General Psychology Insert or Drag and Drop

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Tewodros H. (MSc)

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Why taking psychology course?

• Education is important for two things;

⁃ To make life, and

⁃ To live life

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Common misconception
• Psychology is Not,
 To make you able to read someone mind

 To make you Happy

 To make you earn money

 To love or being loved

 To convince other

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How psychology is important?

• A better understanding of yourself, including your thoughts and behaviors

• Understanding of biological and psychological processes of the human

mind

• Learn to cope with stressors and environmental factors beyond our control

• Learn to communicate and interact with others effectively

• Keeping yourself motivated

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 Course contents

►Chapter one: Introduction to psychology

► Chapter two: Sensation perception

► Chapter three: Learning

► Chapter four: Human memory

► Chapter five: Emotion and motivation

► Chapter six: Personality psychology

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 Course procedures

Teaching method Assessment method

 Question and answer  Quiz and class activities 15%

 Mid-exam 25%
 Lectures
 Assignment 10%
 Group discussion
 Final exam 50%
 At the end of each session,10-15 minutes

discussion on personal skill

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Introduction to psychology
Chapter one
What is psychology?

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Definition
•The word "psychology" is derived from two Greek words; ᴪ
 'Psyche' refers to mind, soul or sprit.
 ‘Logos’ means study, knowledge or discourse.
• After psychology merged as a science, get the definition;

 Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and the underlying mental process

 Science: psychology uses scientific method, and procedures, and use empirical data.
 Behavior: refers to our outward or overt actions and reactions
 Mental processes: refer to all the internal, covert activities of our minds

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Goals of Psychology
Ψ There are four basic goals of psychology as a scientific field;

► Describing: involves observing the behavior and noticing everything about it.

► Explaining: Why is it happening? Explanation is about trying to find reasons for the observed
behavior, or simply show a cause and effect relationship.

► Predicting: is about determining what will happen in the future.

► Controlling: How can it be changed? Control or change the behavior from undesirable one
(such as poor academic performance) to a desirable one (such as academic success).

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Reading Assignment

• Historical development of psychology

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School of Psychology
Ψ Early schools of psychology;

• There are five early schools of psychology, and these schools basically differ in terms of:
• The study elements i.e. conscious mind, unconscious mind, and overt behavior.

• Goal (analyze the components of the mind or observing the effect of the environment on
behavior).
• Method of study (Introspection, observation, clinical case studies, etc...).

Ψ Modern schools of psychology;

• Tend to examine human behavior through several views.
• Biological ( Nature), Environment ( Nurture) and Person related
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Early schools of psychology
ΨStructuralism; found by Edward Titchener (1867-1927).

ΨIt is an expansion of Wundt‘s ideas, later the name given by Titchener, former student of
Wundt.
 Structuralism views psychology as a study of structure of mind (conscious).

 The goal of structuralisms was to find out the units or elements, which make up the mind
such as; sensations (light and sound), images (memory and dream), and feelings (affection).

 The best-known method used was introspection; looking inward into our consciousness.

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Functionalism
Ψ The founder of this school of thought is William James (1848-1910),

 Functionalism views psychology as a study of function of the mind.

 The school focused on how the mind allows people to function in the real world; how
people work, play, and adapt to their surroundings,
 Psychological processes are adaptive. That allow humans to survive and to adapt successfully
to their surroundings.

 William James introduced many research methods other than introspection including
questionnaires, mental tests and objective descriptions of behavior.

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Gestalt psychology
Ψ Max Wertheimer and his colleagues founded this school of thought in
Germany in the 20th century.
 The German word "gestalt" refers to form, whole, configuration or
pattern.

Ψ Gestalt psychology views psychology as a study of the whole mind.

Ψ They held that “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

 Means mind is greater than its parts (images, sensations, and feelings).

 The key principles of gestalt systems are emergence, reification, multi-

stability and invariance

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Behaviorism
Ψ John B. Watson is the founder of behaviorism. Other proponents include E. Thorndike
and F. Skinner.

Ψ Behaviorists view psychology as a study of observable and measurable behaviors.

nothing more about hidden mental processes.

Ψ As to Watson, behaviorism had three other important characteristics in addition to its

focus on behavior;
 Conditioned response as the elements or building blocks of behavior,
 Learned rather than unlearned behaviors, and
 Focus on animal behavior.

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Psychoanalysis
Ψ Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is the founder of this school of thought.

