Intro.

to psychology

1A
Psychology is a new discipline that established in Europe is used to be known as :
Mental philosophy, its defined as the scientific study of the causes of the behavior.
“It is not a common sense “
It includes many branches which are :

Look + Memorize each of them!

Psychologist Psychiatrists Psychoanalysts

normally holds a university Specialized in the causes specific types of counsellors
degree in a behavior-related and treatment of mental who attempt to understand
discipline. disorder. (They are mental disorder by
medically qualified). reference to the workings of
the unconscious.
Explain a behavior occurs in two steps :
 describe is accurately and comprehensively (we must become familiar with
the things people or animals do) and learn how to categorize and measure
that behavior (see it’s nature) in order to be sure that all psychologists are
observing the same phenomena.
 we must discover the causes (The events) that behavior occurs in (The
responsible)
We call the events that cause other events (The responsible) or (the causes)
CASUAL EVENTS.
1B
Modern psychology has its origins in Europe: the first psychological laboratory
was established in Europe.
Most psychologists work in the clinical, educational, or organizational fields.

In Denmark In Greece In the UK

No one could call a law was passed in 1979 Some job titles with the
themselves a licensing psychologists to word “psychologist” in
psychologist unless they practice. are legally protected –
had received specified you cannot call yourself
training. one of these unless you
are qualified.

These are: practitioner psychologist, registered psychologist, clinical

psychologist, forensic psychologist, counselling psychologist, health
psychologist, educational psychologist, occupational psychologist and sport
and exercise psychologist. The title “psychologist” alone is not legally
protected.

Philosophical roots of psychology:

- Animism (Mind and Spirit):

we all are controlled by our minds and spirit.
Even the gravity was explained from a spiritual aspect: “Rocks fell to the ground
because the spirits within them wanted to be reunited with Mother Earth.”

- Dualism: Rene Descartes was the father of that modern philosophy, he

tended to believe that (Animals -including humans- were like machines;
their behavior is controlled by the environmental stimuli).
He described some movements as automatic and involuntary, he also divided
reality into two distinct entities:

o Mind
o Matter (Body)
 He linked between them in a place called: Pineal body (The mind's decision
to perform an action involves tilting the pineal body, causing fluid flow into
the brain, causing muscles to inflate and move).

- Empiricism
People used to believe that ideas were present in our minds from birth, but the
philosopher John Locke rejected this belief, and he proposed that all knowledge
must come through experience: it is empirically derived.
This idea was developed by David Hume, who argued that the study of human
nature could best be undertaken through experience and observation.

Hume suggested 3 specific types of association:

1) resemblance.
2) contiguities.
3) cause and effect.

- Idealism
George Berkeley believed that our knowledge of events in the world did not
come simply from direct experience, he argued that this knowledge is the result
of inferences based on the accumulation of past experiences derived through the
senses - Our knowledge is based on past experiences, and begins from easy
(simple) to hard (complicated) –

- Materialism
According to the philosopher James Mill, is the belief that reality can be
known only through an understanding of the physical world, of which the mind
is a part.

1C
Schools of thought

 Structuralism
William Wundt
“Defined psychology as the “science of immediate experience”
It focuses on the structure of mind built from the elements of consciousness
(Ideas and sensations) it’s about the direct experiences.

His aims were threefold:

1) Analyze the contents of conscious experience.
2) Determine how the elements of consciousness are connected.
3) Devise a law which would explain such connections.

William Wundt, Edward Titchener, and Gustav Fechner …

They were trying to understand how our minds work. They did this by
showing different things to people and asking them to describe what they
saw or felt.

Wundt claimed that when we perceive, this perception is of a whole object and
not separate elements of it (When you see an object, you wll recognize the
whole thing not a few parts of it – giving it a meaning – not just looking at it
(That’s called “apperception”)
His work also aimed to break down and analyze the contents of the mind rather
than determine how they are combined.

 Memory
Hermann Ebbinghaus
“Devised methods to measure memory and how fast we forget things.”
He realized that he could not compare the learning and forgetting of two prose
passages or two poems because some passages would undoubtedly be easier to
learn than others.

 Functionalism “Against the structuralism of Wundt”

William James
“Stressed the biological significance (the purpose, or function) of natural
processes, including observable behaviors.”
He believes Thinking comes before the behavior.

James Angell described the basic principles of functionalism:

- Functional psychology is the study of mental operations and not mental

structures :
(To know brain functions = we need to understand what it accomplishes)

- Mental processes are not studied as isolated and independent events but as
part of the biological activity of the organism (Mental processes are a combo
of many mental processes or funtions to do a specific simple behavior)

- Functional psychology studies the relation between the environment and

the response of the organism to the environment (We take from the
environment and respond according to what we took)

 Evolution and heritability

Charles Darwin
He suggested that behaviors, like other biological characteristics, could best be
explained by understanding their role in the adaptation of an organism (a human
or other animal) to its environment - Behavior has a biological context –
He also assembled evidence that behaviors, like body parts, could be inherited.
Sir Francis Galton
One of the 1st psychologists to study the influence of genetics on human
behavior.
He was interested in discovering if there are any connections between physical
and psychological features like sensory capacity, reaction time, intellect, and
eminence.
He found that features such as height, arm length and weight were highly and
positively correlated.

