Why do we study psychology and what is it?
It was born out of philosophy and explains the subject matter that psychologists study, study of the mind and
The study of the mind: behaviors and mental processes such as thought and emotion.
We use scientific methods to study the mind, we assess everyone and make observations on everyone.
What are psychology roots?
Analyze the respective contributions of philosophy and the physical sciences as the roots of modern psychology
For many years philosophers have had questions about why someone is the way they are. Why people act the way they do.
People observation: how we started as a science, making observations and assumptions of others.
We are now adding to the body of knowledge and are confirming our ancestors knowledge.
We have to know our roots to go further
Questions are posed by philosophy and methods are borrowed from the physical sciences (medicine)
The ancient greek philosopher plato of the earliest thinkers to address what is the mind? He view the mind as three parts that must be in balance.. Intellect, emotion, and instinct
How did science begin?
All scientists use scientific methods.
Began with structuralism, gestalt psych, functionalism, behaviorism, psychodynamic theory and humanism.
Wilhelm Wundt: conducted the first documented psych study, structuralism, he studied reaction time. If you hear a sound how quick can you do something.
Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Psychology: pick apart all structures of the mind and see how they can be put together as a whole. Both structuralism and gestalt
William James and Functionalism. Functionalism propped that the mind was shaped by natural selection, modern evolutionary psychology is one descendent of James ideas.
The behaviorist movement suggests everything else, how the mind works. Observed animal behavior to try and understand human learning. Not interested in mind, interested why you do physically. To understand human learning we have to look at the environment. Looking externally at the mind. No emotion.
The cognitive evolution: Ulric Neisser argued that internal cognitive processes could be studied objectively as well as behavior.
Sigmund Freud and psychodynamic
