Foundations of Psychology

Brief History
• Many cultures throughout history have speculated on the nature of
the mind, heart, soul, spirit, and brain.
• Philosophical interest in behavior and the mind dates back to the
ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, China, and India, but psychology
as a discipline didn’t develop until the mid-1800s when it evolved
from the study of philosophy and began in German and American
labs.
• Concept of Trephining
• Nerves were hollow tubes through which “animal spirits” conducted
impulses in the same way that water is transmitted through a pipe.
When a person put a finger too close to a fire, heat was transmitted
to the brain through the tubes (17th-century philosopher Descartes)
• Franz J Gall, an 18th-century physician, argued that a trained
observer could discern intelligence, moral character, and other basic
personality characteristics from the shape and number of bumps on
a person’s skull.
• 17th-century British philosopher John Locke believed that children
were born into the world with minds like “blank slates” ( tabula rasa
in Latin) and that their experiences determined what kind of adults
they would become.
• the formal beginning of psychology as a scientific discipline is
generally considered to be in the late 19th century, when, in Leipzig,
Germany, Wilhelm Wundt established the first experimental
laboratory devoted to psychological phenomena.
Schools of Thoughts
• Structuralism
• When Wundt set up his laboratory in 1879, his aim was to study the building blocks of
the mind. He considered psychology to be the study of conscious experience.
• He focused on uncovering the fundamental mental components of perception,
consciousness, thinking, emotions, and other kinds of mental states and activities.
• The theory of structuralism strives to understand the key components of the mind by
breaking each thought and emotion down to its most basic elements.
• Introspection: A procedure used to study the structure of the mind in which subjects are
asked to describe in detail what they are experiencing when they are exposed to a
stimulus.
• Wundt argued that by analyzing people’s reports, psychologists could come to a better
understanding of the structure of the mind
Drawbacks
• Introspection was not a truly scientific technique, because there were
few ways an outside observer could confirm the accuracy of others’
introspections.
• People had difficulty describing some kinds of inner experiences, such
as emotional responses. Those drawbacks led to the development of
new approaches, which largely replaced structuralism.
• Functionalism
Concentrated on what the mind does and how behavior functions.
Functionalists, whose perspective became prominent in the early
1900s, asked what role behavior plays in allowing people to adapt to
their environments.
William James, the functionalists examined how behavior allows people
to satisfy their needs and how our “stream of consciousness” permits
us to adapt to our environment.
• Gestalt Psychology
• Gestalt psychology emphasizes how perception is organized. Instead of considering
the individual parts that make up thinking, gestalt psychologists took the opposite
tack, studying how people consider individual elements together as units or wholes.
• Led by German scientists such as Hermann Ebbinghaus and Max Wertheimer, gestalt
psychologists proposed that “The whole is different from the sum of its parts,”
meaning that our perception, or understanding, of objects is greater and more
meaningful than the individual elements that make up our perceptions.

• We can use the seven Gestalt principles as guidelines for user interface design. They
are proximity, similarity, continuity, closure, symmetry, figure/ground, and common
fate.

How would you use gestalt psychology in your distinct field?

• Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk7cXdjX2Ys
• 27th submission 28th November 2020 Presentation

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• Text book Intro to psychology

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Summary of History
• Trephining used to allow the escape of evil spirits
• John Locke introduces idea of tabula rasa
• Descartes describes animal spirits
• Franz Josef Gall proposes phrenology
• Wilhelm Wundt inaugurates first psychology laboratory in Leipzig,
Germany
• Gestalt psychology becomes influential
• Sigmund Freud develops the psychodynamic perspective
 Today’s Perspectives of
psychology
Emphasize: Understand Behavior and mental processes in different
directions.
What is approach and perspective?
• An approach is a perspective (i.e., view) that involves certain
assumptions (i.e., beliefs) about human behavior
• the way they function, which aspects of them are worthy of study
and what research methods are appropriate for undertaking this
study. 
• Each perspective has its strengths and weaknesses, and brings
something different to our understanding of human behavior. 
Neuroscience perspective

