History and Foundations of Psychology
Aristotle: argued human behavior was subject to rules and laws
Democritus: think of behavior as terms of body and mind. Behavior is influenced by external stimulation.
Socrates: rely on rational thought and introspection or examination of one's own thoughts and emotions to gain self knowledge. People are social creatures and influence each other.
Gustav Theodor Fechner: published book Elements of Psychophysics which showed how physical events stimulate psychological sensations and perception.
The founding of psychology as an experimental science is generally credited to a German scientist, Wilhelm Wundt. He studied mental experiences and used a method known as introspection, which is an attempt to directly study consciousness by having people report on what they are consciously experiencing. He also established the world’s first scientific laboratory dedicated to the study of psychology in Germany.
Edward Titchener, Wundt's disciple, brought Wundt's ideas to the United States and the rest of the world. The school of psychology that attempts to understand the structure of the mind by breaking it down into its component parts is known as structuralism. Structuralism: attempted to break conscious experience down into objective sensations
The first American to work in Wundt’s experimental laboratory was the psychologist G. Stanley Hall. Hall founded the American Psychological Association (APA).
William James, recognized as the father of American psychology, founded functionalism, the school of psychology that focused on how behavior helps individuals adapt to demands placed upon them in the environment.
- Focused on the Behavior as well as the mind or consciousness
- Argued that the stream of consciousness is fluid and continuous
- Experiences help us function more adaptively to are environments
Charles Darwin: theory of evolution
- Organisms that are the fittest, survive and reproduce
In the early 1900s, a new force in psychology came about called behaviorism. The founder of behaviorism was the American psychologist John Broadus Watson. Behaviorism was based on the belief that psychology would advance as a science only if it turned away from the study of mental processes and limited itself to the study of observable behaviors that could be recorded and measured.
Early work in the field of behavior was conducted by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov studied a form of learning behavior called a conditioned reflex, in which an animal or human produced a reflex (unconscious) response to a stimulus and, over time, was conditioned to produce the response to a different stimulus that the experimenter associated with the original stimulus. The reflex Pavlov worked with was salivation in response to the presence of food.
Behaviorism became popular due to psychologist B. F. Skinner. Skinner studied how behavior is shaped by rewards and punishments. Skinner showed he could train animals, such as pigeons or rats, to perform simple behaviors by rewarding particular responses. Skinner also showed how advanced behaviors could be learned and maintained by adding the idea of rewards, which he called reinforcers. As a part of his research, Skinner developed a chamber that allowed the careful study of the principles of modifying behavior through reinforcement and punishment. This device, known as an operant conditioning chamber or more familiarly, a Skinner box.
Gestalt psychology, the school of psychology that studies ways in which the brain organizes and structures our perceptions of the world was established by Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Kohler.
Wolfgang Kohler: Research with chimpanzee: Flash of Insight in other wards we rearrange the situation in order to come up with a solution to the problem.
Austrian physician named Sigmund Freud, studied the region of the mind known as unconscious. Freud’s model of therapy, called psychoanalysis, is based on the belief that therapeutic change comes from uncovering and working through unconscious conflicts within the personality.
Psychoanalysis: theory of personality and the method of psychotherapy. Most of our ideas are governed by unconscious ideas and impulses that originate in childhood conflicts
During the early 20th century, American psychology was dominated by behaviorism and psychoanalysis. However, some psychologists were uncomfortable with what they viewed as limited perspectives being so influential to the field. Thus, humanism emerged. Humanism is a perspective within psychology that emphasizes the potential for good that is innate to all humans. Two of the most well-known proponents of humanistic psychology are Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers
By the 1950s, new disciplinary perspectives in linguistics, neuroscience, and computer science were emerging, and these areas revived interest in the mind as a focus of scientific inquiry. This particular perspective has come to be known as the cognitive revolution
By Dr. Saul McLeod, updated 2019
Psychology is the scientific study of the mind and behavior, according to the American Psychological Association. Psychology is a multifaceted discipline and includes many sub-fields of study such areas as human development, sports, health, clinical, social behavior and cognitive processes.
Psychology is really a very new science, with most advances happening over the past 150 years or so. However, its origins can be traced back to ancient Greece, 400 – 500 years BC.
The emphasis was a philosophical one, with great thinkers such as Socrates (470 BC – 399 BC) influencing Plato (428/427 BC – 348/347 BC), who in turn influenced Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC).
