Emergence of Psychology as a Science Flashcards
(11 cards)
How was psychology viewed between the 17th and 19th centuries?
As a branch of philosophy, often referred to as experimental philosophy.
What major event in psychology occurred in 1879?
Wundt opened the first experimental psychology lab in Leipzig, Germany.
What did Sigmund Freud contribute to psychology in the early 1900s?
He developed the psychodynamic approach, emphasizing the unconscious mind and creating psychoanalysis.
What major shift in psychology happened in 1913?
John B. Watson promoted behaviourism, later joined by B.F. Skinner, marking the rise of the behaviourist approach.
What is the humanistic approach and who developed it in the 1950s?
Developed by Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, it emphasizes free will and self-determination, rejecting determinism.
What influenced the cognitive approach in the 1950s?
The advent of the digital computer provided a new metaphor for understanding mental processes
What theory did Albert Bandura introduce in the 1960s?
Social Learning Theory, which links cognitive processes with behaviourism.
What psychological perspective became dominant from the 1980s onward?
The biological approach, driven by technological advances in brain research.
What is cognitive neuroscience, and when did it emerge?
A discipline combining cognitive and biological psychology, emerging at the end of the 20th century to study how brain structures influence mental states.
strength of the emergence of psychology as a science
One strength is that research in modern psychology can claim to be scientific.
Psychology has the same aims as the natural sciences - to describe, understand, predict and control behaviour. The learning approaches, cognitive approach and biological approach all rely on the use of scientific methods, for example, lab studies to investigate theories in a controlled and unbiased way.
This suggests that throughout the 20th century and beyond, psychology has established itself as a scientific discipline.
limitation of the emergence of psychology as a science
One limitation with psychology is that not all approaches use objective methods.
The humanistic approach rejects the scientific approach, preferring to focus on individual experiences and subjective experience. The psychodynamic approach makes use of the case study method which does not use representative samples. Finally, the subject of study - human beings - are active participants in research, responding for example to demand characteristics.
Therefore a scientific approach to the study of human thought and experience may not always be desirable or possible.