• The approach that views behavior from the

perspective of the brain, the nervous
system, and other biological functions.
THE NEUROSCIENCE/Biological
PERSPECTIVE
how genetics influence different behaviors or how damage to specific areas of the brain
influence behavior and personality.
how people and nonhumans function biologically
how individual nerve cells are joined together,
Role of inheritance in influencing behavior
functioning of the body affects hopes and fears,
• A baby’s response to strangers, are viewed as having critical biological components by
psychologists who embrace the neuroscience perspective.
• This perspective includes the study of heredity and evolution, which considers how
heredity may influence behavior.
• Behavioral neuroscience, which examines how the brain and the nervous system affect
behavior
Neuroscience Perspective…..
• major contributions to the understanding and betterment of human
life, ranging from cures for certain types of deafness to drug treatments
for people with severe mental disorders.
• nervous system, genetics, the brain, the immune system, and the
endocrine systems are just a few of the subjects that interest biological
psychologists.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans
Positron emission tomography (PET) scans
• Scientists can now look at the effects of brain damage, drugs, and
disease in ways that were simply not possible in the past.
What Sort of Things Are Biological Psychologists Interested in?

• Bio psychologists study many of the same things that other psychologists
do, but they are interested in looking at how biological forces shape
human behaviors.
Analyzing how trauma to the brain influences behaviors
Investigating how degenerative brain diseases impact how people act
Exploring how genetic factors influence such things as aggression
Studying how genetics and brain damage are linked to mental disorders
Assessing the differences and similarities in twins to determine which
characteristics are tied to genetics and which are linked to environmental
influences.
• One of the strengths of using the biological perspective to analyze
psychological problems is that the approach is usually very scientific.
Researchers utilize rigorous empirical methods, and their results are
often reliable and practical. Biological research has helped yield useful
treatments for a variety of psychological disorders.
• The weakness of this approach is that it often fails to account for
other influences on behavior. Things such as emotions, social
pressures, environmental factors, childhood experiences, and cultural
variables can also play a role in the formation of psychological
problems.
Psychodynamic Perspective
• behavior is motivated by inner forces and conflicts about which we
have little awareness or control. (behavior is the product of
underlying conflicts over which people often have little awareness.)
• They view dreams and slips of the tongue as indications of what a
person is truly feeling of unconscious psychic activity.
• Sigmund Freud
• Freud believed that events in our childhood can have a significant
impact on our behavior as adults. He also believed that people have
little free will to make choices in life. Instead, our behavior is
determined by the unconscious mind and childhood experiences.
• Major assumptions
• (1) that much of mental life is unconscious (i.e., outside of
awareness), and (2) that past experiences, especially in early
childhood, shape how a person feels and behaves throughout life.
Three components of unconscious mind (id, ego, super-ego)
Defense mechanisms
Psychosexual stages(how early experiences affect adult personality).
• It is considered as both Theory and a Therapy
• Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, explained the human mind as
like an iceberg, with only a small amount of it being visible, that is our
observable behavior, but it is the unconscious, submerged mind that
has the most, underlying influence on our behavior.
• Freud used three main methods of accessing the unconscious mind:
free association
dream analysis
slips of the tongue. 
• Freud postulated a cycle in which ideas are repressed but continue to
operate unconsciously in the mind, and then reappear in
consciousness under certain circumstances.
• Much of Freud’s theory was based on his investigations of patients
suffering from “hysteria” and neurosis. Hysteria was an ancient
diagnosis that was primarily used for women with a wide variety of
symptoms, including physical symptoms and emotional disturbances
with no apparent physical cause.
THE BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVE:
OBSERVING THE OUTER PERSON
• The behavioral perspective grew out of a rejection of psychology’s early
emphasis on the inner workings of the mind. Instead, behaviorists suggested
that the field should focus on observable behavior that can be measured
objectively.
• J.B. Watson: one could gain a complete understanding of behavior by
studying and modifying the environment in which people operate.
• Watson believed that it was possible to elicit any desired type of behavior by
