Summary introduction to psychological theories
Chapter 1: The science of psychology
1.1 Psychological science is the study of mind, brain, and behavior
Psychological science is the study, through research, of mind, brain, and behavior.
Mind refers to mental activity. Examples of the mind in action include the perceptual experiences
(sights, smells, tastes, sounds, and touches) we have while interacting with the world. The mind is
also responsible for memories, thoughts, and feelings. Mental activity results from biological
processes within the brain.
Behavior describes the totality of observable human (or animal) actions. These actions range from
the subtle to the complex. Some occur exclusively in humans, such as debating philosophy or
performing surgery. Others occur in all animals, such as eating, drinking, and mating. For many years,
psychologists focused on behavior rather than on mental states. They did so largely because they had
few objective techniques for assessing the mind. The advent of technology to observe the working
brain in action has enabled psychologists to study mental states and has led to a fuller understanding
of human behavior.
Psychologists generally seek to understand mental activity (both normal and abnormal), the
biological basis of that activity, how people change as they grow older, how people vary in response
to social settings, and how people acquire healthy and unhealthy behaviors.
1.2 Psychological science teaches critical thinking
One of the hallmarks of a good scientist-or a savvy consumer of scientific research-is amiable
skepticism. This trait combines openness and wariness. An amiable skeptic remains open to new
ideas but is wary of new scientific findings" when good evidence and good reasoning do not seem to
support them. An amiable skeptic develops the habit of carefully weighing the facts when deciding
what to believe. Th ability to think in this way- to systematically question and evaluate information
using well- supported evidence- is called critical thinking.
The integration of critical thinking in psychological science adds to our understanding of how people
typically think when they encounter information. Many decades of psychological research have
shown that people's intuitions are often wrong.
1.3 Psychological science helps us understand biased or inaccurate thinking
Biases occur because we are motivated to use our intelligence. We want to make sense of events
that involve us or happen around us. Our minds are constantly analyzing all the information we
receive and try to make sense of it, this generally results in relevant and correct conclusion. But
sometimes we get things wrong. → patterns sometimes don’t really exist
Why is it important to care about errors and biases in thinking?; Thomas Gilovich points out that
more Americans believe in extrasensory perception (ESP) than in evolution and that there are twenty
times more astrologers than astronomers. Followers of ESP and astrology base important life
decisions on beliefs that are wrong, which can lead to dangerous actions. Some people hunt
endangered animals for example, because they believe the animals’ body parts provide magical
cures. Some people rely on fringe therapies to provide what they think is real medical or
psychological treatment.
A few major biases;
, - Ignoring evidence (confirmation bias): People show a strong tendency to place great
importance on evidence that supports their beliefs. They tend to downplay evidence that
does not match what they belief. (for example people with certain political views) One factor
that contributes to confirmation bias is the selective sampling of information. (if we restrict
ourselves to evidence that supports our views, then of course we will believe we are right)
Similarly, people show selective memory, tending to better remember information that
supports their existing beliefs.
- Seeing relationships that do not exist. An extremely common reasoning error is the
misperception that two events that happen at the same time must somehow be related (is
predictable, just how we like it) We sometimes see order that does not exist. This can lead to
superstitious behavior. (many times it is just coincidence)
- Accepting after-the-fact explanation. 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.
o One form of this reasoning bias is known as hindsight bias. We are wonderful at
explaining why things happened, but we are much less successful at predicting future
events. Once we know the outcome, we interpret and reinterpret old evidence to
make sense 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.
o Example: 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. People interpret information in ways
that support their positive beliefs about themselves. One factors that promotes overconfidence is
that people often have difficulty recognizing their own weaknesses.
For example everyone says that you are a good singer but at America’s got talent the judges says it is
bad. Such moments make us cringe. The German language has a word for how we feel,
Fremdschämen. This term refers to times when we experience embarrassment for other people in
part because they do not realize that they should be embarrassed for themselves.
Social psychologist David Dunning and Justin Kruger have an explanation: People are often blissfully
unaware of their weaknesses because they cannot judge those weaknesses at all. 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.
People that 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.
,Kruger and Dunning have shown that teaching people specific skills helps them to be more accurate
in judging their performance. This finding implies that people might need help in identifying their
weaknesses before they can fix those 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 behavior.
