The Origins of Psychology Flashcards
How was psychology born?
Many people would argue that psychology grew out of philosophy, and that some of the fundamental questions regarding the human condition and human behaviour, that have interested philosophers for centuries, are also central to psychology.
- The birth of psychology is often cited as being the establishment of the first psychology research laboratory, at the University of Leipzig in Germany in 1879, by Wilhelm Wundt.
- At around the same time, William James began to teach the first experimental course in psychology, at Harvard University in the United States.
What is the mind-body problem?
- The mind-body problem essentially the question of ‘how separate the concept of the human mind is from the brain?’
- Modern approaches to examining the brain, such as neuroimaging, are providing new perspectives, but the question of how separate the mind is from the body is still regarded as one of the earliest philosophical questions.
What are some questions to consider when trying to understand the world around us?
- How do we know what is true and real?
- Can we trust our senses or is it only our own thoughts that we can reliably believe to be true?
- Can we determine the ultimate truth within a scientific framework?
Philosophy has grappled with these questions throughout the ages and they still have relevance to psychology today.
What is meant by nature nurture?
- Is our biological inheritance principal in our behaviour, or is it the environment in which we live and grow?
- Many would argue it’s a combination of both, but with increased recognition of the role of genetics and inheritance in behaviour and psychological disorders on the one side, and a more sophisticated understanding of the importance of environment in early childhood development on the other, the question remains largely unanswered.
- There is also the question of whether there is something unique and special that separates us as humans from the rest of the animal kingdom.
How did Charles Darwin influence inquiries into animal behaviour?
- Until Charles Darwin conceptualised natural selection and evolution, most people held the position that humans were qualitatively different from animals and other non-human creatures.
- From the concept of evolution came the idea that we could use animals as models for human behaviour.
- This opened the door for a whole new range of inquiry into the behaviour of animals as their findings could also be applicable to humans.
What is rationalism?
Descartes was the founder of rationalism: the idea that that the only true understanding of the world should come from intellectual and deductive reasoning given that you can’t really trust your senses.
What is empiricism?
An opposing view to rationalism arose from what we now call British empiricism.
- English philosopher John Locke argued that sensory information is all we have to go by.
- If we are going to understand the world around us, we have to make systematic use of that sensory information.
- Only through being methodical and strategic in how we evaluate sensory information can we build knowledge.
- Locke argued that in order to construct our understanding of the world, we work from a blank slate (tabula rasa).
- The knowledge we build is derived by reflecting on our sensory experiences and we expand upon simple knowledge from sensory processes to comprehend more complex information.
- Scottish philosopher David Hume took this idea further, arguing that our understanding of the world was fundamentally tied to our observations.
- From our observations over time, we build assumptions about functionality and causation and subsequently use these assumptions to create laws, such as laws of resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect.
Example: Balls Hitting
- For example, if we observe one ball about to hit another ball of equal size and weight, we assume that it will cause the second ball to move.
- But that assumption of causation is simply drawn from our previous experiences of having seen one ball hitting another.
- We assume that what we have seen in the past will repeat itself in the future.
What is bundle theory?
- One of Hume’s most controversial theories is what we call bundle theory.
- Hume argued that our world is made up of sensory information that we try to make sense of.
- Our understanding of what constitutes an apple comprises the appearance, feel, smell and taste of an apple.
- Hume argued that the apple itself does not exist.
- Our concept of the apple simply results from our attempt to bring together a range of sensory experiences to make sense of our world.
- From some perspectives, Hume was almost the opposite of Descartes in that he argued that the only thing that is real is sensory information.
- We then put this sensory information together and try to make sense of it.
- The resulting labels that we create (“an apple”) aren’t themselves ‘real’.
Summarise these two polarised approaches to philosophy.
- Rationalists such as Descartes contended that knowledge is gained through reason and thought.
- The mind actively transforms sensory information, but essentially, true knowledge can only be obtained through reasoning.
- Empiricists, on the other hand, argued that all knowledge is gained through experience.
- Only through observation and systematic investigation of sensory information can we extend our knowledge through a framework of assumed patterns of behaviour.