controlling a person’s environment.
• Along with its influence in the area of learning processes, this perspective
has made contributions in such diverse areas as treating mental disorders,
aggression, resolving sexual problems, and ending drug addiction.
• Behaviorism is different from most other approaches because they view
people (and animals) as controlled by their environment and specifically
that we are the result of what we have learned from our environment.
• Behaviorism is concerned with how environmental factors (called
stimuli) affect observable behavior (called the response).
• The behaviorist approach proposes two main processes whereby people
learn from their environment:
Classical conditioning involves learning by association
Operant conditioning involves learning from the consequences of
behavior.
• Behaviorism also believes in scientific methodology (e.g., controlled
experiments), and that only observable behavior should be studied
because this can be objectively measured.
• Behaviorism rejects the idea that people have free will, and believes
that the environment determines all behavior.
THE COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE:
IDENTIFYING THE ROOTS OF
UNDERSTANDING
• cognitive perspective focuses on how people think, understand, and know about the
world. The emphasis is on learning how people comprehend and represent the outside
world within themselves and how our ways of thinking about the world influence our
behavior.
• “Cognition” refers to thinking and memory processes, and “cognitive development”
refers to long-term changes in these processes
• Human mind is like a computer ( information processing)
 How people make decisions?
 Whether a person can watch television and study at the same time.
• The common elements that link cognitive approaches are an emphasis on how people
understand and think about the world and an interest in describing the patterns and
irregularities in the operation of our minds
• Cognitive psychologists often utilize an information-processing model,
comparing the human mind to a computer, to conceptualize how
information is
Acquired
Processed
Stored
utilized.
• Cognitive Psychology revolves around the notion that if we want to know
what makes people think then the way to do it is to figure out what
processes are actually going on in their minds.
• In other words, psychologists from this perspective study cognition which
is ‘the mental act or process by which knowledge is acquired.’
• The cognitive perspective is concerned with “mental” functions such
as memory, perception, attention, etc.
1. Encoding (where information is received and attended to)
2. Storage (where the information is retained)
3. Retrieval (where the information is recalled).
THE HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE:
• study of the whole person (known as holism). Humanistic psychologists look at
human behavior, not only through the eyes of the observer, but through the eyes of
the person doing the behaving.
• Humanistic perspective suggests that all individuals naturally strive to grow,
develop, and be in control of their lives and behavior.
• Humanistic psychologists maintain that each of us has the capacity to seek and reach
fulfillment.
• Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, who were central figures in the development of
the humanistic perspective said that people strive to reach their full potential if they
are given the opportunity.
• The emphasis of the humanistic perspective is on free will , the ability to freely make
decisions about one’s own behavior and life.
• The humanistic perspective assumes that people have the ability to
make their own choices about their behavior rather than relying on
societal standards.
• More than any other approach, it stresses the role of psychology in
enriching people’s lives and helping them achieve self-fulfillment.
• The humanistic perspective suggests that we are each responsible for
our own happiness and well-being as humans. We have the innate
(i.e., inborn) capacity for self-actualization, which is our unique desire
to achieve our highest potential as people.
Issues in psychology
Nature Vs Nurture How much of people’s behavior is due to their genetically determined
nature (heredity), and how much is due to nurture, the influences of the physical and social
environment in which a child is raised?
Conscious Vs Unconscious How much of our behavior is produced by forces of which we
are fully aware, and how much is due to unconscious activity
Observable Vs Internal mental processes should we focus behavior that can be seen by
outside observers, or should it focus on unseen thinking processes
Free will Vs determinism (How much of our behavior is a matter of free will (choices made
freely by an individual), and how much is subject to determinism, the notion that behavior
is largely produced by factors beyond people’s willful control?
Individual differences Vs universal principles (How much of our behavior is a consequence
of our unique and special qualities, and how much reflects the culture and society in which
we live?)