Psychology (8th Edition) – David Myers
Prologue: The Story of Psychology
“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to
understand them.” – Benedict Spinoza, A Political Treatise (1677)
“Once expanded to dimensions of a larger idea, [the mind] never returns to its original size.” – Oliver
Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)
Psychology is a broad science that seeks to answer questions such as:
 How do we think? How does the brain really function? Where do thoughts come from?
 What are emotions? Why do we love? Why do we get sad?
 Why do we act in certain ways? What motivates us to do certain things and not others?
 How do we learn? Do we learn from others? What is intelligence?
Definition
 Psychology – the scientific study of behavior and mental processes
o Behavior – actions (external, observable) – yelling, smiling, crying, sweating
o Mental processes – inferences (conclusions/reasoning) about behaviors (internal) –
dreams, emotions, thoughts, beliefs
o Science – set of questions, hypotheses, studies, and findings – observation and analysis
Roots/History
 Current psychological issues have been questioned for centuries
o Buddha – how do sensations and perceptions form ideas
o Confucius – stressed the power of ideas and an educated mind
o Ancient Hebrew scholars – linked mind and emotion to the body (think with the heart,
feel with the bowels)
o Socrates and Plato – mind is separable from body and continues after the body dies,
knowledge is innate
o Aristotle – recognized the importance of data from observation, rather than logic and
principle alone – the soul is not separable from the body and knowledge is not innate, but
gathered/learned over time from experiences
o Descartes – early 1600s, hypothesized about how the mind and body communicate, nerve
paths enable reflexes

o
o
Francis Bacon – early 1600s, the brain can perceive patterns in random events, the brain
can notice and remember events that confirm beliefs
Locke – 1600s, at birth the mind is a blank slate and learning happens from experience
 Helped formed the idea of empiricism – the view that knowledge originates in
experience and that science should rely on observation and experimentation
Psychological Science is Born
 1879 – Germany’s University (Leipzig) – Wilhelm Wundt devised the first modern psychological
experiment that measured the lag between hearing a sound and pushing a key (first when the
sound was hear, second when they became consciously aware of perceiving the sound) – wanted
to measure “atoms of the mind”
 Structuralism
o Edward Bradford Titchener (Wundt’s grad student)
o Turn of the 20th century
o Early school of psychology that used introspection to explore the elemental structure of
the human mind
o Self-reflective introspection and report elements of experiences as they looked at a rose,
listened to a metronome, smelled a scent, or tasted a substance.
 Immediate sensations, images, feelings
o Downfall – required smart and verbal people, unreliable because results vary from person
to person, self reporting not credible (people don’t know why they feel what they feel and
do what they do)
 Functionalism
o William James, turn of the 20th century, wrote Principles of Psychology
o A school of psychology that focused on how mental and behavioral processes function –
how they enable the organism to adapt, survive, and flourish
o Studied the evolved functions of thoughts and feelings
 Nose smells
 Brain thinks
o Functions evolved due to adaptation – serves a function
o Students


Mary Calkins (Harvard, 1st APA female president in 1905)
Margaret Floy Washburn (Harvard, 2nd APA female president in 1921)
Psychological Science Develops
 Until 1920s, psychology was a study of mental processes (internal). Watson and Skinner shifted
focus to observable behaviors (external).
 Humanistic psychology
o Historically significant perspective that emphasized the growth potential of healthy
people; used personalized methods to study personality in hopes of fostering personal
growth
o 1960s
o Importance of current environmental influences on our growth potential
o Importance of meeting needs for love and acceptance
 Cognitive revolution – importance of considering internal thought processes
 Cognitive neuroscience – study of the interaction of thought processes and brain function,
influenced that development of treatments for disorders
Contemporary Psychology
 Nature-nurture debate – do human traits develop from experiences or do they develop before
birth (Locke – blank sheet, Descartes – innate traits), contemporary science shows that “nurture
works on what nature endows”
 Natural selection – Charles Darwin, part of his theory of evolution, nature selects those that best
enable an organism to survive and reproduce in a particular environment  adaptation, why
polar bears are white and why people express emotions (function and purpose)
Three Main Levels of Analysis
 levels of analysis – differing, complementary views, from biological to psychological to sociocultural, for analyzing any given phenomenon
Formatted: Font: (Default) Times New Roman
SOCIO-CULTURAL INFLUENCES
- presence of others
- cultural, societal, and family
expectations
- peer and other group influences
- compelling models (eg: media)
BIOLOGICAL INFLUENCES
PSYCHOLOGIAL INFLUENCES
- genetic predispositions
- learned fears and other learned expectations
- genetic mutations
- natural selection of adaptice physiology
and bheaviors
- genes responding to the environment
Behavior
or Mental
Processes
- emotional responses
-cognitive processing and perpetual
interpretations

biopsychosocial approach – integrated view of the mind and behaviors that incorporates
various levels of analysis and offers a more complete picture, includes biological, psychological,
and socio-cultural influences

Current Perspectives in Psychology
Perspective
Neuroscience
Focus
How the body and brain enable
emotions, memories, and sensory
experiences.
Evolutionary
How the natural selection of traits
promotes the perpetuation of one’s
genes.
How much our genes and our
environment influence our
individual differences.
How behavior springs from
unconscious drives and conflicts.
Behavior genetics
Psychodynamic
Behavioral
How we learn observable responses.
Cognitive
How we encode, process, store, and
retrieve information.
Social-cultural
How behavior and thinking vary
across situations and cultures.

Sample Questions
How are messages transmitted through
the body?
How is blood chemistry linked with
moods and motives?
How does evolution influence behavior
tendencies?
Nature vs. Nurture
How can someone’s personality traits
and disorders stem from the
unconscious?
How do we learn to fear particular
objects or situations? What is the most
effective way to alter our behavior?
How do we use information in
remembering? Reasoning? Solving
problems?
How are we alike as members of one
human family? As products of different
environmental contexts? How do we
differ?
Different perspectives can complement each other, individually each one has limits.
Psychology’s Subfields
 The study of psychology encompasses a diverse group of subfields to study different aspects.
(lab – clinical)
 Basic research – pure science that aims to increase the scientific knowledge base
o Biological psychologists – explores links between mind and brain
o Developmental psychologists – studies changing abilities from birth to death
o Cognitive psychologists – experiments with how we perceive, think, and solve
problems
o Personality psychologists – investigates our persistent traits
o Social psychologists – explores how we view and affect one another
 Applied research – scientific study that aims to solve problems
 Counseling psychologists – help people cope with challenges
 Clinical psychologists – assess and treat mental, emotional, and behavior disorders
 Psychiatrists – can provide counseling, legal medical doctors licensed to prescribe drugs and
provide medical treatments for disorders/problems