Ψ Psychology studies about the components of the unconscious part of the human mind.

Ψ The unconscious which is the subject matter of psychoanalysis contains hidden wishes,
passions, guilty secrets, unspeakable yearnings, and conflict between desire and duty.
• Unconscious urges and thoughts revealed through dreams, slip of the tongue, apparent
accidents and even jokes.
Ψ Freud argued that conscious awareness is the tip of the mental iceberg beneath the visible
tip lays the unconscious part of the mind.

Ψ The school used clinical case studies (hypnosis and Dream analysis) as a method.

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Modern school of Psychology
Ψ Modern schools of psychology; tend to examine human behavior through several views.
The views that predominate today are
 psycho dynamic, behavioral, humanistic, cognitive, biological, and socio cultural
perspectives.

Ψ These views reflect different questions about human behavior, different assumptions
about how the mind works, and different kinds of explanations why people do and what
they do. 

Ψ the explanations basis on;

• Biological ( Nature)
• Environment ( Nurture)
• Person related

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Modern schools of psychology
• Psychodynamic perspective; it has its origins in Freud's theory of psychoanalysis, but
many other psychodynamic theories exist.

• This perspective emphasizes the unconscious dynamics within the individual such as
inner forces, conflicts or instinctual energy.

• The psychodynamic approach emphasizes:

• The influence of unconscious mental behavior
• The role of childhood experiences in shaping adult personality
• The role of intrapersonal conflict in determining human behavior

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Modern schools of psychology
• Behavioral Perspective
• Emphasizes the role learning experiences plays in shaping the behavior of an organism.
• It is concerned with how the environment affects the person‘s actions.

• Behaviorists focus on environmental conditions (e.g. rewards, and punishments) that

maintain or discourage specific behaviors.
• There are three major learning models;
 Classical condition ( Ivan Pavlov)
 Operant condition (E. Thorndike and F. Skinner.
 Social learning theory ( Albert Bandura)

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Modern schools of psychology
• Cognitive Perspective
• This perspective study cognition which is ‘the mental act or process by which
knowledge is acquired’.

• It emphasizes what goes on in people's heads; how people reason, remember, understand
language, solve problems, explain experiences and form beliefs.

• Psychology shifted toward the understanding of human information processing,

Both human brains and computers process information similarly

• The most important contribution of this perspective has been to show how people's
thoughts and explanations affect their actions, feelings, and choices.
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• Biological Perspective
• Focuses on studying how bodily events or functioning of the body affects behavior,
feelings, and thoughts.

• It holds that the brain and the various brain chemicals affect psychological processes such
as learning, performance, perception of reality, the experience of emotions, etc.

• Biological perspectives tends to explain behavior from;

Genetic inheritance
Brain anatomy
Biochemical interaction and imbalances

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• Humanistic Perspective
 According to this perspective, humans are unique.
 This perspective places greater importance on the individual‘s free will, values and subjective
experiences.
 The goal of humanistic psychology was helping people to express themselves creatively and
achieve their full potential or self-actualization (developing the human potential to its fullest).

• Socio-cultural Perspective; It focuses on the social and cultural factors that affects
human behavior.
 As a fish cannot leave without water, human behavior cannot be understood without
sociocultural context (the social and cultural environment) that people "Swim" in every day.

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Branches/Sub Fields of Psychology
• Developmental psychology; it studies the physical, cognitive and psychological changes
across the life span.
• Personality Psychology; it focuses on the relatively enduring traits and characteristics of
individuals. Personality psychologists study topics such as self-concept, aggression, moral
development, etc.
• Social Psychology; it deals with people‘s social interactions, relationships, social
perception, and attitudes.
• Industrial psychology; applies psychological principles in industries and organizations to
increase the productivity of that organization.
• Forensic psychology; applies psychological principles to improve the legal system (police,
testimony, etc...).

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Cont.…
• Educational Psychology; concerned with the application of psychological principles and
theories in improving the educational process including curriculum, teaching, and
administration of academic programs.

• Health Psychology; applies psychological principles to the prevention and treatment of

physical illness and diseases.

• Clinical Psychology; is a field that applies psychological principles to the prevention,

diagnosis, and treatment of psychological disorders.

• Counseling Psychology; is a field having the same concern as clinical psychology but
helps individuals with less severe problems than those treated by clinical psychologists.

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Recap
• What is psychology? Why do we consider psychology as scientific field?

