PSY111 Notes. For Session 3, Carrington Melbourne. C. Melbourne PSY111 Session 3,

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1 PSY111 Notes For Session 3, Carrington Melbourne C. Melbourne PSY111 Session 3,

2 Psychology111: Week 1 Psychology is the scientific investigation of mental processes and behaviour. It understands a person requires attention to the individual s biology, psychological experience and cultural context. Positive Psychology is a proactive approach to help people live happier, more fulfilling and joyful lives. Focuses on understanding and harnessing positive emotions. Psychology seeks answers for why we do the things we do. A paradigm is a broad system of theoretical assumptions employed by a scientific community. Psychology lacks a unified paradigm but has a number of schools or perspectives that can be used to understand psychological events. PERSPECTIVES IN PSYCHOLOGY: Perspective Info Psychodynamic Sigmund Freud ( ) developed a theory of mental life and behaviour and an approach to treating psychological disorders known as psychodynamic. 3 key premises: o Peoples actions are determined by their thoughts, feelings and wishes connected in their mind. o Many mental events occur outside the conscious awareness. o These processes may conflict with each other. Theory originated by Freud in response to patients whose symptoms were not based on psychological malfunctioning. Freud decided that if their symptoms were not caused consciously they were unconscious decisions (irrational fear) Unconscious motives underlie our intentions consciously A psychodynamic clinician observes a patient s dreams, fantasies, posture and subtle behaviour towards the therapist. Rely on clinical data to support their theories. CRITICISM: lacks scientific grounding, violates the falsifiability criterion, uses unreliable measures and approaches. Behaviouralist Focuses on the way objects or events (stimuli) come to control behaviour through learning. Relationship between external events and observable behaviours. Prefer to study what can be observed. John Watson ( ) and B.F. Skinner ( ) both helped to develop behaviourism. C. Melbourne PSY111 Session 3,

3 Relearning old skills after a brain injury is now becoming possible. Behaviour can be understood completely without internal states (feelings, thoughts). Believe it is the psychology of behaviour and should be scientifically tested, particularly experimentation. Believe conscious thoughts cannot be studied in a scientific way. Mental processes are by-products of environmental events. Experimental method entails framing a hypothesis about the way certain environmental will affect behaviour, creating the situation and testing it. Dominate perspective from s. Humanistic Developed by Abraham Maslow ( ) and Carl Rogers ( ) Focuses on the uniqueness of the individual. Represents an optimistic view of human experience. Assumes people are good and will always choose to adaptive, goal-directed, self-actualizing behaviours. Focuses on human behaviour only. Believe people s actions reflect the way they understand and experience themselves and the world. Believe people are not powerless victims of external forces but have desire to improve themselves. People strive to self-actualize. Goals are based on their personality and experience. Data includes thoughts, motives, actions that reflect a person s inner drive. People experience problems when there are problems between our self-concept and ideal self. CRTICS: perspective is naïve, assumes people are good. Cognitive Focuses on the way people perceive, process and retrieve information. Thinking is information processing, the environment provides inputs, which are transformed, stored and retrieved using various mental programs, leading to specific response outputs. Our memory system evolved to place frequently used information in front of our memory files. Response time is a useful measure of memory. Helps understand processes such as decision-making, interested in how memory works, how people solve problems etc. The primary method of the cognitive perspective is experimental. Main character in cognitive perspective is Rene C. Melbourne PSY111 Session 3,

4 Descartes. Evolutionary Argue that many behavioural tendencies in humans evolved because they helped our ancestors survive and rear healthy children. Believe that most human attributes served a function for humans as biological organisms. Perspective is rooted in Charles Darwin s (1859) evolutionary theory, Thomas Hobbes ( ) also contributes. Darwin argued that natural forces selected traits that enable survive and are likely to be passed to the offspring (natural selection) Adaptive traits are characteristics that help organisms adjust and survive in their environment. Certain behaviours evolved because they helped members of society to survive. Ethology studies animal behaviour from an evolutionary and biological perspective. Sociobiology explores possible evolutionary and biological bases of human social behaviour. Parents also pas on to their children behavioural and mental tendencies. Inclusive fitness refers to not only an individual s own reproductive success, but also to his or her own influence on the reproductive success of genetically related individuals. CRTICISM: predicting behaviour in a laboratory is more difficult. Involves prediction of behaviour in a laboratory. We think, feel and behave in ways that helped our ancestors adapt to their environment, and hence to survive and reproduce. Biopsychology Examines the physical basis of psychological phenomena such as motivation, emotion and stress. The neural circuits that underlie psychological events cannot be found in one section of the brain Cross-cultural psychology Tries to distinguish universal psychological processes from those that are specific to particular cultures. C. Melbourne PSY111 Session 3,

5 HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY Early in the 20 th century, philosophers entered a period of intense selfdoubt about the limitations of what they could know about topics such as morality, justice and the nature of knowledge. Psychology grew out of philosophy. Philosophers searched for answers to questions about Main philosophical questions if humans do things by free will (freely choose our actions) or by determinism (behaviour is caused by things out of our control). Rene Descartes ( ) contended human action follows human intention (free-will) Psychological determinists believe that physical forces determine the actions of humans and animals (genetics and environment events). The mind-body problem questions how mental and physical events interact. Willhelm Wundt ( ), the father of psychology founded the first psychological laboratory in Germany. o He used psychological methods to discover elementary units of human consciousness that combine to form complex ideas. o He used introspection, the process of looking inward and reporting on one s conscious experience o Trained observers to report verbally their thoughts when confronted with stimulus or a task. o Basic elements of consciousness are sensations and feelings. o Structuralism attempted to uncover the basic elements of consciousness through introspection. o Functionalism attempted to explain psychological processes in terms of the role, or function they serve. PERSPECTIVE PSYCHODYNAMIC KEY FIGURES Sigmund Freud BASIC PRINCIPLE Behaviour is largely the result of unconscious processes, motivation and early experiences. BEHAVIOURIST B. F. Skinner Behaviour is learned and selected by its environmental consequences. HUAMISTIC Carl Rogers Behaviour and experience is shaped by the needs to selfactualize, to fulfill one s inner potential. METAPHOR Consciousness is like the tip of an iceberg; the mind is like a battleground for warring fractions. Humans and other animals are like machines; the mind is like a black box. Life is like a bottle of milkthe cream always rises to the top. This is an optimistic view of METHODS Interpretation of verbal discourse, slips of the tongue, dreams, fantasies, actions and postures, limited experimentation. Experimentation with humans and other animals. Person-centered therapeutic approach that emphasises, empathy, acceptance and respect for the C. Melbourne PSY111 Session 3,

6 COGNITITVE EVOLUTIONARY Rene Descartes (early philosophical questions lead to many cognitive therapists to emphasise the role of reason in creating knowledge). Charles Darwin Behaviour is the product of information processing: storage, transformation and retrieval of data. Psychological processes reflect the evolutionary process of natural selection. behaviour, emphasising that everyone aims to be the best person they can be. The mind is like a computer; enduring patterns of thought are like software. Life is like a race for survival and reproduction. individual. Experimentation with humans; computer modeling. Deduction of explanations for traits and behaviours; cross species and cross cultural comparisons, limited explanations. C. Melbourne PSY111 Session 3,

7 C. Melbourne PSY111 Session 3,

Name: Date: Period: AP Psychology Chapter 1 Study Guide

Name: Date: Period: AP Psychology Chapter 1 Study Guide 1. What does Munchausen's syndrome involve? A psychological illness in which people fabricate or induce illness in themselves 2. What do the authors