Maya Oton

PSY110-G: Introduction to Psychology

C12010243
Fall 2016

Lecture One
I.

Definition of Psychology

The scientific study of mind and behavior.

Textbook definition:
Psychology is advanced by using the scientific method.
Its not the topic that makes it a science its the method.
The mind is the product of a healthy brain. It produces an awareness of your surroundings, memories, personality etc.
This mind dictates behavior.

II. Six Approaches to Psychology

A. Psychoanalytic (Freud)

Came up with the idea that we have an unconscious mind

Thats a big part of our personality
Our personalities are shaped by early experiences, specifically sexual awareness/awakening

B. Behavioral (Watson)

In the year 1913 Watson argued that you cannot find and observe like personalities and superegos
He believed we should focus on behavior and quantifying in numbers (behavioral psychology)
For many years the behavioral approach dominated psychology

C. Gestalt (Kohler, Wertheimer)

Gestalt means the whole spectrum.

The whole human experience is more than the sum of the parts that make it up.

D. Cognitive (Maslow, Rogers)

They said Watson was wrong and claimed that it is possible to measure thinking memory, language, learning, problem
solving, creativity.

E. Humanistic (Maslow, Rogers)

F. Biological/Medical/Physiological
Every thought you have is a chemical phenomenon/process

III. Fields of Specialization

Human Services

Clinical: therapy (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder,etc)

Counseling: family couseling, marriage counseling
Community: help people to navigate the legal system, help find houses for homeless, (similar to social workers)
School: disorders

Applied

Educational: learning how to best teach to children, principal-teacher relationship

Forensic: Psychology for the legal system as a whole.
Sports: help motivate
Industrial /Organizational: helping businesses improve their industry, employer-employee relationship, etc
Health: health study
Engineering: design equipment that work better

Experimental

Social
Personality
Cognitive
Developmental
Physiological/Medical/Biological

IV. History of Psychology

A. Charles Darwin 1859

Charles Darwin suggested that humans evolved from lower animals.

Nature selects the fittest characteristics of organisms and passes them on in greater numbers.
Because of natural selection, species tend to change over time.
Beginning of psychology: If we evolved from animals

B. Wilhelm Wundt 1879/Titchener 1893

The first person to set up a scientific lab for psychology (in 1889)
1879 he founded the first school/lab of psychology in Germany.
Titchener was Wundts students.
Wundt came up with the school of structuralism.
He taught his graduate students who wanted to be psychologists to observe himself. (methods of introspection).
The issue with this were the inherent biases that came along with this method.
Wundt believed that they should take the same approach as physicists, chemists, and biologists and take a look at what
makes things up.

C. Sir Francis Galton 1884

Said if Darwin is correct, then individual differences were passed on in families

If Darwin is correct, strength should run in families
He predicted that you should be more similar to your twin than your brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters to
cousins, parents than grandparents, etc
Got credit for being the first person to attempt to measure mental abilities (aka intelligence)

D. William James 1890 Principles of Psychology

One of the most famous American psychologists.

Wrote a book called the Principles of Psychology, cited as one of the best books for Psychology.
He was essentially creating a field that didnt exist.
He was the one who provided us with the idea of the stream of consciousness.
Stream of consciousness: the idea that your mind flows like a stream (flows from topic to topic)
He did not like the technique of the structuralists but decided to use it because there were no other techniques.
He formed the school of Functionalism
Functionalism: What was the function of consciousness?

E. Sigmund Freud 1900

He had a theory of psychoanalysis.

F. Ivan Pavlov 1920s

Physiologist studied the digestive process in dogs.

He collected saliva from the dogs, but he had an issue with the dogs salivated whenever anyone walked in, messing up
the data.

He had to stop investigating the digestive process and began seeing what other things would stimulate the dog to start
drooling (classical conditioning).
Seen as a behaviorist.
Won a nobel prize for this work

G. John Watson (1913) 1920s

V.

His ideas made psychology much more rigorous and stated that you cant measure thinking or consciousness.

Ethical Issues

Institutional Review Boards (IRB)

Any institution that does any human research must have an institutional review board to determine if a study can be done.
A paper must be submitted to the IRB.
Theyll want you to minimize risks, have informed consent.
Informed consent: I understand that I will be doing and I agree
If youre doing outdoor research as long as youre not doing anything to the participants.
Nothing gained about you can be shared outside of the study or even within the study unless they apply to the experiment.
You have the right to receive the purpose of the experiment at the end of the experiment.
There must be detailed records on file in case anything goes wrong.
Animal research:
o Equally complex
o You need approval for the studies you are doing.

*Little Albert Experiment* (check online)

Watson believed that phobias are learned in childhood. He took a small baby, Albert, and put him in a bed in a blanket. They put a white rat and
startled the kid with a pot and pan from behind them. It generalized to anything white and fuzzy. He planned to counter-conditioned the phobia,
but the child and mother left before it was possible.

VI. Overview of the Scientific Method

The aim is the disprove a hypothesis rather than prove it because its open to bias.
A theory is never proven.
The goal of a theory is to motivate research and create new hypotheses to expand knowledge in that area.
Theories lead to many good, testable hypotheses.

Theories evolve and expand with support.

The hypothesis needs to be testable and disprovable.

Obs.: Coffee makes your heart rate goes us

Theory: There is a stimulus within the coffee that causes the
Hypothesis: 40 people randomly split in two groups of two. Group one will receive coffee.
Results will not prove/disprove a theory.

Science
Modify

Support

If
NO

If
YES

Coffee leads to heart rate

Heart rate leads to coffee
The directionality issue:
Generally may go in either direction
? unknown variable (age) affecting the coffee and the heart rate
Third variable issue: any unknown variable may cause both correlated variables to move together.
In Chicago they noticed a positive correlation between ice cream sales and street crimes. The third variable could be temperature. On hotter
days, people are more likely to commit crimes and buy ice cream.
Directionality:
They discovered that the mothers cold mothering in autistic children. In reality, the babies were not responsive to the children and made the
mothers cold and aloof.

Methods of Research

True Experiment
Randomly Divide Subjects
(into two or more groups)
2) Manipulate the Independent
Variable
3) Measure the Dependent Variable

EX:

Mean Coffee gp = 75 bpm

Mean no Coffee gp = 65 bpm

Correlational Study
1) Measure Two Variables
2) Calculate the Relationship

Ex:

Pearsons correlation = +.90

May infer that coffee CAUSED an

increase in Heart Rate

Support for hypothesis but cannot infer

Causality

Test the difference for significance. Have to input those values into a T table and use the T formula. Take into account the sample size.
Remember: Correlation does not imply causation!
It is necessary for causation, but does not imply causation. Its not sufficient enough to incur causation.
Correlational studies often have Directionality Problems and/or Third variable problems