Summary Psychology of Bernstein summarized for partial exams I and II!
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Course
Inleiding In De Psychologie
Institution
Universiteit Leiden (UL)
Book
Psychology
This summary of Bernstein's book 'Psychology' is almost complete (except h. 2,3,11& 17). The book is incredibly thick, so summary is extremely useful. It contains all chapters for both partial exams. I had obtained a 8.7 and 9.5 with my summary;)
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Inleiding in de Psychologie literatuursamenvatting PEDA
Samenvatting Inleiding in de Psychologie, literatuur (foundations and frontiers psychology) + hoorcolleges (eigen cijfer 8)
Samenvatting Inleiding in de Psychologie (6461PS002) 2021-2022
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H1. Introduction Psychology
Termen
Positive psychology= A field of research that focuses on people’s positive experiences and
characteristics, such as happiness, optimism and resilience.
Engineering psychology= A field in which psychologists study human factors in the use of equipment
and help designers create better versions of that equipment.
Community psychologists= psychologists who work to obtain psychological services for people in
need of help and to prevent psychological disorders by working for changes in social systems.
Quantitative psychologists=Psychologists who develop and use statistical tools to analyze research
data.
Forensic psychologists= Psychologists who assist in jury selection, evaluate defandants mental
comptence to stand trial, and deal with other issues involving psychology and the law.
Environmental psychologists= Psychologists who study the efects of the physical environment on
behavior and mental processes.
Consciousness= The awareness of external stimuli and our own mental activity.
A brief history of psychology
Psychology is a relatively new discipline, but in the history of philosophy (Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle) they had been debating psychological topics.
The philosophical view empiricism was very important to the development of scientific psychology.
John Locke, George Berkely and David Hume challenged the claim that we are born with knowledge
about the world. Empiricist however, claimed that everything we know is through experience and
observation (tabula rasa).
Wundt and the Structuralism of Titchener
Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology research laboratory at the University of Leipzig in
Germany (1879). The German physiologist Gustav Fechner discovered ways that changes in the
physical characteristics of stimuli produced changes in our psychological experience of them
(psychophysics).
Wundt focussed on consciousness. By the technique of introspection (=looking forward) he
concluded that quality and intensity are two essential elements of sensation, and that feelings can
be described in terms of pleasure or displeasure, tension/relaxation and excitement/depression. In
conducting his kind of research, he began psychology’s transformation from the philosophy of
mental processes to the science of mental processes.
Edward Titchener (student of Wundt) added clearness as an element of sensation. He called his
approach structuralism (=trying to define the structure (of consciousness)).
Wundt was not alone in the scientific study of mental processes, nor was his work universally
accepted.
,Gestalt Psychologists
Max Wertheimer (and some others) argued against Wundt’s efforts to break down human
experience or consciousness into its component parts. They were called gestalt psychologists
because they pointed out that the whole shape (gestalt in German) of conscious experience is not
the same as the sum of its parts. (je moet het in het geheel zien)
Freud and Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud was beginning to explore the unconscious. He concluded that the causes of these
people’s physical problems were not physical. But the deep-seated problems that the patients had
pushed out of consciousness were the causes. He developed his ideas known as psychoanalysis,
which included a theory of personality and mental disorder, as well as as set of treatment methods.
His ideas have never been universally accepted, partly because they were based on a small number
of clients, but his theory had an influence on psychology.
William James and Functionalism
William James rejected both Wundt’s approach and Titchener’s structuralism. Instead (like Darwin)
James wanted to understand how images, sensations, memories and the other mental events that
make up our flowing ‘stream of consciousness’ function to help us adapt to our environment
(=functionalism). Focused on the role of consciousness in guiding people’s ability to make decisions,
solve problems etc. He wanted psychologist to look not only how the mental processes work to our
advantage but also at how they differ from one person to the next.
John B. Watson and behaviorism
After 1900 the thought we could learn something about people by studying animals (Darwin). John
B. Watson agreed to this. However, he thought it was utterly unscientific to use behaviour as the
basis for making inferences about consciousness, as structuralists and functionalists did (laat staan
alleen unconscious as Freud did). He wanted to base psychology only on what we can actually see in
overt behaviour and in responses to known stimuli (prikkel) = behaviorism. He believed that te most
important bepalende of behavior is learning and that animals and humans are able to adapt to their
environments through learning.
Skinner from behaviorism worked on mapping out the details of how rewards and punishments
shape, maintain, and change behavior through ‘operant conditioning’.
School of Early Advocates Goals Methods
Thought
Structuralism Edward To study conscious experience Experiments;
Titchener, trained and its structure. introspection
by Wilhelm
Wundt
Gestalt Max Wertheimer To describe the organization of Observation of sensor-
psychology mental processes: ‘The whole is perceptual phenomena
different from the sum of its
parts.’
Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud To explain personality and Study of individual
behavior; to develop techniques cases
for treating mental disorders.