Please enable JavaScript
What is Psychology?Philosophers used to discuss many topics now studied by modern psychology, such as memory, free will vs determinism, nature vs. nurture, attraction etc.
The Beginnings of Psychology as a Discipline
In the early days of psychology there were two dominant theoretical perspectives regarding how the brain worked, structuralism and functionalism.
Structuralism was the name given to the approach pioneered by Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), which focused on breaking down mental processes intro the most basic components.
The term originated from Edward Titchener, an American psychologist who had been trained by Wundt. Wundt was important because he separated psychology from philosophy by analyzing the workings of the mind in a more structured way, with the emphasis being on objective measurement and control.
Structuralism relied on trained introspection, a research method whereby subjects related what was going on in their minds while performing a certain task.
However, introspection proved to be an unreliable method because there was too much individual variation in the experiences and reports of research subjects.
Despite the failure of introspection Wundt is an important figure in the history of psychology as he opened the first laboratory dedicated to psychology in 1879, and its opening is usually thought of as the beginning of modern experimental psychology.
An American psychologist named William James (1842-1910) developed an approach which came to be known as functionalism, that disagreed with the focus of Structuralism.
James argued that the mind is constantly changing and it is pointless to look for the structure of conscious experience. Rather, he proposed the focus should be on how and why an organism does something, i.e. the functions or purpose of the brain.
James suggested that psychologists should look for the underlying cause of behavior and the mental processes involved. This emphasis on the causes and consequences of behavior has influenced contemporary psychology.
The Perspectives of Psychology
Structuralism and functionalism have since been replaced by several dominant and influential approaches to psychology, each one underpinned by a shared set of assumptions of what people are like, what is important to study and how to study it.
Psychoanalysis, founded by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was the dominant paradigm in psychology during the early twentieth century. Freud believed that people could be cured by making conscious their unconscious thoughts and motivations, thus gaining insight.
Freud’s psychoanalysis was the original psychodynamic theory, but the psychodynamic approach as a whole includes all theories that were based on his ideas, e.g., Jung (1964), Adler (1927) and Erikson (1950).
The classic contemporary perspectives in psychology to adopt scientific strategies were the behaviorists, who were renowned for their reliance on controlled laboratory experiments and rejection of any unseen or unconscious forces as causes of behavior.
Later, the humanistic approach became the 'third force' in psychology and proposed the importance of subjective experience and personal growth.
During the 1960s and 1970s, psychology began a cognitive revolution, adopting a rigorous, scientific, lab-based scientific approach with application to memory, perception, cognitive development, mental illness, and much more.
The Goals of Psychology
The four main goals of psychology are to describe, explain, predict and change the behavior and mental processes of others
To Describe
Describing a behavior or cognition is the first goal of psychology. This can enable researchers to develop general laws of human behavior.
For example, through describing the response of dogs to various stimuli, Ivan Pavlov helped develop laws of learning known as classical conditioning theory.
To Explain
Once researchers have described general laws behavior, the next step is to explain how or why this trend occurs. Psychologists will propose theories which can explain a behavior.
To Predict
Psychology aims to be able to predict future behavior from the findings of empirical research. If a prediction is not confirmed, then the explanation it is based on might need to be revised.
For example, classical conditioning predicts that if a person associates a negative outcome with a stimuli they may develop a phobia or aversion of the stimuli.
To Change
Once psychology has described, explained and made predictions about behavior, changing or controlling a behavior can be attempted.
For example, interventions based on classical conditioning, such as systematic desensitization, have been used to treat people with anxiety disorders including phobias.
Critical Evaluation
Kuhn (1962) argues that a field of study can only legitimately be regarded as a science if most of its followers subscribe to a common perspective or paradigm.
Kuhn believes that psychology is still pre-paradigmatic, while others believe it’s already experienced scientific revolutions (Wundt’s structuralism being replaced by Watson’s behaviorism, in turn, replaced by the information-processing approach).
The crucial point here is: can psychology be considered a science if psychologists disagree about what to study and how to study it?How to reference this article:
McLeod, S. A. (2019). What is psychology? Retrieved from //www.simplypsychology.org/whatispsychology.html
How to reference this article:
McLeod, S. A. (2019). What is psychology? Retrieved from //www.simplypsychology.org/whatispsychology.html
Home | About Us | Privacy Policy | Advertise | Contact Us
Simply Psychology's content is for informational and educational purposes only. Our website is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
© Simply Scholar Ltd - All rights reserved