 Psychodynamic theory
Sigmund Freud
 “He devised his concepts of ego, superego, id and other mental structures
through talking with his patients, not through laboratory experiments.”

 Behaviorism (it argued that psychology should focus on observable and

unverifiable mental events)
Behaviorists believed that “psychology is the study of observable behaviors”
which means mental events – which cannot be observed – are outside the realm of
psychology = (The study of the relation between people’s environments and
their behavior; what occurs within their heads is irrelevant)

Edward Thorndike (American psychologist who studied the behavior of

animals)
He noticed that :
- Pleasant events seemed to “stamp in” a response that had just occurred.
- Noxious events seemed to “stamp out” the response or make it less likely to
recur.

Ivan Pavlov (A physiologist)

“He showed that through experience an animal could learn to make a response to a
stimulus that had never caused this response before. This ability, in turn, might
explain how organisms learn cause-and-effect relations in the environment.”

John B. Watson
“Defined psychology as the objective study of behavior and the stimuli which
produce such behavior.”
The important feature of behaviorism was its reliance only on observable behavior
(thinking was also considered as a form of behavior - Talking to oneself -)
He divided behaviors into :
- Explicit behavior (visually observable)
- Implicit behavior (potentially observable)
Watson's concept of stimulus and response, influenced by Descartes and Pavlov,
posits that organisms can learn specific behaviors based on correct stimuli.

 Radical behaviorism
Clark Leonard Hull
All human (and any organism’s) behavior evolve through interaction with the
environment.
This interaction occurs within a wider frame of reference - the biological
adaptation of the organism to the environment -
The variable intervening between environment and organism was drive – a bodily
need arising from deprivation or desire or another motivational spur ("drive" is like
a little messenger inside you that tells your body, "Hey, pay attention! Something
important is going on, and we need to do something about it!" It helps your body
adapt to what it needs to be okay and happy)

Edward Tolman
suggested that it was important not only to observe the stimulus and response but
to consider intervening variables.
Intervening variables = cognitions and demands = purposive behaviorism
(Behaviors are not just random; there's a reason behind them)

Burrhus Frederic Skinner

“Focused on the idea of reinforcement, he Identified three types of
reinforcements”:
- positive reinforcement
- negative reinforcement
- punishment: A negative stimulus which is presented when a behavior occurs

 Genetic epistemology (The study of the origin of knowledge in child

development)
Jean Piaget
“He was interested in the question of human knowledge and how we begin to
acquire knowledge.”
(He wanted to know how we go from not knowing much to knowing a lot)

 Gestalt psychology (overall shape)

Max Wertheimer
“He attempted to discover the organization of cognitive processes, not their
element.”
Gestalt psychologists insisted that perceptions resulted from patterns of
interactions among many elements – patterns that could exist across both space and
time (When we look at something, our brains don't just focus on one thing at a
time. They look at everything together, and that's how we see the whole picture.)

 Humanistic psychology (A reaction against both behaviorism and

psychoanalysis)
“It’s an approach to the study of human behaviors that focuses on human
experience, choice and creativity, self-realization and positive growth.”
Humanistic psychologists insist that human nature goes beyond environmental
influences, and that conscious processes, not unconscious ones, are what
psychologists should study.

 Individual differences (Experimental psychologists focused on

scientifically measuring personality, an essential aspect of behavior)
Hans J. Eysenck
He proposed that personality comprised three dimensions:
- neuroticism–stability1
- extraversion–introversion2
- psychoticism–normality3

all of which had a biological basis, and that each of us scores somewhere along all
three dimensions.

 Cognitive revolution
“Many psychologists protested the restrictions of behaviorism and turned to the
study of consciousness, feelings, memory, imagery and other private events.”
cognitive psychology uses an approach called information processing –
information received through the senses is “processed” by various systems in the
brain.
system types :
- store the information in the form of memory.
- control behavior.
- operate automatically and unconsciously.
- conscious and require effort on the part of the individual.
Chapter 3
The development of evolutionary theory
Charles Darwin

He argued that organisms originate and become adapted to their environments by

biological means, this concept is referred to as biological evolution.
Biological evolution is : The changes that take place in the genetic and physical
characteristics of a population or group of organisms over time.

Over time, our physical appearance, biology, and behavior have evolved
significantly, with brain development, sophisticated societies, increased
intelligence, improved communication, and language systems.

The four basic premises of Darwin’s theory

- Animal and plant communities are dynamic : All ornaisim change over
time by creating new froms to aviod extinction.
- The evolutionary process is gradual and continuous : Through gradual
environmental changes that "perfect" each species to its surroundings,
new species are created.
- All organisms descended from an original and common ancestor :
Natural selection has resulted in the creation of diverse species, each
uniquely adapted to its specific ecological niche over time.
- Natural selection not only affects population changes as a result of
shifting environmental factors, but it also helps to maintain the status
quo under generally stable circumstances.

Natural selection and human evolution

Natural selection has favoured two important characteristics of humans, which

could be responsible for the apparent success of the human species in adapting to
different ecological niche :
- Bipedalism (The ability to move about the environment on two feet)
- Encephalization (The increased brain size) = Positive brain allometry

Another important ability that emerged from encephalization was planning.

Another important criteria is language.