Understanding Psychology: Theoretical Perspectives and Historical Developments, Assignments of Psychology

Download Understanding Psychology: Theoretical Perspectives and Historical Developments and more Assignments Psychology in PDF only on Docsity!

General Psychology-online

Fall 2019

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY?

THE THEORETICAL

PERSPECTIVES OF

PSYCHOLOGY

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 The History of Psychology: Theoretical Perspectives I. Psychology – give a definition and explain what it means Psychology is the scientific investigation of the human and animal mental processes and behaviors. We can infer from the above definition that Psychology is a study of the nature and responses of the mind, through observation and experimentation (scientific method). It aims to understand and give an explanation of humans mental processes such as thinking, memory, emotions, and perceptions that affect our behavior, with the help of paradigms (models, metaphors, and methods), and points of view (perspectives). A. “Nature” – or Biology. Text: “The Boundary with Biology”.

1. Explain Biopsychology Biopsychology or behavioral neuroscience is the branch of psychology that analyzes how the nervous system and its electrical and chemical processes influence the human behavior. This study started when doctors found a relationship between severe head injuries and changes on the speech, memory, and a switch in their patients’ personalities. 2. Phenomenon: Phineas Gage. Who was he? What does his famous case of brain damage illustrate? Phineas Gage is possibly the most famous person to have survived a very dramatic accident that severely damaged the front part of his brain. Gage was a railroad construction foreman in 1848 when an explosion at work caused an iron rod to go through his head, destroying most of the left frontal lobe of his brain. This was perhaps first time when a brain injury was linked to the striking change of in behavior and personality. People who knew Phineas would say that he was a totally different person, acting rude and uncivil, and not being capable of resuming his work responsibilities. This case sparked scientific curiosity and marked the beginning of experimentation with the brains in animals such as surgical extraction of its parts to analyze any subsequent changes in the subject’s behavior. 3. Explain localization of function. Use Broca’s area as an example in your explanation. You will need to look it up outside the text. The localization of function is the idea that different parts of the brain are related or are responsible for different parts of human processes or for specific behaviors like speech, memory, or personality. General Psychology

Chapter 1 II. From Philosophy to Psychology A. 1879 – the first scientific approach to studying the mind. Wundt establishes the 1st psychology lab. His method of observing the mind was called introspection****. Explain it. Willem Wundt is considered the father of experimental psychology. He founded the very first psychological laboratory in Germany where he used the scientific method to study psychology. In his experimentation he and his students used a method called introspection to learn about conscious mental states. Wundt’s introspection consisted of a group of observers reporting verbally on what was going on in their minds. It encouraged them to a self-examination of their mental and emotional processes. A good example of introspection that one can do at home is meditation, which allows a person to be more aware and conscious of their surroundings and feelings. B. Titchener develops introspection into the first way of thinking about psychology called “ Structuralism ”. Explain it. Edward Titchener along with Willem Wundt created the theory of structuralism utilizing introspection as a way of conducting their experimentations. Titchener believed that consciousness could be broken down into elements which could be identified and arranged into a table, just like the table of elements in chemistry. This way the processes elements could be quickly identified and help to identify how they work together. His overall goal was to create a structural form of the consciousness, thus this method received the name of structuralism. C. Explain the other early school of thought, functionalism. Functionalism is the study of consciousness focused on the psychological processes of the human mind to adapt to the environment. William James was one the founders of this school of thought. He believed that not only what is in the mind is what affects the psychological processes, but also what is around an individual, like children, animals, the mentally ill, etc. The main point of functionalism is that consciousness exists because it servers a function, and trying to find and understand what that function is its goal III. Theoretical Perspective or Paradigm Explain this VERY important idea – what is a paradigm? A paradigm is a written or unwritten law, a set of ideas or a belief system, which includes sets of models, metaphors, and methods that help constitute contributions to a field, and to obtain useful data. All of these components of a paradigm have to be approved and the General Psychology

Chapter 1 members of the scientific community have to agree on them. For example, astronomers agree that telescopic investigation provides a window to events in space. A known paradigm in biology is evolution, a change in the characteristics of a species over a number of generations that increases the survival of such species on the process of natural selection. In psychology there’s a lack of a unified paradigms due to presence of many different methods, ideas, and perspectives used in the pursuit to understand the human mind. IV. The Psychodynamic Perspective ~ A. Explain what Freud meant by psychodynamics – the motives, or emotional forces, that control our behavior. Go beyond the text and use an example to illustrate. Sigmund Freud was a neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, a theory that deals with the unconscious part of the mind. He believed that specific behaviors, psychological disorders, and personalities are the result of unconscious psychological processes, repressed experiences that we are not aware of. Freud was convinced that childhood experiences are the basis of adult’s personalities. The purpose of psychodynamics’ tools is to help an individual to bring up those repressed feelings, emotions, and experiences to the conscious mind and analyze them. A good example of the use of retrospection in psychodynamics is the case of Ana O. Ana O. was a patient of Freud’s close friend Joseph Breuer. One of the many symptoms that Ana presented was a paralysis in her right arm and leg. In her talks with Breuer she brought up a dream, where she was sitting on the bedside of a sick person and a snake would appear to attack this individual. Anna would be unable to defend this person from the snake because she couldn’t move, she felt paralyzed. This dream was then linked with the fact that Ana had taken care of her ill father for a long period of time, sometime during this event Anna also fell sick, being uncapable to stay next to her father during his final days. Her realization and linkage to these events, the dream and death of der father, helped her to recover. B. What does Freud mean by the idea that our most important motives – the most important psychodynamics – are unconscious? Freud deducted that the humans’ most important motives must be unconscious given the fact that a wide scope of psychological disorders doesn’t seem to have physical basis and that they are not consciously created. Feelings, motives, and decisions are very much influenced by our past experiences stored in our unconscious, and we have no idea what information is stored in there. General Psychology

