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Psychology Chapter 1: What is Psychology?

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Title: Psychology Chapter 1: What is Psychology?


1
Psychology Chapter 1 What is Psychology?
  • Section 1 The Science of Psychology

2
  • Psychologists take as their subjects the entire
    spectrum of human beings as well as animals
  • Want to know why people do things
  • Want to know how people and animals solve
    problems, learn, remember, perceive, feel, get
    along or dont get along with others

3
  • Study child rearing, gossiping, remembering a
    shopping list, daydreaming, etc
  • What makes people tick

4
  • Definition- the discipline concerned with
    behavior mental processes how they are
    affected by an organisms physical mental state
    external environment

5
Psychology, Pseudoscience, Common Sense
  • What Psychology is NOT
  • pop psych
  • Self help books talk shows
  • A pseudoscience promising a quick fix to lifes
    problems

6
  • Serious psych is more complex, more informative
    based on rigorous research empirical evidence
  • Evidence gathered by careful observation,
    experimentation, and measurement.

7
  • Not handwriting analysis, fortune telling,
    numerology, or astrology
  • Psychology is not just a fancy name for common
    sense
  • Psychological research often produces findings
    that contradict popular beliefs

8
The Birth of Modern Psychology
  • Like todays psychologists they wanted to
    describe, predict, understand, modify behavior
    in order to add to human knowledge increase
    human happiness
  • Didnt rely on empirical evidence

9
  • Hippocrates
  • Father of modern medicine
  • Observed patients with head injuries inferred
    that the brain must be the source of our
    pleasures, joys, laughter, sorrows, pains, grief,
    tears

10
  • Bumpy Logic
  • Phrenology Study of the mind
  • Popular in the early 1800s
  • Argued that different areas of the brain
    accounted for specific character personality
    traits could be determined by the bumps on the
    head

11
  • 1879- First psychology lab was officially
    established in Leipzig, Germany by Wilhelm Wundt
  • Trained introspection- volunteers were taught to
    carefully observe, analyze, describe their own
    sensations, mental images, emotional reactions

12
  • Goal is to break down behavior into its most
    basic elements
  • Later rejected for being too subjective
  • Still important to making psychology a science

13
  • Functionalism- emphasized the function of
    behavior
  • William James
  • Looked at the causes consequences of behavior

14
  • Psychotherapy
  • Sigmund Freud
  • Psychoanalysis- emphasized unconscious motives
    conflicts
  • Psychology eventually grew into a complex
    discipline encompassing many different
    specialties, perspectives, methods

15
Psychologys Present
  • Five Major Theoretical Perspectives
  • Reflecting the different assumptions about how
    the mind works, different questions that
    psychologists ask about human behavior,
    different ways of explaining why people do what
    they do

16
1. Biological Perspective
  • Emphasizes bodily events and changes associated
    with actions, feelings, and thoughts
  • Study how physical events interact with events in
    the external environment to produce perceptions,
    memories, emotions, etc

17
  • Investigate the contribution of genes other
    biological factors to the development of
    abilities personality traits
  • Evolutionary psychology- focuses on how
    genetically influenced behavior that was
    functional or adaptive during our evolutionary
    past may be reflected in our present behavior,
    mental processes, traits

18
2. Learning Perspective
  • Emphasizes how the environment and experience
    affect a person's or animal's actions
  • Behaviorists focus on the environmental rewards
    punishers that maintain or discourage specific
    behavior
  • Look at what they can observe measure directly

19
  • Social Cognitive learning theorists combine
    behaviorism with research on thoughts, values,
    intentions
  • People learning by adapting their behavior to the
    environment by imitating others, by thinking
    about the events happening around them

20
3. Cognitive Perspective
  • Emphasizes mental processes in perception,
    memory, language, problem solving, and other
    areas of behavior
  • What goes on in peoples heads, how they reason,
    explain experiences, acquire moral standards,
    form beliefs

21
  • Infer mental processes from observed behavior
  • Show how our thoughts explanations of events
    affect what we feel do

22
4. Sociocultural Perspective
  • Emphasizes social and cultural forces outside the
    individual, forces that shape every aspect of
    behavior
  • Most of us underestimate the impact of other
    people, the social context, cultural rules on
    nearly everything we do

23
5. Psychodynamic Perspective
  • Emphasizes unconscious dynamics within the
    individual, such as inner forces, conflicts, or
    the movement of instinctual energy
  • Says that psychologists should focus in what
    really matter to most people- their hopes
    aspirations

24
  • positive psychology- focuses on the qualities
    that enable people to be happy, optimistic,
    resilient in times of stress
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