PSYC 100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Descriptive Statistics, Central Tendency, Criterion Validity

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Professor Jens Pruessner

Document Summary

Psychology science of behavior and mental processes. Answers are sought using the methods of science. Allows one to reach informed conclusions and generate new questions. Psychological research methods use insights and explanations to understand the world. Chinese/muslim philosophers and scientists speculated about human behavior. In nineteenth-century europe, psychology emerged as a scientific discipline. Ancient greek philosophers aristotle and plato debated the source of human psychology. Received view today: nature and nurture influence each other and are inseparable. Early scholars: the mind is entirely separate from and in control of the body. 1600s: cartesian dualism suggested body and mind were indeed separate but that some mental functions resulted from bodily functions. Early 1800s: john stuart mill argued psychology should be a science of observation and of experiment. 1879: wilhelm wundt established the first psychology laboratory. Laboratories were established throughout europe, canada, and the united states. Edward titchener: pioneered a school of thought that became known as structuralism.