• What are the goals of psychology?

• The two eras in psychology history

 The early school

 The modern school

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Research Methods in Psychology
• Psychology uses different type of research methods, depending on the objectives and goals
to achieve.

• There are three major types of research methods:

1. Descriptive
 Naturalistic observation
 Case study
 Survey
2. Correlational
3. Experimental

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Descriptive research
• The researcher simply records and describe what she/he has systematically observed.
• Naturalistic observation; is a descriptive research method in which subjects are observed in their
natural environment to get a real (not artificial) picture of how behavior occurs.
• Limitations of naturalistic observation are observer effect and observer bias

• Case study; is a descriptive technique in which an individual is studied in great detail. Its
advantage is that it provides tremendous amount of data about a single case or individual.
• The disadvantage of case study is that the researchers can‘t apply the results to other similar
people.

• Survey; is a descriptive research method used to collect data from a very large group of people. It
is useful to get information on private (covert) behaviors and it addresses hundreds of people with
the same questions at the same time.
• Its disadvantage is that it needs a careful selection of a representative sample of the actual
population.
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Correlational research
• Is a research method that measures the relationship between two or more variables.
• A variable is anything that can change or vary; scores on a test, the temperature in a room,
gender, and so on.
• For example, a researcher might be curious to know whether or not cigarette smoking
is connected to life expectancy.

• Correlation shows how strong the relationship is, and in what direction the
relationship goes, but it doesn‘t prove causation (which means it doesn‘t show the cause
and effect relationship).
• For example, that if there is a relationship between smoking and lung cancer, this
doesn‘t mean that smoking causes lung cancer.

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Experimental Research
• It is a research method that allows researchers to study the cause and effect relationship
between variables.
• In experimental research, a carefully regulated procedure in which one or more factors
believed to influence the behavior being studied are manipulated and all other factors are
held constant.

• Experiments involve at least two variables

• Independent variable (manipulated, influential, experimental factor, and
• Dependent variable (behavior that will be observed).

• For example, a researcher may need to know whether or not class size has an effect on
students ‘academic performance
• Experiments also involve randomly assigned experimental groups and control groups.

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Thank You!

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 Sensation and Perception
Chapter two

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Meaning of Sensation
• Sensation is the process whereby stimulation of receptor cells in the eyes, ears, nose,
tongue, and surface of the skin sends nerve impulses to the brain.
• Sensation is therefore the process that detects the stimulus from one‘s body or from the
environment.

• The starting of point of sensations is a stimulus. A form of energy (such as light waves or
sound waves, chemical, and pressure/touch)
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The sensory laws
• There are certain sensory laws that explain how sensation works; Sensory thresholds and
sensory adaption.
• Sensory threshold is the minimum point of intensity a stimuli can be detected.

 The law of absolute threshold; the minimum amount of stimulation a person can
detect 50% of times is called the absolute threshold, or Limen.
 for example, a cup of coffee would require a certain amount of sugar before you could detect a
sweet taste.

 The law of difference threshold; the minimum change in stimulation to detect

difference 50 percent of the time by a given person.
 This difference in threshold is called the just noticeable difference (JND).
 The amount of change in intensity of stimulation needed to produce a JND is a constant fraction of
the original stimulus this became known as Weber‘s law.
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Sensory Adaptation/Habituation
• Sensory adaptation lets you detect potentially important change
in your environment while ignoring unchanging aspects of it.

• One possible reason is that if a stimulus remains constant in

intensity, you will gradually stop noticing it.

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Perception
• Perception is the process that organizes sensations into meaningful patterns.
• It is the process whereby the brain interprets sensations, giving them order and meaning.

• Thus, hearing sounds and seeing colors is largely a sensory process, but forming a melody
and detecting patterns and shapes is largely a perceptual process.

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Cont.…
• Perceptual process include; selectivity of perception, from perception, depth perception,
perceptual constancy, and perceptual illusion.

• Selectivity of perception: Attention

 At any given time, your sense organ is bombarded by many stimuli. Yet you perceive a few of them.
 for example, listening carefully to what someone is saying while ignoring other conversations in a
room.
 Such selective perception is called attention.

• Our experience divided into what is known as Focus and Margin.

