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Summary Psychological Science, ISBN: 9780393640403 Introduction To Psychological Theories (PSMIN10)
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Psychological Science, M. GazzanigaChapter 1
What is psychological science?
1.1 Psychological Science Is the Study of Mind, Brain, and Behaviour
• The science of psychology is not simply about intuitions or common sense, psychological science is the
study, through research, of mind, brain, and behaviour.
• Mind refers to mental activity, and is responsible for memories, thoughts and feelings. Mental activity
results and produced by biological processes within the brain
• Behaviour describes the totality of observable human (or animal) actions
• Psychologists seek to understand the mental activities and their biological basis, how people change as
they grow, how they change in social circumstances, how they acquire healthy or unhealthy behaviours.
1.2 Psychological science teaches critical thinking
• Amiable skepticism: being open to new ideas but carefully considering the evidence.
• An amiable skeptic develops the habit of careful weighing the facts when deciding what to believe.
• The ability to think that way, to question and evaluate information is called critical thinking
• In many cases intuition and common sense fails and influences people judgments in bias ways.
1.3 Psychological Science Helps Us Understand Biased or Inaccurate Thinking
• Many people are subject of biased and inaccurate thinking, where they see what they expect to see and
fail to notice things that do not fit with our expectations.
• It’s important to care about these errors because they can lead to dangerous beliefs and actions.
• Having critical thinking skills and knowing about biases thinking help people do better in classes.
• A few major biases
• Ignoring evidence (confirmation bias): People only pay attention and give merit to evidence which
support their beliefs and ignore the ones which don’t. A factor which contributes to confirmation
bias is the selective sampling of information. If people restrict themselves to evidence that support
their views, then of course they’ll believe they’re right
• Seeing relationships that do not exits: It’s the misperception that two events that happen at the same
time must somehow be related. In our desire to find predictability in the world, we sometimes see
order that does not exist. Believing that events are related when they are not can lead to
superstitious behaviour. But many Tim es events that appear related are just coincidence.
• Accepting after-the-fact explanations: Because people expect the world to make sense, they often
come up with explanations for why events happen. They do so even when they have incomplete
information. One form of this reasoning bias is known as hindsight bias. Once the outcome is
known, people interpret and reinterpret old evidence to make senses of that outcome. We need to be
wary of after-the-fact explanations because they tend to distort the evidence.
• Taking mental shortcuts: People often follow simple rules, called heuristics, to make decisions. These
mental shortcuts are valuable because they often produce reasonably good decisions without too
much effort. Unfortunately, many heuristics can lead to inaccurate judgments and biased outcomes.
One example of this problem occurs when things that come most easily to mind guide our thinking.
This shortcut is known as the availability heuristic.
,1.4 Why are people unaware of their weaknesses?
• Another bias in thinking is that people fail to see their own inadequacies. People are motivated to feel
good about themselves, and this motivation affects how they think.
• People use various strategies to support their positive views, such as crediting personal strengths for
their successes and blaming outside forces for their failures. In general, people interpret information in
ways that support their positive beliefs about themselves. One factor that promotes overconfidence is
that people often have difficulty recognising their own weaknesses.
• How can those people not see their weaknesses? People are often blissfully unaware of their
weaknesses because they cannot judge those weaknesses at all. A lack of skill not only prevents people
from producing good results, it also prevents those people from knowing what good results are.
• As noted by researchers, “Thus, if people lack the skills to produce correct answers, they are also
cursed with an inability to know when their answers, or anyone else’s, are right or wrong”. To make
matters worse, people who are unaware of their weaknesses fail to make any efforts at self-
improvements to overcome those weaknesses. They do not try to get better because they already
believe they are performing well.
• Why should you be skeptical of people’s description of their personal strengths? Because people offer
fail to see their personal weaknesses.
What are the scientific foundations of psychology?
Psychology originated in philosophy, as the great thinkers sought to understand human nature. In the
1800s psychologists began to use scientific methods to investigate mind, brain, and behaviour.
1.5 Many psychological questions have a long history
Are psychological characteristics biologically innate? Or are they acquired through education experience
and culture?
• Psychologists now widely recognise that both nature and nurture dynamically interact in human
psychological development. Psychologist study the ways that nature and nurture influence beach other
in shaping mind, Braun and behaviour.
• The mind/body problem: are the mind and body separated and distinct or is the mind simply the
subjective experience of ongoing brain activity?
• Through history the mind has been viewed to resign in other organs of the body, not much importance
was attributed to the brain
• In the following years, the brain’s importance was recognised and mainly studied in people with brain
injuries
• Nonetheless, scholars continued to believe that the mind was separate from and in control of the body.
They held this belief partly because of the strong theological belief that a divine and immortal soul
separates humans from nonhuman animals.
• In the 1500,s Da Vinci challenged this doctrine as he directed human bodies and he came to many
conclusions about the brain. His work and conclusion weren’t accurate but they represent an effort
and improvements.
