Unit I Outline

I.                    What is Psychology

A.     Psychology’s Roots

i     Prescientific Psychology

-Ancient Greeks

-Socrates (469-399 B.C.E.)

-The mind is separable from the body

-Knowledge is innate

-Plato (428-348 B.C.E.)

-Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.)

-Knowledge is not preexisting

-Knowledge grows from experience

-Rene Descartes (1595-1650)

-Expands on Socrates and Plato

-Animal spirits through hollow nerves

-Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

-One of the fathers of modern science

-Experimentation and common sense

-John Locke (1632-1704)

-An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

-Tabula Rasa (blank slate)

-Empiricism-The view that knowledge originates in experience and that science should, therefore, rely on observation and experimentation

ii   Psychological Science is Born

-Wilhelm Wundt

-Leipzig, Germany

-Reaction time experiment

-Time lag

-1/10 of a second

-2/10 to consciously become aware of perceiving the sound

-Psychology’s first official experiment

iii  Thinking About the Mind’s Structure

-Edward Bradford Titchener

-Introduced Structuralism

-Self-reflective introspection

-Looking inward to determine feeling

-Required intelligent, verbal people

-Results unreliable

iv Thinking About the Mind’s Functions

-William James

-Focused on function and not structure

-Thinking is “adaptive”

-1890-James admitted Mary Calking into his graduate seminar

-Harvard refused to award her a degree

-Margaret Floy Washburn-First woman to receive a PhD in Psych

-Washburn’s thesis published by Wundt in his journal

B.     Psychological Science Develops
-Developed out of Philosophy and Biology
-Freud emphasized emotional responses to childhood experiences and thought processes
-How do they affect our behavior?
-John Watson and B.F. Skinner dismissed introspection and redefined psychology as
“the scientific study of observable behavior”
-Science is the KEY word!

II.                 Contemporary Psychology

A.     Psychology’s Biggest Question
-Nature-Nurture
-Biology-Experience
-Ancient Greeks-Socrates, Plato, Aristotle
-Locke-Tabula Rasa
-Descartes-Some ideas are innate
-Charles Darwin

B.     Psychology’s Three Main Levels of Analysis
-Levels of Analysis
-Biological
-Psychological
-Social-Cultural

C.     Psychology’s Subfields
-Psychometrics
-Basic Research
-Developmental Psychology
-Educational Psychology
-Personality Psychology
-Social Psychology

D.     Tips For Studying Psychology
-Applied Research
-I/O Psychology
-Human Factors Psychology
-Counseling Psychology
-Clinical Psychology
-Psychiatry