History and Approaches

Archaeologist find evidence of stone age human carving holes through the sculpture to release
evil spirits Greek philosophers such as Plato and democritus theorized about the relationship
between thought and behavior
However all of these people were thinking about psychology not studying it

Wave one introspection

1879
William Wundt set up the first psychological laboratory in an apartment near the university in
leipzig Germany he trained subjects in introspection the subjects were asked to record
accurately their cognitive reactions to simple stimuli

He published the​ theory of structuralism

the idea that the mind operates by combining subjective emotions and objective sensations

William James 1890

● Principles of psychology
● the first scientific psychology textbook explores how emotions and objective sensations
function in our lives

Wave one does not significantly influence current psychological thinking

Wave two gestalt psychology

Max Wertheimer
● Argued against dividing human thought and behavior into discrete structures instead
tried to examine a person's total experience because the way we experience the world is
more than just a sum of various perspective experiences the whole experience is often
more than just the sum of the parts of the experience therapists later Incorporated the
gestalt thinking by examining not just a clients difficulty but the context in which the
difficulty occurs
● other than this gestalt psychology has relatively little influence on current psychology
 Wave three psychoanalysis
Freud revolutionized psychology
Psychoanalytic theory
● discovered the unconscious mind a part of our mind over which we do not have
conscious control that determines in part how we think and behave
● this hidden part of ourselves builds up over the years through repression
● the pushing down into the unconscious events and feelings that caused so much anxiety
and tension our conscious mind cannot deal with
● thought we must examine the unconscious mind through dream analysis has been
criticized for being unscientific and creating unverifiable theories

Wave four behaviorism

● John Watson studied the pioneering conditioning experiment (Ivan Pavlov)
● He then declared that for psychology to be considered a science it must limit itself to
observable phenomenal not observable concepts like the unconscious mind
● wanted to establish behaviorism as the dominant part of psychology
● look at only behavior and cause of behavior and response and not concern themselves
with describing elements of consciousness
● another behaviorists BF Skinner expended the basic idea of behaviorism to include the
idea of reinforcement
● behaviorism was the dominant school of thought from the 1920s to the 1960s

We five multiple perspectives

● describe themselves as eclectic drawing from multiple perspectives
● Modern psychologist look at thoughts and behavior from multiple perspectives

Contemporary perspective can be placed into seven broad categories

Humanist perspective
describe some mysterious aspect of consciousness
Abraham Maslow Carl Rogers
● stressed individuals choice and free will contrast with the deterministic behaviorists to
theorize that all behavior is caused by past conditioning
● We choose most of our behaviors and these choices are guided by psychological
emotional or spiritual needs
● theories are not easily tested by the scientific method

Psychoanalytic perspective
Read wave 3 psychoanalytical

● Biopsychology or neuropsychology perspective

● Biopsychologists explain human thought and behavior strictly in terms of biological
processes human cognition
A reaction might be caused by affect of our genes hormones or neurotransmitters in the
brain or by a combination of all three

Evolutionary or Darwinian perspective also sometimes called sociobiologist

examine human thought and action in terms of natural selection some psychological traits
might be advantageous for survival and these traits would be passed down from the parents to
the next generation

Behavioral perspective
● behaviorists examine human thought and behavior in terms of conditioning
● look strictly at observable behavior and what reactions organisms get in response to
specific behavior
● look for environmental conditions that caused that response

Cognitive perspective
● examines human thought and behavior in terms of how we interpret process and
remember environmental events
● in this perspective the rules that we use to view the world are important to
understanding why we think and behave the way we do
● the way each person sees the world makes sense to them

Social culture or socio-cultural perspective

● Social culture psychologist look at how our thoughts and behavior very from people living
in other cultures they emphasize the influence the culture house on the way we think
and act