History of Psychology

Getting a history of the fields helps to make sense of where we are and how we got there.

Prehistory of Psychology

Empiricism: all knowledge comes from experience

Physiology and Psychophysics

Even though the human senses were fallible, the mind could be measured using the methods of science

Physical reality and psychological reality are not identical

Introspection: detailed self-reports of their reactiosn to various → identify the elements of consciousness

the mind could be measured and the nature of consciousness could be revealed through scientific means

Scientific Psychology

Structuralism: structuralists were interested in the contents of the mind—what the mind is.

Functional Psychology

Functionalism: interested in the activities of the mind—what the mind does

Consciousness is ongoing and continuous; it cannot be isolated and reduced to elements.
Consciousness helped us adapt to our environment in such ways as allowing us to make choices and have personal responsibility over those choices.

Assessment of individual differences: mental abilities such as intelligence were inherited and could be measured using mental tests

Eugenics: the promotion of selective breeding society was better served by identifying those with superior intelligence and supported efforts to encourage them to reproduce

The Growth of Psychology

Gestalt: studying the whole of any experience was richer than studyingg individual aspects of that experience → precursor to teh rise of cognitive psychology

Behaviorism: reject any reference to mind and view overt and observable hebavior as the proper subject matter of psychology

Through the scientific study of behavior, it was hoped that laws of learning could be derived that would promote the prediction and control of behavior.

Conditioned learning, popularly referred to as classical conditioning, provided support for the notion that learning and behavior were controlled by events in the environment and could be explained with no reference to mind or consciousness

Cognitive Psychology: constructive mind, recognizing that people use their past experiences to construct frameworks in which to understand new experiences.

Flashbulb memory: a highly vivid and detailed 'snapshot' of a moment in which a consequential, surprising, and emotionally arousing piece of news was learned.

Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: a state in which one cannot quite recall a familiar word but can recall words of similar form and meaning.

Working memory: a cognitive system with a limited capacity that can hold information temporarily (7 ± 2 bits)

Applied Psychology in America

mental testing: nature-nurture debate that raises questions about the relative contributions of heredity and environment in determining intelligence

Psychology as a Profession

Scientist-practitioner model

Scholar-practitioner model