1.5 Many psychological questions have a long history
Since at least the times of ancient Greece, people have wondered why humans think and act in
certain ways. Greek philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato debated whether an individual’s
psychology is attributable more to nature or to nurture. (biologically innate or acquired through
education, experience, and culture.)
The nature/nurture debate has taken one form or another throughout psychology history.
Psychologists now widely recognize that both nature and nurture dynamically interact in human
psychological development.
The mind/body problem was perhaps the quintessential psychological issue: Are the mind and body
separate and distinct, or is the mind simply the subjective experience of ongoing brain activity?
Throughout history, the mind has been viewed residing in many organs of the body, including the
liver and the heart.
In the following centuries, especially among the Greeks and Roman recognition grew that the brain
was essential for normal mental functioning. Much of this change came from observing people with
brain injuries. (Roman gladiators)
Nonetheless, scholars continued to believe that the mind was separate from and control of the body.
They held this belief partly because of the strong theological that a divine and immortal soul
separates humans from nonhuman animals.
Around 1500, the artist Leonardo da Vinci challenged this doctrine when he dissected human bodies
to make his anatomical drawings more accurate. Da Vinci’s dissections led him to many conclusions
about the brain’s workings. (he believed that all sensory messages (vision, touch, smell, etc.) arrived
at one location in the brain, which he called the sensus communis, and he believed it to be the home
of thought and judgment; the root of the name of the term common sense)
In the 1600s, the philosopher René Descartes promoted the influential theory dualism. This term
refers to the idea that the mind and the body are separate yet intertwined. The body, he argued, was
nothing more than organic machine governed by reflex. Many mental functions – such as memory
and imagination – resulted from body functions. Deliberate actions, however, was controlled by the
rational mind.
Nowadays psychologists reject dualism. In their view, the mind arises from brain activity. It does not
exist separately.
1.6 Experimental psychology initially focused on the structure, not the function, of mental activity
In a system of logic, the philosopher John Stuart Mill declared that psychology should leave the
realms of philosophy and of speculation and become a science of observation and of experiment.
Indeed, he defined psychology as the science of the elementary laws of the mind and argued that
, only through the methods of science would the processes of the mind be understood. As a result,
throughout the 1800s, early psychologists increasingly studied mental activity through careful
scientific observation.
Wilhelm Wundt realized that psychological processes, the products of physiological actions in the
brain, take time to occur. Therefore, he used a method developed earlier, called reaction time, to
assess how quickly people can respond to events. Wundt presented each research participant with a
simple psychological task and a related but more complex one. He timed each task. The then
performed a mathematical operation: subtracting the time a participant took to complete the simple
task from the time the participant took to complete the more complex task. This method enabled
him to infer how much time a particular mental event took to occur. Researches still widely use
reaction time to study psychological processes, but their types of equipment are more sophisticated.
Wundt was not satisfied with simply studying mental reaction times. He wanted to measure
conscious experiences. To do so, he developed the method of introspection, 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. Wundt asked people to use introspection in comparing their subjective
experiences as they contemplated a series of objects-for example, by stating which object they found
more pleasant.
Structuralism
Edward Titchener, a student of Wundt's, used methods such as introspection to pioneer a school of
thought that became known as structuralism.
This school is based on the idea that conscious experience can be broken down into its basic
underlying components, much as the periodic table breaks down chemical elements. Titchener
believed that an understanding of the basic elements of conscious experience would provide the
scientific basis for understanding the mind. He argued that one could take a stimulus such as a
musical tone and, through introspection, analyze its "quality," "intensity," "duration," and "clarity."
Wundt ultimately rejected such uses of introspection, but Titchener relied on the method throughout
his career.
- The general problem with introspection is that experience is subjective. Each person brings a
unique perceptual system to introspection, and it is difficult for researchers to determine
whether each participant in a study is employing introspection similarly.
- Additionally, 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.
Functionalism
In criticizing structuralism's failure to capture the most important aspects of mental experience,
William James argued that the mind is much more complex than its elements and therefore cannot
be broken down. For instance, he noted that the mind consists of an ever-changing, continuous
series of thoughts. This stream of consciousness cannot be frozen in time, so the structuralists’
techniques were sterile and artificial. Psychologists who used the structural approach, he said, were
like people trying to understand a house by studying each of its bricks individually. More important
to James was that the bricks together form a house and that a house has a particular function. The
mind’s elements matter less than the mind’s usefulness to people.
