Varsity College Introduction to Psychology (PSYC5111)
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Summary Varsity College Introduction to Psychology
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Course
Varsity College Introduction to Psychology (PSYC5111)
Institution
University Of South Africa (Unisa)
Book
Discovering Psychology: The Science of Mind
Introduction to Psychology PSYC5111
Chapter 1:
Learning Unit 1:
LO1: Provide a comprehensive definition of the concept of psychology that clearly locates its role in the sciences.
LO2: Define and provide examples of all key concepts associated with this learning unit (all terminology in chap...
Test Bank For Discovering Psychology: The Science of Mind - 3rd - 2019 All Chapters - 9781337561815
Chapter 1: The Science of Mind
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What is Psychology?
- Psychological scientists view the mind as a way of talking about the activities of the brain, including
thought, emotion, and behaviour.
- Psychology means the objective study of the mind.
- Scientific study of behaviour, mental processes, and brain functions - the study of the mind.
- Behaviour refers to any action that we can observe.
- Early efforts to study mental processes were generally unsatisfactory, because they relied on the use of
introspection (the personal observation of your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviours).
What are psychology s roots?
- Dating back to the 1870s.
Psychology s philosophical roots:
- Philosophers and psychologists share an interest in questions regarding the nature of the self, the effects
of early experience, the existence of free will, and the origin of knowledge.
- Both disciplines consider the relative balance of biological factors (nature) and environmental factors
(nurture) in the resulting human behaviour.
- Both attempt to determine the relationships between self-interest and community welfare, between body
and mind, and between humans and other species with which we share the planet.
How did the science of psychology begin?
Wilhelm Wundt and Structuralism:
- First psychologist - Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920).
- Saw mental experience as hierarchy.
- The mind constructs an overall perception out of building blocks made up of separate sensations (taste,
vision, emotional responses).
- Wundt s student - Edward Titchener (1867-1923) expanded on Wundt s views to establish a theory of
structuralism - the mind could be broken down into the smallest elements of mental experience.
Gestalt Psychology:
- Founded by Kurt Koffka, Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler.
- Believed that breaking a whole perception into its building blocks (as advocated by structuralists) would
result in the loss of some important psychological information.
William James and Functionalism:
- Viewed behaviour as purposeful because it led to survival.
- Functionalists were interested in why behaviour and mental processes worked in a particular way.
- James coined the term stream of consciousness to describe the flow of ideas that people experience while
awake.
- James emphasised the role of evolution.
Clinical roots: Freud and the humanistic psychologists:
- Most common view of psychological disorders over the course of history has been the supernatural
approach.
- According to this view, psychological disorders resulted from the actions of evil spirits or other external,
magic forces.
- Between the 17th and 19th centuries, supernatural explanations for psychological disorders began to give
way to two scientific approaches: a medical model and a psychological model.
• The medical model of psychological disorder: emphasised physical causes of abnormal behaviour and
medical treatments, such as medication.
• The psychological model: suggested that abnormal behaviour came from life experiences, leading to fear,
anxiety, and other counterproductive emotional responses.
Sigmund Freud:
- Freud s ideas about the existence of the unconscious mind, the development of sexuality, dream analysis,
and psychological roots of abnormal behaviour influenced not just psychology, but culture.
- Developed the techniques of psychoanalysis for treating mental disorders.
- Theories are based on observations of his patients - but they were not representative of the human
population.
’’ ’ “ ’ “ ” ” ’
, Humanistic psychology:
- A belief that people are innately good, are motivated to improve themselves, and behave badly only when
corrupted by society.
- Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) introduced a theory of motivation. Emphasis on what is good about people, as
opposed to Freud s focus on what goes wrong with people.
- Humanistic therapists rebelled against Freudian approaches to treatment.
The behaviourists and the cognitive revolution:
- Behaviourism concentrated on observable, measurable behaviours.
- As part of their effort to measure behaviour carefully, many behaviourists restricted their research to
studies using animals.
- The behaviourists drew parallels between their observations of animals and their assumptions about human
behaviour.
- Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936) significant impact on behaviourism and psychology. Classical conditioning -
the experiment with the dog, where he conditioned the dog s behaviour when triggered by a stimuli.
- John B. Watson (1878-1958) echoed the blank-slate approach in his emphasis on the role of experience in
forming human behaviour.
- Watson approached psychology with a focus on the relationships between environmental cues and
behaviour.
- Other behaviourists were more interested in the effects of consequences on behaviour, an idea that was
derived from basic functionalism.
- Edward Thorndike (1874-1949) proposed the law of effect, which suggested that behaviours followed by
pleasant or helpful outcomes would be more likely to occur in the future, whereas behaviours followed by
unpleasant or harmful outcomes would be less likely to occur.
- B. F. Skinner (1904-1990) was interested in the effects of consequences on how frequently behaviours were
performed.
- Skinner shared Watson s belief that psychology did not benefit from consideration of consciousness or
internal mental states. He believed that inner, private states such as thinking or feeling existed, but he
viewed them as behaviours that followed the same rules as public behaviours.
- Skinner was also comfortable generalising from the behaviour of rats and pigeons to the complex human
behaviours.
- Skinner s behaviourism has provided a wealth of beneficial applications.
- Cognition covers the private and internal mental processes that the behaviourists avoided studying -
information processing, thinking, reasoning, and problem solving.
- Ulric Nessier (1928-2012) gave the new name to the field - Cognitive Psychology.
- Alan Newell (1927-1992) and Herbert Simon (1916-2001) wrote groundbreaking artificial intelligence
programmes using human information processing as their model.
’ ’ ’ ’
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