Notes on Intro to Psychology
Introduction to Psychology - Coursera/Yale
Module 1
Introductory Reading
- History of Psychology By David B. Baker and Heather Sperry University of Akron, The University of Akron
- Research Designs By Christie Napa Scollon Singapore Management University
Text 1
American-centric
Historical period:
For the purposes of this module, we will examine the development of psychology in America and use the mid-19th century as our starting point.
History (ours) is important to define who we are.
Precursors to psychology:
- philosphers (such as John Locke and Thomas Reid) who promoted empiricism → the idea that all knowledge comes from experience.
the role of the human observer and the primacy of the senses in defining how the mind comes to acquire knowledge.
early 1800s, universities, empiricism is taught courses on mental and moral philosophy. (hehehe morality and mental stuff...)
19th century, philosophical questions on mind & knowledge is matche by physiological investigations → sensory system of humans.
H. von Hemboltz (German) → measures speed of neuron impulse
senses can be deceived + mind is measurable by methods of "science"
psychological reality ø physical reality
philosophical speculation about the nature of mind became subject to the rigors of science.
psychophysics:
The question of the relationship between the mental (experiences of the senses) and the material (external reality)
The formal development of modern psychology = invention of experimental psychology.
German physician, physiologist, and philosopher Wilhelm Wundt :
Students were trained to offer detailed self-reports of their reactions to various stimuli, a procedure known as introspection.
The goal was to identify the elements of consciousness.
Studied:
- Sensation and perception
- Mental chronometry, more commonly known as reaction time.
Wundt → America via Edward Bradford Titchener: structuralism: describe the elements of concious experience
For Titchener, the general adult mind was the proper focus for the new psychology, and he excluded from study those with mental deficiencies, children, and animals
American Psychological Association (APA) in 1892
Titchner first student → women named Margaret Floy Washburn, who became first woman to earn a PhD and 2st woman president of APA.
Striking a balance between the science and practice of psychology continues to this day.
William James → functionalism : the utility of focus
influeced by Darwin's theory of evolution.
opened the way to animal an comparative psychology.
W. James wrote: Principles of Psychology:
James proposed that consciousness is ongoing and continuous; it cannot be isolated and reduced to elements. For James, consciousness helped us adapt to our environment in such ways as allowing us to make choices and have personal responsibility over those choices.
G. Stanley Hall:
- created the first journal of psychology in America, American Journal of Psychology.
- researched the process of adaptation and human development.
- mentored first black man who got a PhD in psychology, Francis Cecil Sumner, who become to be commonly known as the “Father of Black Psychology„
James McKeen Cattell:
- student of Wundt
- researched assessment of individual differences → Ways in which people differ in terms of their behavior, emotion, cognition, and development.
- promoted eugenics ... outch
- believed that mental abilities such as intelligence were inherited and could be measured using mental tests.
The Growth of Psychology
Gestalt Psychology Began in Germany.
Max Wertheimer
In opposition to Wundt's laboratory approach.
[They] believed that studying the whole of any experience was richer than studying individual aspects of that experience. The saying “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” is a Gestalt perspective.
Hypothesis: the mind processes information simultaneously rather than sequentially. Using Gestalt Principles, they explored the nature of learning and thinking.
Most early academics of this school of thought were Jewish, and fled Germany.
In America, Gestalt Psychology served as a precursor to cognitive Psychology (The study of mental processes).
Behaviorism early 20th John B. Watson (1878–1958) and B. F. Skinner (1904–1990)
Behaviorism ≠ mind → overt and observable behavior as proper subject. → hope to derive laws of learning → promote prediction + behavior control Ivan Pavlov influenced the early behaviorism in America → work on conditioned learning = learning + behavior = conditioned by environment and events outside of mind/consciousness.
Behaviorism dominated the American Psychology before 60s, until recognition of it's inability to fully explain human behavior, neglecting mental processes.
But turn to cognitive psy. was not new :
- 30s → British psychologist Frederic C. Bartlett (1886–1969): the constructive mind → people use past experiences to construct frameworks to understand new experiences.
major pioneers in American cognitive psychology: Jerome Bruner (1915–), Roger Brown (1925–1997), and George Miller (1920–2012).
- Bruner:
- cognitive aspects of sensation and perception.
- flashbulb memory : high detail vivid memory of emotionally significant event.
- tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
- Miller:
- working memory
- The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information, in 1956, one of most highly cited papers in Psychology.
- popular interpretation: number of bits of information an average human can hold in memory is 7 ± 2.
That is a bit cybernetic stuff. This also seems overly simplistic. I wonder how well this held out overtime.
- same time as computer science was growing + used as analogy to mind.
Applied Psychology in America
America → !! application of psychology to everyday life. !!! Mental testing (?)
Intelligence testing → Alfred Binet →
goal was to develop a test that would identify schoolchildren in need of educational support.
Introduced by Henry Goddard and standardized by Lewis Terman at Stanford Uni.
HUGE debate on nature/nurture → the relative contributions of heredity and environment in determining intelligence
employee selection, eyewitness testimony, and psychotherapy psychology of advertising and marketing industrial psychology and engineering psychology time and motion studies to improve efficiency in industry psychology of efficiency Clinical psychology
WWII = necessity for professional psychologists
scientist-practitioner model = both researcher and clinical study. scholar-practitioner = emphasis on clinical training. more common
Psychology and Society
SPSSI (Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues)
Helen Thompson Woolley → examined the assumption that women were overemotional compared to men and found that emotion did not influence women’s decisions any more than it did men’s.
Leta S. Hollingworth → found that menstruation did not negatively impact women’s cognitive or motor abilities.
Mamie Phipps Clark (1917–1983) and her husband Kenneth Clark → studied the psychology of race and demonstrated the ways in which school segregation negatively impacted the self-esteem of African American children.
Brown v. Board of Education, which ended school segregation
Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi)
Evelyn Hooker → “The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual,” → No significant differences in psychological adjustment between homosexual and heterosexual men → helped to de-pathologize homosexuality → contributed to the decision by the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.