PSYC 100 Study Guide - Naturalistic Observation, Empiricism, Ancient Greek

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Ingrid Johnsrude

Document Summary

A behavior is any action that can be observed, recorded, and measured. Rationalism: the pursuit of truth through reason and logic. Socrates concluded that our perceptions are not always the same as reality. Empiricism: the belief that people can describe the world through rules generated by observation, quantification, and the principle of parsimony. This approach was applied to questions about why people do the things they do. Ernst weber, and gustav fechner founded the discipline of psychology known as psychophysics. Psychophysicist measured the relationship between changes in the magnitude of the physical energy in a stimulus (light intensity) and our sensation of the changes in stimulus magnitude (how we perceive its brightness). They discovered that physical and sensory magnitudes were not equivalent. Founding fathers of psychology are wilhelm and william. Wilhelm focused on smaller elements that made up human experience. William focused on purposes associated with various human traits.