Psych History

Leipzing, Germany
-Very focused on education at the time, had an abundance of universitites
-focus on scientific method, and inductive reasoning
-focus on biology and physiology
-experimenting begun here

-research AND learning/teaching at universities
-Gave freedom to pursue new studies AND make a living

Founder of Psychology
-got medical degree from University of Heidelberg 1855
-studied with Muller, then physicist von Helmholtz

-Understand facts of consciousness
-construct explanations of experience
-methods to access consciousness and experience
-objectify experience

Psychology as an experimental science, not just a branch of philosophy
-

Sensation: raw info sent to the brain
Feeling: to feel emotions

-Pleasantness
-Tension
-Arousal

-Mediate- how the physical world impacts our body, measured and understood through instruments
-may or may not be aware of impact
-Immediate- direct experience, which causes sensations/feelings
-in the consciousness

-assimilation/interpretation through the past
-requires attention
-Limits-we can only process so much at once

Introspection
-method used to observe what is in the mind
- believed consciousness could be broken down to its basic elements w/o sacrificing the properties of the whole
-Systematically and carefully observe own consciousness
-not like other sciences-- you cant test physical things

-you must know when introspection begins
-you must be in a sate of attention
-observations must be replicated
-use variation in stimuli to develop experiments
-subject must know the difference between mediate and immediate experience
-trained for introspection

-Interested in culture and language -first discussion of social psychology
-thought that this would be non-experimental
--Focused on the relationships between the intellectual, moral, and other mental characteristics of different peoples, as well as the influence
-aimed to characterize groups of people

-Ideas that precede behavior/choice
-HOW is it different than previous approaches to psychological ideas?

Brentano, Kulpe

Acts- a mental process, all mental phenomena are acts.
- presentation (sensing, imagining)
- Judging (rejecting, perceiving, recalling)
- Desire (loving, hating)

- the defining feature of consciousness
- we experience what we intend to experience
- HOW do you distinguish mental from physical phenomena

- We perceive one mental phenomenon at any given time, making inner observation impossible

He did not like Wundt introspective approach bc he claimed to introspect is to destroy what you perceive

-Focus on higher order process (no connection to sensation)
-His subjects would complete complex tasks and then provide a retrospective acct of their cognitive processes throughout the task

1. Preparatory (anticipate stimuli, prepare self)
2. presentation of stimulus
3. Search for the associated word (Search for word/word retrieval: "Thats a.. oh what is that.." then make a judgement."
-response period
4. Imageless thought-> association
- Example: doubt
- no image associated with it
-report non-senses
-Mind can think w/o images

Influenced by Herbart. Used nonsense syllables (constant-vowel-constant trigrams)

-Looked, took syllables away, would try to remember, got about half right out of 2300.
-2nd/3rd time, remembered more
-each repetition- would remember more and more

Once memorized them all, then would try to remember..
-random objects trying to remember- more likely to remember something if mental connection is made to objects
-in a list most likely to remember 1st, last, memory, unusual, or repeats
-connections can be based on our own experiences/associations

The continued practice or study of material or a skill long it has been mastered
- lead to greater retention

meaningless stuff

-more rehearsed=less forgotten
-3 days later=21% is in the permanent memory
-study, forget, study, not forget as much
-spaced out distributed learning method=more success

-Purposes natural selection=evolutionary mechanism
-collected animal species
-survival of fittest deal
- Give importance to individual differences
- believed in natural variations
-

-come from filling the same space in the economy of nature.
-limits to the environment (food, water, etc)
-species that grow too fast encounter epidemics

- Evolutionary associationism: the tendency for associations to be passed on to future generations
- we have instincts (compound reflex actions) Ex. flinching away from a snake in a tank when it lashes out, even if we know it cant hurt us
-Very influential- infleunced Darwin
Came up with survival of the fittest: coined PHRASE

movements long associated with a stimulus is performed when that stimulus is encountered

-Opposite emotional sates are accompanied by opposite physical states
-anger: standing up stiffly, fists clenched, furrowed brow
-unbothered: opposite of anger, shrugging, opposite of angry stance

- nerves produce movements with no functional benefit
-nervous system acting out- nervous=trembling
-Different than other theories. No benefit claimed for some emotions

under darwins influence

capacity for hard work. Wrote a book (Heredity Genius): -Focuses on mental feature of heredity,
-Children are similar to their parents,
-Robust psychology-intelligence-some correlation genetically
-Not perfect correspondence across generations, some acquired characteristics
- Too little emphasis on environment
-Wide variability in human ability

-people cluster in the middle and thin down on the sides of the distribution curve.
-mental characteristics inherited just like height
-applies to human traits/abilities
-describes distribution of human abilities

-not a perfect relationship in heredity, but relationship nevertheless
-describes the imperfect relationship between traits passed from parents to offspring

-extreme value is typically followed by a less extreme value
-peak leads to down hill decline
-if measurement is extreme first time, 2nd time its measured it will more likely be closer to avg

-independent existence in reality
-religious/philosophical branch
-not scientifically based, no experiments, focused on idea of a soul

i think locke?

-Did not like the idea of breaking consciousness into separate components
-Treating the abstraction as it has an independent existence
-?Faculties treated as having the power to produce effects or intended results (causal efficacy)

Influenced james to believe secularization of forces established intellectual order
-led to his belief that the mind is goal oriented

-Attempt to secularize soul
-defined psychology as the science of mental life

-Empirical self: "Me vs. not me"
-Material, social, spiritual, pure ego
-We define ourselves in a certain way, often related to our:
-Evolutionary instinct to defend physical self and other things we care about
-Our different "selves" in different situations-internal conflict
-Babies are instinctively immediately protective
-God-part of social self that seeks approval

-consciousness was a continuous steam, flowing and unbroken, doesnt focus merely on sensations, is personal
-structuralist said did not focus enough on thinking, "The mind works on the data it receives much like a sculptor on a block of stone" -Wundt

-substantive: stable areas were focused on
-Transitive: Large connected thoughts (tangents) connecting the substantive states. Inseparable and hard to distinguish

-Thinking/doing something forms a connection in the mind or pathway, recurring-stronger connection :
-more and more repetition diminishes consciousness of doing it ex. piano player
-things become automatic by pathways carved by electrical circuits doing it over and over
-anytime we d something a pathway is etched
-Experience has an effect:
-Leaves a mark, if you do something everyday it will soon be difficult to not do that one thing

-rejected the idea that perception leads to emotions, thought it was the other way around
-We don't tremble because we are afraid, we are afraid because we tremble
-stimuli -> physical reaction-emotion

-First president of the APA
-First PHD in philosophy from harvard
-First to popularize the word "adolescence"

Brought Freud into US

development process that we go through relates to the evolution of our ancestors

?(child animal alike) (Adult-refined human being)

an alternative to the bodily dimensions Galton had focused on (Galton believed rugged physiology was the basis for intelligence)

-used performance tests to measure psychological characteristics instead:
-two point threshold test
-reaction times

no correlation between student's grades and his findings