 Events or stimuli that you perceive clearly are the focus of your experience and
 Other items or stimuli that you perceive dimly or vaguely are in the margin of your attention.
 What is in the focus of your attention one moment may be in margin; and what is in the margin may
become in your focus, and this constantly shift.
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Factors that attract attention
• External factors; refer to factors that are generally found in the objects or stimuli to be
perceived, such as
 Size and intensity, repetition, novelty (or newness), and movement.
 Stimuli that are bigger and brighter, or more frequently occurring. Or newer or moving are
likely to get your attention.

• Internal factors; that related to persons psychological state at the moment, these factors
are ‘Set or expectancy and motives or needs’.
 Set refers to the idea that you may be ‘ready’ and ‘Primed for’ certain kinds of sensory input.
 Motives and needs; you will attend to and organize the sensory input in ways that match your
respective needs.
 People who are hungry, thirst, or sexually aroused are likely to pay attention to events in the
environment, which will satisfy these needs.

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From perception
• Meaningful shapes or patterns or ideas that are made out of meaningless and discrete or
pieces of sensations refer to form perception.
 There are different principles in forming perception.
 Figure-ground and Perceptual organization

• Figure-ground principle; is the perception of objects and forms of everyday experience

as standing out from a background.
 The ability to distinguish an object from its general background is basic to all form perception.
 There can be a shift in you perception of figure and ground such that the figure may become
the ground and vice versa.
 Factors that determine your attention equally determine what should become the figure and
what should become the ground.
 the law of contour

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Organization in form Perception
• When several objects are present in the visual field, we tend to perceive them as organized
into patterns or groupings.
 Organization in perception partially explains our perception of complex patterns as unitary forms, or
objects.

• There are around four principles in perceptual organization, these are proximity,
similarity, continuity, and closure.

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Depth perception
• Depth perception is the visual ability to perceive the world in three dimensions, and to
gauge how far away an object is.
 Depth perception depends on the use binocular cues and monocular cues

• Binocular cues: cues require the interaction of both eyes. Involve retinal disparity and
convergence.
• Retinal disparity; is the degree of difference between the images of an object that are focused
on the two retinas. The closer the object, the greater is the retinal disparity.
• Convergence; is the degree to which the eyes turn inward to focus on an object. As you can
confirm for yourself, the closer the objects are the greater the convergence of the eyes.

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Monocular cues
• Requires only one eye. This means that even people who have lost sight in one eye may still have
good depth perception.

• Accommodation, which is the change in the shape of the lens that lets you focus the image of an
object on the retina. But prolonged accommodation can alter your depth perception.
 For example, if you stare at a near object for a long time and then look at a more distant object,
the more distant object will look farther away than it is.

• Motion parallax, the tendency to perceive ourselves as passing objects faster when they are closer
to us than when they are farther away.

• Pictorial cues, any information in two-dimensional visual representations from which three-
dimensional spatial relations can be inferred.
 Types of pictorial cues; Interposition, relative size, etc

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Cont.…
• Interposition; an object that overlaps another object will appear closer.

• Relative size; objects with similar size, the one appear smaller will be perceive as farther
away

• Linear perspective; refers to the fact that we perceive depth when we see two parallel
lines that seem to converge in an image.

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Cont.…
• Shading patterns; provide cues to distance because areas that are in shadow tend to
recede, while areas that are in light tend to stand out.

• Aerial perspective, depends on the clarity of objects. Closer objects seem clearer than
more distant ones.

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Cont.…
• Texture gradient, affects depth perception because the nearer an object, the more details
we can make out and the farther an object the fewer details we can make out.

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Perceptual consistency
• The image of a given object focused on your retina may vary in size, shape, and
brightness. Yet you will continue to perceive the object as stable in size, shape, and
brightness because of perceptual constancy.

• This is adaptive, because it provides you with a more visually stable world, making it
easier for you to function in it.

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Reading assignment
Illusion; a misrepresentation of a “real” sensory stimulus.
 the misapplication of a visual cue, in this case perceived size constancy, can produce a visual
illusion.

 Extra sensory perception

A. Clairvoyance
B. Psycho-kinesis
C. telepathy
D. precognition

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Learning
Chapter three

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What is Learning?
• The most commonly used definition of learning; “A relatively permanent change in
knowledge or behavior as a result of experience and training.”

• Change in behavior: this is the standard against which we judge whether learning has
occurred or not.

• Relatively permanent

• The change must be from practice, training and experience

 Does not include changes due to illness/injuries, fatigue, or intoxication.

