PSY 181 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Complex System, Motivation, Human Behavior

• School: University of Rochester
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 181
• Professor: C H R I S T O P H E R N I E M I E C

Document Summary

Reductionist view: approach to understanding the nature of complex things involving reducing complex things to the interaction among their component parts. Complex systems (including humans) are nothing more than the sum of their parts. Popular meta-theory in psychology that can be used to explain personality, psychological disorders, and addictions . incorporating genetics, biology, and neuroscience. Psychological experiences can be reduced to biology, biology can be reduced to chemistry, and chemistry can be reduced to physics. Mechanistic view: assumes that humans are nothing but machines. Human behavior can be explained using material and efficient causes. We are wholly controlled by outside, environmental forces, so awareness and other internal phenomena don"t explain behavior. This is the basis for the stimulus-response model of human behavior. Environmental stimuli reinforce and elicit certain behavioral responses. Organismic view: begins with assumption that living things differ from non-living things. Living things show tendencies toward assimilation of and accommodation to new material.