, Functionalism William James To study how the mind works in Naturalistic
allowing an organism to adapt to observation of animal
the environment. and human behavior
Behaviorism John B. Watson To study only observable Observation of the
B. F. Skinner behavior and explain behavior relationship between
through learning principles. environmental stimuli
and behavioral
responses
Approaches to the science of psychology
Approach Characteristics
Biological Emphasizes activity of the nervous system, especially of the brain; the action of
hormones and other chemicals; and genetics
Evolutionary Emphasizes the ways in which behavior and mental pocesses are adaptive for
survival.
Psychodynamic Emphasizes internal conflicts, mostly unconscious, which usually pit sexual or
aggressive instincts against environmental obstacles to their expression.
Behavioral Emphasizes learning, especially each person’s experience with rewards and
punishments; the cognitive-behavioral approach adds emphasis on learning by
observation and the learning of certain ways of thinking
Cognitive Emphasizes mechanisms through which people receive, store, retrieve, and
otherwise process information
Humanistic Emphasizes individual potential for growth and the role of unique perceptions
in guiding behavior and mental processes
• Darwin said that evolution occurs through natural selection, survival of the fittest.
• Behavioral approach is rooted in the behaviorism of Watson and Skinner.
• Behaviorists seek to eliminate problems by helping people replace bad habits with new and
more appropriate ones.
•
Human diversity and psychology
Today, the diversity seen in psychologists approaches is matched by the diversity in their own
backgrounds. Vroeger niet. In the early 20th century most psychologists were white, middle-class
men.
The Impact of Sociocultural Diversity on Psychology
Another aspect of diversity in psychology lies in the wide range of people psychologists study and
serve. Beople tend to live in groups, have religious beliefs, create rules, music, dances and games.
The principles of nerve, reactions to heat, sour taste, recognition of a smile etc is al the same. But
moral values, achievement motivation, communication styles not. Many aspects of behavior and
menat lprocesses are affected by sociocultural factors (=Social identity and other background
factors, such as gender, ethnicity, social class and culture).
Culture= The accumulation of values, rules of behavior, forms of expression, religious beliefs,
occupational choices, and the like for a group of people who share a common language and
environment. The (sub)culture in which people live shapes their thinking and behavior.
Maybe look at table 1.2 p21
, H4 Sensation and perception
Sensing and perceiving the world
A sense= a system that translates outside information into activity in the nervous system. Messages
from the senses are called sensations. Sensations shape behaviors and mental processes by
providing the vital link between the self and the world outside the brain. Perception is the process of
using information and your understanding of the world to turn those sensations into meaningful
experiences. Before you can perceive something, you must be able to sense it.
Sensory systems
All senses detect information about stimuli, encode it into neural activity, and then send this
encoded information to the brain. The first step in most sensory systems involves accessory
structures, which modify the incoming environmental stimuli. The second step in sensation is
transduction, which is the process of converting incoming energy into neural activity. It takes place
in neural/sensory receptors, which are specialized cells that can detect certain forms of energy.
They respond best to changes in energy. A constant level of stimulation usually produces sensory
adaption: decreasing responsiveness to an unchanging stimulus. Sensory nerves carry information
from receptors to the central nervous system- the spinal cord and the brain.
Encoding translates the physical properties of a stimulus into a pattern of neural activity that
represents those physical properties. Specific energy doctrine says that stimulation of a particular
sensory nerve provides codes for that one sense, no matter how the stimulation takes place.
The minimum detectable amount of light, sound, pressure or other physical energy has traditionally
been called the absolute threshold. Psychologist discovered this by exploring psychophysics, the
relationship between physical energy in the environment and your psychological experience of that
energy. Absolute threshold is the smallest amount of energy that can be detected 50 percent of the
time. Threshold vary because of *internal noise= the spontaneous random firing of nerve cells that
occurs because the nervous system is always active. If the amount of internal noise happens to be
high, your sensory systems might mistakenly interpret the noise as an external stimulus. *Response
bias/criterion, which reflects a person’s willingness to respond to a stimulus. A persons motivation
and expectations affect response bias.
Signal detection theory presents a mathematical model of how your personal sensitivity and
response bias combine to determine your decision about whether or not a near-threshold stimulus
occurred. Sensitivity refers to your ability to detect a particular stimulus from a background of
competing stimuli. It is influenced by internal noise, the intensity of the stimulus, and the capacity of
your sensory systems.
Sometimes our task is to notice small changes in a stimulus or decide whether two stimuli are the
same/different. Your ability to judge differences between stimuli depends on the strength of the
stimuli you are dealing with. The weaker those stimuli are, the easier it is to detect small differences.
Weber’s law states that the smallest detectable difference in stimulus energy (just-noticeable
difference) is a constant fraction of the intensity of the stimulus. The size of JND varies among
individuals, and as we age tend to become less sensitive to stimulus differences. This does not hold
when stimuli are very intense or very weak.
Different wavelengths, frequencies and amplitudes create different visual and sound experiences.
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