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Characteristics of learning

• Learning is continuous modification of behavior

• Learning is responsive to incentives
throughout life
• Learning is an active process
• Learning is pervasive, it reaches into all aspects of
human life. • Learning is purposeful

• Learning involves the whole person, socially, • Learning depends on maturation, motivation

emotionally & intellectually. and practice.

• Learning is often a change in the organization of • Learning is multifaceted

experiences.

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Factor that influence learning

• Motivation • Good working conditions

• Maturation • Background experiences
• Health condition • Length of the working period
• Psychological wellbeing • Massed and distributed learning

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Theories of Learning
 Behavioral views of learning

 Classical conditioning ( Ivan Pavlov)

 Operant conditioning ( B.F. skinner, E. Thorndike)

 Cognitive views of learning

 Latent ( hidden) learning (Tolman and C.H. Honzik)

 Insight learning (Wolfgang Kohler)

 Social learning theory

 Observational learning ( Albert Bandura)

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Behavioral theories
1. Classical condition:
• I. Pavlov
• Learning by association between two stimulus
• Helps to explain involuntary behavior/conditioned reflexes

• Stimulus and responses

• Unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
• Unconditioned response (UCR)
• Neutral stimulus (NS)
• Conditioned stimulus (CS)
• Conditioned response (CR)
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Principle of Classical Conditioning
• Acquisition
• The initial stage of learning, during which a response is established and gradually
strengthened
• CR to CS

• Extinction

• Diminishing of a CR

• When a UCS does not follow a CS

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Cont.…
• Spontaneous recovery

• Reappearance, after a rest period, of an extinguished CR

• Generalization

• Tendency for a stimuli similar to CS to evoke similar responses

• Discrimination
• The ability to distinguish between a CS and other stimuli that do not signal and UCS

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Cont.…
• Higher order conditioning:

• Second order condition

• CS paired with new NS

 To make conditioning effective;

 The time laps between the presentations of the two stimuli (NS & UCS) should be
small ranging from half to a few seconds.
 The NS should present before the presentation of the UCS (sometimes
simultaneously).

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Recap

• Learning is ……………………

• A relatively permanent change in a behaviour that result from training and experience

• Classical condition ( I Pavlov)

• Stimulus and stimulus ( UCS and NS)

• Principles of CC

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Operant Condition

• E. Thorndike’s and B.F. Skinner

 Consequence strengthens or weakens a R-S connection

 Better at explaining voluntary behaviors

• The consequence is;

• Reinforcement; to increase the occurrence of the behavior

• Punishment; to decrease the occurrence of the behavior

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Types of Reinforcement

 Primary Reinforces: Innately satisfying

 Secondary Reinforces: Repeated association with a pre-existing reinforce, become
satisfying through experience

 Continuous Reinforcement

 Partial Reinforcement

• Ratio: Reinforcement depends on amount of responses

• Interval: Reinforcement depends on time interval

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The four schedule of reinforcement

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Effective Punishment

 Ways to make punishment effective

1. Immediacy

2. Intensity

3. Consistency

4. Explanations/ justifications

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Cognitive theories of learning
• This approach defines learning as a relatively permanent change in mental
associations due to experience.

• The learner as an active participant in the process of knowledge acquisition

and integration.

• The approach includes;

• Latent learning

• Insight learning /’Ahha’/

• Observational Learning

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Cont.…
• Tolman and C.H. Honzik (1930)
• Latent learning is a form of learning that is not immediately expressed in an
overt response.
• The assumption is an organism learns a new concept in its life; however, the
knowledge is not immediately expressed.
• Instead, it remains dormant, and may not be available to consciousness, until specific
events/experiences might need this knowledge to be demonstrated.

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 Insight learning
 Wolfgang Kohler
 Insight learning is a type of learning or problem solving that happens all-of-a-
sudden through understanding the relationship of various parts of a problem
rather than through trial and error.

 What has been learnt can also be applied early to other similar situations.

 In insight learning, the following events occur:

• The solution comes suddenly after a period during which various response
strategies are tried.
• There is perceptual rearrangement.
• The solution, once got, can be generalized rather to other similar problems.

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Observational Learning

• Albert Bandura: Social Cognitive Theory

• Learning that occurs when a person observes and imitates behavior (modeling).

• Four processes

- Attention, Retention, Motor reproduction and Reinforcement

• Vicarious Learning; learning that occur by observing the consequence of the

behavior in other peoples, not the behavior but the consequence.

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