Dakota Doukas

AP Psych Outline: Prologue, pgs 1-11

The Story of Psychology

What is Psychology?

 Psychology’s Roots
 Psychological Science is Born
 Before 300 BC, philosopher Aristotle theorized about learning
and memory, motivation and emotion, perception and
personality – can be credited with asking right questions
 1879, Germany’s University of Leipzig – true birth of
psychology- professor Wilhelm Wundt created first
psychological experiment that measured time lag between
people’s hearing a ball hit a platform and their pressing a
telegraph key
 Psychology then organized into different schools of thought –
each with different thinkers
• Early schools: structuralism and functionalism
• Later schools: Gestalt psychology (ch6), behaviorism (ch7),
psychoanalysis (ch13)

 Thinking about the Mind’s Structure

 Professor Wundt’s student, Edward Bradford Titchener
introduced structuralism – an early school of psychology
that used introspection to explore the structural elements of
the human mind
• Method: engage people in self-reflective introspection
(looking inward) and get their reactions/immediate
sensations/feelings to certain experiences (such as looking
at a rose)
• Structuralism faded because it proved to be somewhat
unreliable – we often just don’t know why we feel what we
do

 Thinking about the Mind’s Functions

 William James – under influence of evolutionary theorist
Darwin

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 • James believed that thinking developed because it was
adaptive and contributed to our ancestor’s survival –
consciousness is a function
• Studied functionalism – a school of psychology that
focused on how our mental and behavioral processes
function – how they enable us to adapt, survive, and
flourish
• James admitted Mary Calkins into his graduate seminar
(although women had few rights) and tutored her alone
because all other men dropped out – she was denied
degree and went on to be a memory researcher and the
American Psychological Association’s first female president
♦ Margaret Floy Washburn- first woman to receive
psychology Ph.D – wrote influential book, The Animal
Mind, which synthesized animal behavior research
• James wrote textbook – Principles of Psychology – which
introduced psychology to educated public

 Psychological Science Develops

 Developed from the more established fields of philosophy and
biology
 In psychology’s early days – focus was more in inner
sensations/feelings (Wundt, Titchener, James)
 Sigmund Freud – emphasized the ways emotional responses
to childhood experiences and our unconscious thought
processes affect our behavior
♦ Until 1920s, psychology was “the science of mental life”
 1920-1960 – psychology redefined as “the scientific study of
observable behavior”
 Behaviorism – recording a behavioral response, since you
cannot observe a feeling/thought (ch7)
• the view that psychology (1) should be an objective science
that (2) studies behavior without reference to mental
processes (today most psychologists only agree with (1) )
 Humanistic Psychology – emphasized importance of
current environmental influences on personal growth (ch13)

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 • historically significant perspective that emphasized the
growth potential of healthy people and the individual’s
potential for personal growth
 Cognitive Neuroscience – how mind processes and retains
info (ch14/15)
• Study of brain activity linked with cognition (perception,
thinking, memory, language)
 Today, psychology = the science of observable behavior and
mental processes (inner thoughts/feelings)
• Behavior = anything an organism does – anything we can
observe and record (Ex: yelling, smiling, sweating, talking)
• Mental processes = internal experiences we observe from
behavior – sensations, perceptions, dreams, thoughts,
beliefs, feelings

Contemporary Psychology

 Psychology’s Biggest Question

 Psychology’s biggest historic issue (ch4) is the nature-nurture
issue – controversy over the relative contributions of biology
and experience
♦ Nature = genes, nurture = all other influences
 Do our human traits develop through experience or are we
born with them?
• Plato assumed that character and intelligence are largely
inherited
• Aristotle countered that there is nothing in the mind that
does not first come in from the external world through the
senses
• Descartes believed that some ideas are inborn - his views
gained support by Darwin
♦ Darwin’s On the Origin of Species explained
evolutionary process of natural selection – the
principal that, among the range of inherited trait
variations, those contributing to reproduction and
survival will most likely be passed onto succeeding
generations – nature selects the traits that best enable

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 an organism to survive and reproduce in a particular
environment
 Today, science emphasizes the interaction of genes and
experiences in specific environments – nurture works on what
nature awards

 Psychology’s Three Main Levels of Analysis

 Different levels of analysis (the differing complementary views
—biological, psychological and social-cultural—factored in to
analyze any given phenomenon) form an integrated
biopsychosocial approach
 Levels of Analysis:
• Biological Influences (natural selection, brain mechanics,
hormonal influences),
• Psychological Influences (learned fears, emotional
responses, perceptual interpretations)
• Social-Cultural Influences (presence of others,
cultural/societal/family expectations, peer influences)
• Together, they affect Behavior or Mental Process

 Psychology requires all the different perspectives to reveal the

whole picture – each perspective brings out something
 Current perspectives =
• neuroscience (how body and brain enable emotions,
memories, sensory experiences)
• evolutionary (how the natural selection of traits promoted
the survival of genes)
• behavior genetics (how much our genes and our
environment influence our individual differences)
• psychodynamic (how behavior springs from unconscious
drives and conflicts)
• behavioral (how we learn observable responses)
• cognitive (how we encode, process, store, and retrieve info)
• social-cultural (how behavior/thinking varies across
situations and cultures)

 Psychology’s Subfields – all fields work together to describe/explain

behavior and the mind underlying it

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  Basic Research = pure science that aims to increase the
scientific knowledge base (done by biological psychologists-
exploring links between brain and mind, developmental
psychologists- studying our changing abilities from womb to
tomb, cognitive psychologists- experimenting with how we
perceive, think and solve problems, personality psychologists-
investigating our persistent traits, and social psychologists-
exploring how we view and affect one another)
 Applied Research = scientific study that aims to solve
practical problems (done by industrial/organizations
psychologists who use psychology’s concepts to improve
productivity in the workplace)
 Counseling Psychology = a branch of psychology that assists
people with problems in living (often related to school, work or
marriage) and in achieving a greater well being
 Clinical Psychology = a branch of psychology that studies,
assesses, and treats people with psychological disorders
 Psychiatry = a branch of medicine dealing with psychological
disorders; practiced by physicians who sometimes provide
medical (ex: drug) treatments, as well as psychological therapy

 How psychological principles can help you as a student

 SQ3R method – acronym for survey, question, read, rehearse,
review – applies principles derived from psychological research