• In the 1600s, Descartes introduced the idea of dualism. This term refers to the idea that the mind and
the body are separate yet intertwined. Descartes concluded that the rational mind was divine and
separate from the body. Nowadays, psychologists reject dualism. In their view, the mind arises from
brain activity. It does not exist separately.
• Culture: The beliefs, values, rules, and customs that exist within a group of people who share a
common language and environment.
,• Nature/nurture debate: The arguments concerning whether psychological characteristics are
biologically innate or acquired through education, experience, and culture.
• mind/body problem: A fundamental psychological issue: Are mind and body separate and distinct, or
is the mind simply the physical brain’s subjective experience?
1.6 Experimental psychology initially focused on the structure, not the function, of mental activity
• Introspection (Wundt): a systematic examination of mental experiences that requires people to inspect
and report on the content of their thoughts. Introspection is a subjective process because it assesses
how each individual personally experiences an event.
Limitations of introspection:
• The general problem with introspection is that experience is subjective. Each person brings a
unique perceptual system to introspection
• the reporting of the experience changes the experience
• Over time, psychologists largely abandoned introspection because it was not a reliable method
for understanding psychological processes.
• Structuralism (Edward Titchener): An approach to psychology based on the idea that conscious
experience can be broken down into its basic underlying components.
• Functionalism (William James): he criticised the structuralism idea, stating that the mind is much more
complex than its elements and therefore cannot be broken down. The mind consists of an ever-
changing, continuous series of thoughts. He spoke about a stream of thoughts that can’t be frozen in
time and studied in different pieces. For him, the mind’s elements matter less than the mind’s
usefulness.
• Evolution, adaptation and behaviour: functionalism was largely influences by scientific researchers
such as Darwin, with his theories of evolution, adaptations and natural selection (the process by which
changes that are adaptive are passed along and those that aren’t are not passed along, in other words the
species which are better adapted to survive will reproduce)
The theory of natural selection is related to functionalism because the theory focuses on the fiction of
adaptive behaviour to increase survival and reproduction.
1.7 Different schools of thought reflected on different perspectives on mind, brain and behaviour
• Different ways of thinking about the content of psychology emerged during the years and those are
called schools of thought.
• In addition to structuralism and functionalism, five other schools of thought were seen in the history of
psychology
• Structuralism: identify basic parts, or structures, of the conscious mind
• Functionalism: describe how the conscious mind aids adaptation to an environment
• Psychoanalytic theory: Understand how unconscious thoughts cause psychological disorders
• Gestalt movement: Study subjective perceptions as a unified whole
• Behaviourism: describe behaviour in response to environmental stimuli
• Humanistic psychology: investigate how people become happier and more fulfilled, focus on the
basic goodness of people
• Cognitivism: explore internal mental processes that influence behaviour
• Psychoanalytic approach (Freud):
, • He elaborated the idea of the unconscious (The place where mental processes operate below the level
of conscious awareness).
• He believed that unconscious mental forces, often sexual and in conflict, produce psychological
discomfort and in some cases even psychological disorders.
• According to Freudian thinking, many of these unconscious conflicts arise from troubling childhood
experiences that the person is blocking from memory.
• Psychoanalysis: therapeutic method, the therapist and the patient work together to bring the contents
of the patient’s unconscious into his or her conscious awareness.
• Free association: the patient would talk about whatever he or she wanted to for as long as he or she
wanted to. Freud believed that through free association, a person eventually revealed the
unconscious conflicts that caused the psychological problems.
• Behaviourism: A psychological approach that emphasises the role of environmental forces in
producing observable behaviour. The study of environmental stimuli is important to understand the
response of the subject to this stimuli
• Gestalt movement: A theory based on the idea that the whole of personal experience is different from
the sum of its constituent elements.
• The whole is different from the sum of its parts
• Humanistic psychology:
• In the 1950s, most schools of thought viewed behaviour as resulting from events outside of people’s
control. For Freud, behaviour was determined by unconscious forces. For behaviourists,
environmental factors were key.
• Rejecting these views, psychologists such as Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers focused on how
people are free to choose activities that make them happy and bring them fulfilment. This more
positive perspective became known as humanistic psychology.
• This approach emphasised the basic goodness of people. It focused on how people should accept
themselves, work on personal goals, and try to live up to their full potential as human beings.
• Cognitivism: mental functions are important for understanding behaviour—they demonstrated the
limitations of a purely behavioural approach to psychology.
What are the latest developments in psychology?
1.8 Biology is increasingly emphasised in explaining psychological phenomena
• Brain chemistry:
• hundreds of substances play critical roles in mental activity and behaviour.
• Brain chemistry is different when we are aroused than when we are calm, and those same chemicals
influence the neural mechanisms involved in memory.
• Brain imaging: new brain imaging methods have been developed (ex: fMRI) and help study mental
activity
• consistent patterns of brain activation are associated with specific mental tasks, the activation appears
to be connected with the tasks.
• localisation of function: some areas are important for specific feelings, thoughts, and actions.
• mapping out how various brain regions are connected and how they work together to produce mental
activity.
• Those imaging methods can be used to identify a huge variety of things: emotional changes during
adolescence, thinking patterns involved in depression …
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