-Both approaches remain fundamental aspects of the scientist practitioner model that we use in modern psychology today: we try to formulate theoretical ideas (rationalism), test them through observable experiments (empiricism), and interpret the results in terms of our theoretical concepts.
What is phrenology?
The study of phrenology by Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828) was a particularly popular early idea on the relationship between mental characteristics and the brain.
- The underlying assumption of phrenology was that indentations and bumps on the outer surface of the skull reflected differences in brain volume that were associated with particular mental functions or personality traits.
- For example, a bump in one region might suggest the individual was prone to combativeness, while an indentation at another point on the skull might suggest a decreased capacity for conscientiousness or individuality.
While this idea did not stand up to rigorous scientific testing, the notion that certain parts of the brain are responsible for different mental abilities or traits was highly influential in stimulating further research.
How did the work of Broca and Wernicke contribute to the localisation of function hypothesis?
Developments in medicine that gave further credibility to the localisation of function hypothesis came from the work of Paul Broca (1824–1880) from France and, later, Carl Wernicke (1848–1905) in Germany.
- These physicians were looking at patients with brain damage to see how damage in particular regions of the brain related to different mental impairments.
- Broca found that individuals with damage to the left frontal region of the brain could understand language, but were unable to produce speech of their own.
- In contrast, Wernicke found that if the damage was towards the rear (posterior) region of the left side of the brain, patients could speak fluently but had difficulties comprehending language so their sentences were nonsensical.
- These findings provided more solid scientific evidence for the notion that mental functions, in this case language, could be broken down into distinct elements and localised to specific areas of the brain.
- This stimulated a vast array of subsequent investigations to further map the functions of the brain.
How did the findings of Broca and Wernicke contribute to the localisation of function hypothesis?
Developments in medicine that gave further credibility to the localisation of function hypothesis came from the work of Paul Broca (1824–1880) from France and, later, Carl Wernicke (1848–1905) in Germany.
- These physicians were looking at patients with brain damage to see how damage in particular regions of the brain related to different mental impairments.
- Broca found that individuals with damage to the left frontal region of the brain could understand language, but were unable to produce speech of their own.
- In contrast, Wernicke found that if the damage was towards the rear (posterior) region of the left side of the brain, patients could speak fluently but had difficulties comprehending language so their sentences were nonsensical.
- These findings provided more solid scientific evidence for the notion that mental functions, in this case language, could be broken down into distinct elements and localised to specific areas of the brain.
- This stimulated a vast array of subsequent investigations to further map the functions of the brain.
What is psychophysics?
- Psychophysics is the process of systematically investigating the relationships between physical stimuli and psychological perceptions.
- The psychophysics approach to quantifying sensory perception was fundamental to establishing the scientific method of inquiry into psychological phenomena.
How did Weber contribute to our understanding of the psychophysics of perception?
- Alongside their counterparts in medicine, physiologists around this time were beginning to take interest in different aspects of sensory perception.
- Researchers such as Ernst Weber (1795–1878) were looking at two-point discrimination.
- This was the investigation of how people perceive somatosensory, or touch, information in different regions of the body.
- Weber showed that our discrimination of two distinct points varied widely depending on how much we relied on touch information for that particular body part.
- The tongue was among the most accurate or most sensitive regions of the body, where people could discriminate between two points about a millimetre apart, and the tips of the fingers were very much at that acuity as well.
- Other places in the body, like the middle of the back or the middle of the thigh, had very poor acuity.
- Therefore, you could have two points separated by as much as five centimetres in the middle of the back, and a person would perceive that as a single point.
What is Fechner’s Law?
One of Weber’s students, Gustav Fechner (1801–1887), took the study of human response to physical stimuli further by investigating the ability to discriminate between other physical stimuli, such as two objects of different weights, or two lights with different levels of brightness.
- One of the results of his observations, now known as Fechner’s Law, predicts that our ability to discriminate between two different stimuli decreases as the magnitude of the stimuli increases.
- For example, if you have two very bright lights, the difference in brightness between them will need to be large for you to detect the difference, whereas for two dim lights, the difference in brightness only needs to be minimal for the difference to be detected.
