PSY 105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Psychology Today, Human Brain, Behaviorism
16 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
1
Psychology Around Us
Psychology Around Us ............................................................................................................................................ 1
Chapter 1: ................................................................................................................................................................ 1
1. Define Psychology ....................................................................................................................................... 1
2. Psholog’s Roots i Philosoph ............................................................................................................... 2
3. Early days of psychology ............................................................................................................................. 2
4. Psychology Today ........................................................................................................................................ 5
Chapter 2 ................................................................................................................................................................. 5
Chapter 3 ................................................................................................................................................................. 9
Chapter 1:
1. Define Psychology
Psychology:
➢ The scientific study of the mind & behaviour
Mind
➢ Our private inner experiences of perceptions, thoughts, memories &
feelings
Behaviour
➢ Observable actions of human beginnings and non human animals
Questions in psychology:
➢ Why do we behave the way we do?
➢ Why do we get jealous?
➢ Why do we like to eat fat
➢ Why do we like praise?
Myths
➢ People use only 10% of their inner brains
➢ It is better to express anger than to bottle it up
➢ Some people are primarily right brained whereas others are primarily
left brained.
4 Goals of Psychologists
1. Description of what we observe
2. Explanation: ex. Why do we eat
3. Prediction of the circumstances that lead to the expression of a
certain behaviour.
4. How can we control behaviour?
How is behaviour different from mental processes?
Levels of analysis
Level
What is analyzed
Ex. Using social media
The Brain
➢ Neuro activity
➢ How brain
structure & brain
cell activity differ
from person to
person and in
situation to
situation
➢ What are the patterns of
brain activation as people
iterat ith frieds
online?
The Person
➢ Emotions, ideas,
thoughts
➢ Are there personality
factors that influence how
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2
➢ How the content
of the
idiidual’s
mental
processes form
& influence
behaviour
much people use different
types of social media?
➢ Can social support or crisis
online social support or
crisis resources improve
people’s deisio akig &
quality of life
The Group
➢ Friends, Family,
Culture
➢ What features of social
networking sites, such as
relative anonymity, ease of
access & lack of face to face
contact, increase or
derease user’s feeligs of
belonging &
connectedness?
➢
2. Psychology’s Roots in Philosophy
Philosophy
➢ The study of knowledge & reality
➢ Socrates (469-399 BCE), Plato (427-347 BCE) & Aristotle (348-322
BCE) posed questions & then discussed possible solutions to those
questions.
- This discourse was the beginning of modern processes of
scientific enquiry.
Hippocrates (460-377)
➢ Ancient Greek
➢ Argued that the brain is the organ of mental life.
➢ By the 1600s modern science began to thrive
Rene Descartes (1593-1650)
➢ Thought that the brain controlled the body via the movement of
fluids within tubes that ran through the body.
Johannes Muller (1801-1853)
➢ Advocated for scientists to study the relationship between physical
stimuli & their psychological effects.
Herman Von Helmholtz (1821-
1853)
➢ Measured the speed of neural impulses.
➢ Discovered that neural impulses were not instantaneous.
3. Early days of psychology
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
➢ Proposed the theory of evolution in his book The Origin of the
Species.
➢ All life on earth comes from one common ancestor – a radical idea.
➢ Natural Selection – hae ariatios i oe’s ehaiour are passed
down from parents to children.
➢ Some of these are more advantageous than others
- They help an organism survive & are called adaptive variations.
Evolutionary Psychology
➢ A psychological approach that explains mind & behaviour in terms of
adaptive value of abilities that are preserved over time by natural
selection
Theories can be tested, propelled by E.O Wilson & Hamilton.
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3
➢ Misunderstood, often equated with determinism which false
➢ From evolutionary view, to understand the organism, one must first
study the bottom layer, ie. Genes, biology etc.
➢ Evolutionary psychologists view humans as any other animal &
studies adaptive behaviour to help organism survive
➢ Interaction with environment
➢ Nature via nurture.
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)
Voluntarism.
➢ Father of psychology
➢ Originally psychology was indistinguishable from Philosophy but that
changed with his study of Voluntarism.
➢ He focused on the study of consciousness.
Edward Titchener (1867-1927)
Structuralism
➢ Developed Structuralism as an attempt to try to identify all of the
elements of consciousness
➢ The goal of structuralism is to describe observable processes rather
than to explain, predict or control.
• Introspection
➢ The careful reflective & systematic observation of the details of
mental processes and how simple thoughts combine into complex
ideas.
William James (1842-1910)
Functionalism
➢ Functionalism – The flow of consciousness.
➢ Set up the first psychology lab in the US at Harvard.
➢ Wrote the first psychology textbook, Principles of Psychology, which
was published in 1890.
➢ Jaes elieed that etal proesses ere fluid strea of
osiousess istead of fied eleets struturalist’s iepoit
➢ Emphasis on the functions of the mind in adapting to changing
environment
➢ Functionalist scientists used empirical methods that focused on the
causes and consequences of behaviour.
➢ Emphasis was also placed on studying animals, children and
individuals with mental disorders.
Gestalt Psychologists
➢ Said consciousness CANNOT be broken down into elements
➢ We perceived things as whole perceptual units
➢ The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
➢ Learning is tied to what we perceive.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis – The psychology of the unconscious,
- A form of therapy that Freud develop aimed to resolve
unconscious conflicts.
➢ The elief that people’s behaviours are based on their unconscious
desires and conflicts
• Unconscious
➢ The part of the mind that operates outside of conscious awareness
but influences thoughts, feelings, actions
➢ Controversial for his time because it talked about sexuality, violence
➢ Theories are difficult to test
➢ Generalized from abnormal patients to general population (not a
good idea)
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Document Summary
Chapter 1: 1: define psychology 1, ps(cid:455)(cid:272)holog(cid:455)"s roots i(cid:374) philosoph(cid:455) 2. Early days of psychology 2: psychology today 5. The scientific study of the mind & behaviour. Our private inner experiences of perceptions, thoughts, memories & feelings. Observable actions of human beginnings and non human animals. Why do we like to eat fat. People use only 10% of their inner brains. It is better to express anger than to bottle it up. Some people are primarily right brained whereas others are primarily left brained: description of what we observe, explanation: ex. How brain structure & brain cell activity differ from person to person and in situation to situation. Are there personality thoughts factors that influence how. How the content of the i(cid:374)di(cid:448)idual"s mental processes form. Can social support or crisis online social support or crisis resources improve people"s de(cid:272)isio(cid:374) (cid:373)aki(cid:374)g & quality of life.
