Psychology's Family Tree

Prescientific Psychology

Psychological Science is Born

Psychological Science Develops

Young science of psychology developed from more established fields of philosophy and biology.

Pioneering Psychologists ("Magellans of the mind" who also illustrate psychology's origins in different disciplines and countries):

• Wundt-German philosopher and physiologist
• James- American philosopher
• Ivan Pavlov (1905)- Russian physiologist who pioneered the study of learning and discovered conditioning
• Sigmund Freud (1900)- Austrian physician developed influential theory of personality and published "The Interpretation of Dreams" (major work on psychoanalysis and focused on emotional responses to childhood experiences and unconscious thoughts)
• Jean Piaget (1950)- Swiss biologist who was an influential observer of children and studied their intelligence

Contemporary Psychology

Contemporary Psychology

Subfields

Perspectives

Contemporary Psychology

Counseling- helps people cope with issues

Personality- investigates our persistent traits

Biological- explores links between mind and brain biologically

Social- explores how we view and influence one another

Development- studies the changes in abilities from birth to death

Clinical- treats mental, emotional, and behavior disorders

Cognitive- experiments with how we think and solve problems

Psychiatry- can prescribe drugs and treat physical causes of psychological disorders

Neuroscience- how body and brain enable emotions, memories, and sensory experiences

Evolutionary- how natural selection of traits promotes perpetuation of one's genes

Behavior genetics- how much our genes and environment influence individual differences

Psychodynamic- how behavior springs from unconscious drives and conflicts

Behavioral- how we learn observable responses

Cognitive- how we encode, process, store, and retrieve information

Social-cultural- how behavior and thinking vary across situations and cultures

Big Debate:

• nature-nurture issue (longstanding controversy over relative contributions that genes and experience make to the development of psychological traits and behaviors)
• Charles Darwin (1859):
• principle of natural selection (survival of the fittest)
• published "Origin of Species," synthesizing work on theory of evolution

Like its pioneers, today's psychologists are citizens of a myriad of lands.

• International Union of Psychological Science- 69 member nations, from Albania to Zimbabwe
• American Psychological Association members and affiliates went from 4,183 in 1945 to more than 160,000 today.
• Psychology is growing and globalizing.

APA Building

Darwin

Main Levels of Analysis:

• Biological influences
• Psychological influences
• Social-cultural influences

Psychological Science Develops

• Until the 1920s, psychology was defined as "the science of mental life."
• From 1920s into the 1960s, American psychologists initially led by Watson and Skinner, dismissed introspection and changed the definition of psychology to "the scientific study of observable behavior."
• John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner (1920):
• founded behaviorism
• B.F. Skinner (1940):
• behaviorist who rejected introspection and studied how consequences shape behavior
• studied reinforcement

Psychological Science Develops

Pavlov

• In the 1960s Carl Rogers (1970; humanistic therapy) and Abraham Maslow (1955; humanist approach) were humanists who emphasized importance of current environmental influences on our growth potential and importance of meeting our needs for love and acceptance.
• In the 1960s, psychology began to recapture its interest in mental processes. To include both psychology's concern with observable behavior and inner thoughts and feelings, it is now defined as "the scientific of behavior and mental processes."

B.F. Skinner

Watson and Rayner

Freud

Rogers

Maslow

Piaget

Early Psychologists

After structuralism waned, William James thought it beneficial to consider the evolved functions of our thoughts and feelings.

James

William James (1890):

• functionalist
• wrote and published first psychology comprehensive textbook ("Principles of Psychology)
• Harvard psychology teacher who taught Calkins
• describes psychology as "the study of mental life'"

Mary Calkins (1895):

• first female president of the APA
• functionalist

Calkins

Psychology's Family Tree

Margaret Floy Washburn (1921):

• first woman to receive psychology Ph.D.
• synthesized animal behavior research in "The Animal Mind"

Washburn

Early Psychologists

Wundt

Wilhelm Wundt (1879):

• created first psychology laboratory in 1879 at University of Leipzig, Germany (which was a platform for psychology's organization into different branches)
• sought to measure "atoms of the mind"- simplest and fastest mental processes

Edward B. Titchener (1892):

• introduced structuralism and introspection
• aimed to discover elements of the mind

Titchener

Alexandria Marsicovetere

Ms. Ritter

AP Psychology

20 January 2015

Prescientific Thinkers

Descartes (1595-1650):

• French philosopher and scientist
• proposed mind-body interaction and doctrine of innate ideas in 1637
• published "A Discourse on Method"

Descartes

Thoughts of Prescientific Thinkers

Francis Bacon (1561-1626):

• published "The Proficiency and Advancement of Learning" in 1605
• from Britain
• anticipated mind's hunger to discern patterns even in random events
• foresaw research findings on people noticing and remembering events that confirm beliefs

Confucius

Bacon

Psychology can be traced through human history, beginning with early thinkers who wondered:

• How does the mind work?
• How does the body and mind relate?
• How much of what we know comes from within ourselves?
• How much of what we know comes through experience?

Ideas of Presecientific Thinkers about Psychology

• In India, Buddha thought about how sensations and perceptions combine to form ideas.
• In China, Confucius stressed the power of ideas and the educated mind.
• In ancient Israel, Hebrew scholars predicted today's psychology by linking mind and emotion to the body.

John Locke (1632-1704):

• British political philosopher
• wrote "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" where he famously argued that mind at birth was a blank slate on which experience writes
• His ideas helped form modern empiricism.

Buddha

Locke

Ancient Israel

Prescientific Thinkers

Socrates

Ancient Greece:

• Socrates (469-399 B.C.) and Plato (428-348 B.C.):
• Socrates was a philosopher-teacher and Plato was his student.
• Concluded that mind can be separated from the body and continues after the body dies
• Also concluded that knowledge is innate- born within us
• Aristotle (384-322 B.C.):
• student of Plato
• derived principles from careful observations
• said knowledge is not preexisting
• instead, believed knowledge grows from experiences stored in memories

Plato

Aristotle