Psychology 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Circadian Rhythm, Unconscious Mind, Sigmund Freud

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Laura Fazakas- De Hoog

Document Summary

State of consciousness: psychologists mean a pattern of subjective experience, a way of experiencing internal and external events. Consciousness is defined as our moment-to-moment awareness of ourselves and our environment: subjective and private, dynamic and ever-changing, self-reflective and central to our sense of self, intimately connected with the process of selective attention. Scientists must operationally define private inner states in terms of measurable responses processes: self report, but can be subjective and not verifiable, physiological measures, correspondence between body and mental, behavioural measures, measuring performance on special tasks, objective. Behaviourists criticized his model and sought to explain behaviour without invoking conscious mental process, much less unconscious ones. However, research supports his general premise that non-conscious processes influence behaviour. Cognitive psychologists reject the notion of an unconscious mind driven by instinctive urges and view conscious and unconscious mental life as complementary forms of information processing: controlled processing is the voluntary use of attention and conscious effort.