2: Introduction to Psychology Flashcards
(36 cards)
Where does the term “Psychology” come from?
The Greek work “psyche” means soul and the root “ology” means the study of, hence, psychology refers to the study of the mind, or more broadly, the scientific study of mind and behavior.
What did psychology start off as, and when did it change?
Psychology started as a branch of philosophy, but in the late 1800s, psychology started branching into medicine and later into its own discipline.
What kind of science is psychology related to and why?
Psychology is a social science, as it’s connected to natural science like biology.
Who is Hermann von Helmholtz? What was his approach? Who was his research assistant?
He started measuring phenomenon (ex/ pinching in foot and hand experiment). His approach was considered empirical (research through observation). His research assistant was Wilhelm Wundt.
Who is the founder of psychology / who established psychology as a science?
Wilhelm Wundt.
Who is Wilhelm Wundt? What was his approach? What method did he use to study psychology?
Wilhelm Wundt is one of the founders of Psychology. He was a person in structuralism and he utilized introspection to study psychology.
What is introspection?
Introspection refers to examining your own conscious as objectively as possible. It was a method used to research psychology.
What is structuralism?
Structuralism is a theory of psychology where people (structuralists) wanted to find out if there was a soft of structure to conscious experience.
What were the issues of structuralism?
the issue with structuralism was that it needed very educated people to act as the sample bias. It’s also very subjective by nature.
How was functionalism started?
Functionalism was started when William James took some ideas from Wundt and brought them back to America to form his own ideology.
Who is William James? What was his approach to psychology? What methods did he use?
William James is looked upon as one of the founders of psychology. He started the functionalism approach and he also believed in introspection.
What is functionalism?
Functionalism was started by William James and it was influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Functionalism isn’t interested in the structure, but function of the brain.
- What biological function does consciousness serve?
they were interested in the mind as a whole rather than it’s individual parts.
Who are Wetheimer, Koffka, and Ho(:)hler?
They were German psychologists who fled Germany and brough ideas of Gestalt psychology to America.
What is Gestalt Psychology?
Gestalt psychology is a ideology that claims that sensory experiences can be broken down into individual parts, but how those parts relate to each other (the “Whole”) is often what individuals respond to as perception.
Ex/ Words are nothing more than black dots against a white background that your brain makes sense of.
Why wasn’t Gestalt psychology as popular in America as it was in Germany?
Gestalt psychology have way to behaviorism, the main ideology at the time.
Who is categorized in the experimental branch of psychology?
Von Helmholtz, Wundt, William James, and Gestalt psychology
Who is categorized in the clinical branch of psychology?
Freud
Who is Freud? What did he believe you had and what did he believe was important? How did he try to analyze his findings? What did get other people to start talking about?
Psychoanalytic psychology IS FREUD’S THING!
Freud believed that you had an unconscious mind, where all your deepest darkest wants, desires, and traumas lied.
Freud also belied that early childhood experiences were important.
Freud believed that he could access the unconscious mind through dream analysis, free association, and Freudian slips. He believed that it was your consciousness suppressing your covered desires.
Freud was the first to really talk about unconscious vs. conscious and he also stated that motivations can cause psychological conflict.
What were the issues with Freud’s theories?
- His theories could not be proven false (therefore being scientifically uninteresting)
- Unfalsifiable
- Placed to much emphasis on sex
Where do “Behaviorists” lie on the experimental and clinical branch chart?
The middle
Define what the Behaviorists believed in.
They believed that you were nothing more than a complex computer.
- primary mechanism: learning
- the study of consciousness = flawed
- started classical conditioning (where you take a stimulus that doesn’t elicit a response, pairs it with a stimulus that does elicit the desired response, pairs them together enough time, and eventually, the first stimulus will elicit the desired response.
Who is B.F. Skinner, what is he known for, and what did he study/discover?
He was a behavioral psychologist and he’s known for his studies with behavior and obedience (think skinner cage, a rat cage that can reward and punish rats).
Discovered:
- behaviors that result in a pleasant consequence will be repeated
- behaviors that result in an unpleasant consequence will be stopped
Who are the Humanists?
They believed that we are inherently good and they spoke on personal control and intentionality.
Describe Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.
- Self-actualization
- self-esteem
- belonging-love
- safety
- physiological (food, water, shelter)
Your lower needs will always trump your higher needs.
