Psychology as a science: the history of the development of the object of psychology

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Outline
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The Growth of Psychology:
Structuralism
Functionalism
Psychodynamic Psychology
Behaviorism
Cognitive Psychology

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HISTORICAL APPROACHES
How did psychology begin?
• Structuralism: Elements of the Mind
• Functionalism: Functions of the Mind
• Gestalt Approach: Sensations versus
Perceptions
• Behaviorism: Observable Behaviors

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The Growth of Psychology
The history of psychology can be divided
into three main stages:
• The emergence of a science of the mind
• The behaviorist decade
• The “cognitive revolution”

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Structuralism: Wundt and Titchener
Wundt was interested in studying thoughts and
developing a way to study them scientifically
Titchener broke down consciousness into their
simplest components: physical sensations, feelings,
and images
Developed into an approach called Structuralism
• Concerned with identifying the units of conscious
experience (“thought”) and how they can be combined
and integrated

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Functionalism: William James
William James challenged structuralism
• Pure sensations without associations do not exist in reallife experience
• Consciousness cannot be broken into elements it flows
in a continuous stream
Functionalism was concerned with the ongoing use of
conscious experience
• Interested in learning and the impact of experience on
the brain

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Psychodynamic Psychology: Sigmund
Freud
Freud believed that we are motivated by unconscious
instincts and urges that are not available to the
rational, conscious part of our mind
Psychodynamic theory laid that foundation for the
study of personality and psychological disorders

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Redefining Psychology: The Study of
Behavior
Psychology saw itself as the study of mental
processes
• Primary method of collecting data was introspection or
self-observation
Behaviorism challenged this idea and focused on
behaviors that can be observed and measured

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Behaviorism: Watson and Skinner
Watson founded behaviorism on the belief that if you
cannot locate or measure something (i.e.
consciousness), it cannot be the object of scientific
study
• All mental experiences – thinking, feeling, awareness of
self – are nothing more than physiological changes in
response to accumulated conditioning or learning
Skinner focused on the role of reinforcement
• By rewarding certain behavior, we become an active
participant in our conditioning or learning

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The Cognitive Revolution
By the 1960’s psychologists came to view
behaviorism as only one piece of the
explanation of human behavior and mental
processes
• Began to see humans as active learners not
passive recipients of life’s events
Two schools of thought paved the way for the
Cognitive Revolution:
• Gestalt Psychology
• Humanistic Psychology

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The Cognitive Revolution
Gestalt Psychology
• Concerned with perception – our tendency to see patterns,
to distinguish an object from it’s background, etc.
• Wertheimer, Köhler, and Koffka were interested in tricks of
perception.
Humanistic Psychology
• Emphasizes human potential, the importance of love,
belongingness, self-esteem, etc.
• Maslow was concerned with feelings and yearnings

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Most of the scientific knowledge concerning learning was derived from the work on
animal behavior, it was conducted by 20th century German Gestalt psychologist
Wolfgang Kohler. During the time period, Edward Thorndike had concluded through
his studies that learning is a trial and error method which is completely dependent
on rewards and punishments. Kohler contradicted Thorndike’s approach, he
attempted to prove that animals arrive at a solution through insight than trial and
error (insite).

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Cognitive Psychology
Concerned with mental processes: thinking feeling,
learning, remembering, decision making, etc.
Concerned with how we acquire, process, and use
information to solve problems
Believe that mental processes can be studied
scientifically by observing behavior and making
inferences about the kinds of cognitive processes
that underlie the behavior

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New Directions in Psychology
Today, psychologists are more flexible in
considering other approaches
New theories and initiatives are emerging:
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Positive Psychology

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Chapter Review, con’t
The Growth of Psychology
• How did the work of Wundt and Titchener, of James, and
of Freud contribute to the early development of
psychology as a field of study?
• How was the approach to human behavior taken by
Watson and Skinner different from Freud’s?
• How have Gestault, humanistic and cognitive
psychologists extended the definition of psychology?
• How is the field of psychology being defined today?