Chapter 1 B. Behaviorists believe that human behavior is completely controlled by the environment/ environmental stimuli. Explain this statement. Can you describe an example to illustrate? Behaviors that bring pleasurable consequences are more likely to be repeated that those that resulted in unpleasant ones. For example, a kid would avoid touching the hot furnace that almost burned their hand once but would splash in the tub repeatedly because it brings them joy. The consequences of these acts were learned resulting in the behavior of avoiding and repeating such actions in the future. VI. The Cognitive Perspective (also a* field of study ) ~1950s-60s A. Explain this paradigm. Make sure you explain:

1. What cognition, or information processing, is Cognition is referred to the process of thinking, to the action of collecting knowledge, the way we understand and perceive it, and the way we use or retrieve that knowledge. The understanding of the internal mental processes used in the way we think are the focus of the cognitive perspective. Some of the mental processes that this school of psychology works with are: perception, thinking, memory, attention, language, problem solving, and learning. 2. Give two examples of “cognition” a) Problem solving. Search a solution for a given problem. To solve a problem, the mind goes through a process of thinking. It gathers information surrounding the problem, retrieves solutions from memory or creates new ones from where you then judge them and decide which is the most fitting one according to your needs, implements the solution, and obtains results. b) Judgement and decision. Process where you make a choice between alternatives. For example: you need to travel from point a to point b, the problem is how to get there. The information that involves this problem are how far point b is and how soon you have to reach it. Some solutions you come up with are walking, driving, or taking the bus to point b. According to the problem and the gathered information, you decide on one of the solutions and apply it. B. Cognitive psychologists liken the mind to a computer****. Explain why the computer is a fitting metaphor for the cognitive perspective. General Psychology

Chapter 1 The cognitive perspective examines the way we perceive, process, and retrieve information. In general, the way a computer works is by taking inputs or information, processing the inputs based on a program, and then producing outputs or results. Looking at these two descriptions, you can notice that they seem to have the same components.

1. Perceive / inputs.
2. Process.
3. Retrieve / outputs. That’s the reason why it is reasonable to compare the human mind to a computer. VII. The Evolutionary Perspective A. Explain this way of thinking about human psychology Charles Darwin was an English naturalist. He proposed a theory of evolution through natural selection. This theory states that all species develop through natural selection of genetic alterations that help increase a species’ ability to survive and reproduce. The evolutionary perspective is a psychological point of view based on the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin. It claims that patterns of human behaviors have evolved though natural selection. Because of it our ancestors survived and increased their chances to reproduce. These alterations are kept and passed down from generation to generation. Thus, if we want to understand the human mental processes and behaviors, we should take a closer look at their evolution. B. This perspective is based on Darwin’s theory of evolution: Natural Selection. Explain natural selection by giving an example of an adaptive trait – one that promotes the ability of a species to adapt to its environment, survive and reproduce. An adaptive trait is a genetic feature that helps an organism to increase its reproductive achievement. For example: Many kinds of sharks use “countershading” as camouflage, they are blue or gray on the top and white on the underside. The shade on their tops help them blend with the water color and sea bottom if someone is looking form above, and the bottom shade blends them from the light that comes through water if you are looking from below. Camouflage makes the sharks hard to be noticed while hunting and hard to be spotted by predators thereby giving them better chances of survival. C. Inclusive fitness – explain this concept, and how it is used by evolutionary psychologists to explain human behavior General Psychology

Chapter 1 Behaviors, psychological disorders, and personalities are the result of unconscious, repressed experiences (especially experiences form childhood) that we are not aware of.

Very well done! You obviously put considerable care into this. A few important

points to develop understanding of concepts:

What did the case of Phineas Gage illustrate? Not just that the brain injury

affected his personality, or the impact of brain damage on behavior. It was

one of the first demonstrations of how the brain controls behavior.

A paradigm is not a scientific law.

Psychologists study the mind – mental processes - and behavior. Theoretical perspectives are different ways of thinking about/ understanding the mind and/or behavior. The mind and behavior are both abstract, especially the “mind”. The purpose of theoretical perspectives in psychology is to make sense of phenomena, which in psychology are patterns of behavior that can be observed, as in an experiment. Each perspective explains the mind and/or behavior by proposing different ideas – such as unconscious motivation (psychodynamic), brain “circuits” (neuroscientific/ biological), conditioning (behaviorism), and natural selection (evolutionary).

First-rate understanding of the psychodynamic perspective and Freud,

behaviorism, and the cognitive paradigm.

How is Darwin's theory of natural selection applied in the evolutionary

perspective? The main idea is that natural selection doesn’t just apply to

physical traits, but also to behaviors that are adaptive and thus promote the

survival/ propagation of a species – again, provided the behavior is influenced

by genes, so it can be passed from one generation to the next. Inclusive

fitness is a good example.

General Psychology