Notes for Gen Psych (Intro)

What is Psychology? * Aristotle- before 300 B.C.E, theorized about learning and memory, motivation, and emotion, perception and personality * Wundt- experiment: measure the time lag between people’s hearing a ball hit a platform and their pressing a telegraph key; Wundt was seeking to measure “atoms of the mind” (the fastest and simplest mental processes) * First psych lab in Germany at University of Leipzig * Structuralism and fundamentalism- two earliest schools of psychology * Edward Titchener- aimed to discover the mind’s structure * Introspection- looking inward; training them to report elements of their experience as they looked at a rose, listened to a metronome, smelled a scent, or tasted a substance * William James- considered the evolved functions of our thoughts and feelings * Under the influence of Charles Darwin (evolutionary theorist) * Assumed thinking and smelling developed because it was adaptive- contributed to our ancestors survival * Functionalist: encouraged explorations of down to earth emotions, memories, will power, habits, and moment-to-moment stream of consciousness * Mary Whiton Calkins- studied with James; first woman to become president of the APA * Margaret Washburn- first woman to receive Ph.D in Psych; synthesized animal behavior research in The Animal Mind * Questions and Key Points: * What event defined the start of scientific psychology? * When Wilhelm Wundt started the first psychology lab in Germany (1879) * Why did introspection fail as a method for understanding how the mind works? * People’s self-reports varied, depending on the experience and the person’s intelligence and verbal ability * Structuralism used introspection to define the mind’s makeup; functionalism focused on how mental processes enable us to adapt, survive, and flourish.

Psychological Science Develops * Behaviorism- (led by John B. Watson and Abraham