget’s Stages of Development

Each child goes through the stages in the same order (but not all at the same rate),
and child development is determined by biological maturation and interaction
with the environment.

At each stage of development, the child’s thinking is qualitatively different from

the other stages, that is, each stage involves a different type of intelligence.

Although no stage can be missed out, there are individual differences in the rate at
which children progress through stages, and some individuals may never attain
the later stages.

Piaget did not claim that a particular stage was reached at a certain age-although
descriptions of the stages often include an indication of the age at which the
average child would reach each stage.
 The Sensorimotor Stage

Ages: Birth to 2 years.

During this stage infants develop basic motor skills and learn to perceive and
interact with their environment through physical sensations and body
coordination. The infant learns about the world through their senses and through
their actions.

At the beginning of this stage, the infant lives in the present. It does not yet have
a mental picture of the world stored in his memory, so it does not have a sense of
object performance. If the child cannot see something, then it does not exist.

The main achievement during this stage is object performance - knowing that an
object exists, even if it’s hidden. It requires the ability to to form a mental
representation of an object.

The child begins to be able to store information about the world, recall it, and
label it.

The Preoperational Stage

Ages: 2-7 years

At the beginning of this stage,the child does not use the operations (a set of
logical rules),so thinking is influenced by how things look or appear to them
rather than logical thinking.For example, a child might think a tall,thin glass
contains more liquid than a short, wide glass, even if both hold the same amount,
because the child focuses more on the height rather than considering both
dimensions.

Furthermore,the child is egocentric; he assumes that other people see the word as
he does.

As the preoperational stage develops, egocentrism declines, and children begin to

enjoy the participation of another child in their games, and let’s pretend becomes
more important.
 The Concrete Operational Stage

Ages: 7-11 years

By the beginning of this stage, the child can use operations (a set of logical
rules) so they can conserve qualities, realize that people see the world in a
different way, and demonstrate improvement in inclusion tasks. Child still have
difficulties with abstract thinking.

The stage is called concrete because children can think logically much more
successfully if they can manipulate real materials or pictures of them.

Piaget considered the concrete stage a major turning point in the child’s
cognitive development because it marks the beginning of logical or operational
thought. This means the child can work things out in their head, rather than
physically try things out in the real world.

Operational thought is only effective here if the child is asked to reason about
materials that are physically present. Children at this stage will tend to make
mistakes or be overwhelmed when asked to reason about abstract or
hypothetical problems.

The Formal Operational Stage

Ages: 12 and over

As adolescents enter this stage, they gain the ability to think abstractly, the
ability to combine and classify items in a more sophisticated way, and the
capacity for higher-order reasoning.

Adolescents can think systematically and reason about what might be as well as
what is (not everyone archives this stage. This allows them to understand
politics, ethics, and science fiction, as well as to engage in scientific reasoning.
Teens can deal with abstract ideas, for example, they can understand division
and fractions without having to actually divide things up, and solve hypothetical
(imaginary problems.