Module 1. What is Psychology?
1.1 Psychology Is a Science
● Empirical approach: an evidence-based method that draws on observation and
experimentation
○ Ex) people who claim to see glowing auras around peoples bodies
● Scientific attitude: being skeptical but not cynical, open-minded but not gullible
● Electroconvulsive therapy: (delivering an electric shock to the brain) is an effective
treatment for severe depression
● Humility: an awareness of our own vulnerability to error and an openness to new
perspectives
○ predicts helpfulness and realistic academic confidence
1.2 Critical Thinking
● Critical thinking: thinking that does not automatically accept arguments and conclusions.
Rather, it examines assumptions, appraises the source, discerns hidden biases, evaluates
evidence, and assesses conclusions
○ open to the possibility that they might be wrong
○ Some religious people may view critical thinking and scientific inquiry, including
psychology’s, as a threat (excluding Copernicus and Newton)
● Sleepwalkers are not acting out their dreams. Our past experiences are not all recorded
verbatim in our brains
● Most people do not suffer from unrealistically low self-esteem
● Opposites tend not to attract
1.3 Psychological Science Is Born
● Birth of psychology:
○ December 1879, Germany’s University of Leipzig
○ Wilhelm Wundt
○ machine measured how long it took for people to press a telegraph key after
hearing a ball hit a platform
○ Wundt was seeking to measure “atoms of the mind”
● Structuralism: an early school of thought promoted by Wundt and Titchener; used
introspection to reveal the structure of the human mind
○ structuralism’s technique of introspection proved somewhat unreliable
○ It required smart, verbal people, and its results varied from person to person and
experience to experience
● Functionalism: an early school of thought promoted by James and influenced by Darwin;
explored how mental and behavioral processes function—how they enable the organism
to adapt, survive, and flourish
○ explore the mind’s adaptive functions, James studied down-to-earth emotions,
memories, willpower, habits, and moment-to-moment streams of consciousness
● Psychology's first women:
, ○ Mary Whiton Calkins, first female president of the American Psychological
Association (APA). Denied her psychology Ph.D from Harvard because she was a
woman
○ Margaret Floy Washburn, who also wrote an influential book, The Animal Mind,
and became the second female APA president in 1921
○ Women now earn most psychology doctorates
1.4 Psychological Science Matures
● psychology was defined as “the science of mental life.” psychology was defined as “the
science of mental life.”
● Behaviorism: the view that psychology (1) should be an objective science that (2) studies
behavior without reference to mental processes. Most research psychologists today agree
with (1) but not with (2)
○ one of two major forces in psychology well into the 1960s. The other being
Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic psychology.
● Psychoanalytic psychology: emphasized the ways our unconscious mind and childhood
experiences affect our behavior
● Humanistic psychologists: a historically significant perspective that emphasized human
growth potential
○ Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow
○ focused on our growth potential, our needs for love and acceptance, and the
environments that nurture or limit personal growth
1.5 Contemporary Psychology
● 1960s is the cognitive revolution
● Cognitive psychology: the study of mental processes, such as when we perceive, learn,
remember, think, communicate, and solve problems.
○ Marriage of cognitive psychology (the science of mind) and neuroscience (the
science of brain) gave birth to cognitive neuroscience
● Cognitive neuroscience: the interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with
cognition (including perception, thinking, memory, and language)
○ Studies the brain activity underlying mental activity
● Psychology: the science of behavior and mental processes
○ Behavior is anything an organism does—any action we can observe and record
○ Mental processes are our internal, subjective experiences—our sensations,
perceptions, dreams, thoughts, beliefs, and feelings
○ Established from fields of philosophy and biology
● Nature-nurture issue: the longstanding controversy over the relative contributions that
genes and experience make to the development of psychological traits and behaviors.
Today’s science sees traits and behaviors arising from the interaction of nature and
nurture
● Natural selection: the principle that inherited traits that better enable an organism to
survive and reproduce in a particular environment will (in competition with other trait
variations) most likely be passed on to succeeding generations)
, ○ On the Origin of Species (Darwin): explained this diversity by proposing the
evolutionary process of natural selection
● Evolutionary psychology: the study of the evolution of behavior and the mind, using
principles of natural selection
● Behavior genetics: the study of the relative power and limits of genetic and
environmental influences on behavior
● Nurture works on what nature provides
● Epigenetics: how experience can influence genetic expression
● Plasticity: an enormous capacity to learn and adapt
● WEIRD cultures: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic
● Culture: the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group
of people and transmitted from one generation to the next
● Gender identity: our sense of being male, female, neither, or some combination of male
and female
● Gender identity: our sense of being male, female, neither, or some combination of male
and female
● Even when specific attitudes and behaviors vary by gender or across cultures, as they
often do, the underlying processes are much the same.
● human flourishing: on understanding and developing the emotions and traits that help us
to thrive
● Positive psychology: the scientific study of human flourishing, with the goals of
discovering and promoting strengths and virtues that help individuals and communities to
thrive
○ Explore the building of a “good life” that engages our skills, and a “meaningful
life” that points beyond ourselves
● Biophysical approach: an integrated approach that incorporates biological, psychological,
and social-cultural levels of analysis
● Levels of analysis: the differing complementary views, from biological to psychological
to social-cultural, for analyzing any given phenomenon
1.1 Psychology Is a Science
● Empirical approach: an evidence-based method that draws on observation and
experimentation
○ Ex) people who claim to see glowing auras around peoples bodies
● Scientific attitude: being skeptical but not cynical, open-minded but not gullible
● Electroconvulsive therapy: (delivering an electric shock to the brain) is an effective
treatment for severe depression
● Humility: an awareness of our own vulnerability to error and an openness to new
perspectives
○ predicts helpfulness and realistic academic confidence
1.2 Critical Thinking
● Critical thinking: thinking that does not automatically accept arguments and conclusions.
Rather, it examines assumptions, appraises the source, discerns hidden biases, evaluates
evidence, and assesses conclusions
○ open to the possibility that they might be wrong
○ Some religious people may view critical thinking and scientific inquiry, including
psychology’s, as a threat (excluding Copernicus and Newton)
● Sleepwalkers are not acting out their dreams. Our past experiences are not all recorded
verbatim in our brains
● Most people do not suffer from unrealistically low self-esteem
● Opposites tend not to attract
1.3 Psychological Science Is Born
● Birth of psychology:
○ December 1879, Germany’s University of Leipzig
○ Wilhelm Wundt
○ machine measured how long it took for people to press a telegraph key after
hearing a ball hit a platform
○ Wundt was seeking to measure “atoms of the mind”
● Structuralism: an early school of thought promoted by Wundt and Titchener; used
introspection to reveal the structure of the human mind
○ structuralism’s technique of introspection proved somewhat unreliable
○ It required smart, verbal people, and its results varied from person to person and
experience to experience
● Functionalism: an early school of thought promoted by James and influenced by Darwin;
explored how mental and behavioral processes function—how they enable the organism
to adapt, survive, and flourish
○ explore the mind’s adaptive functions, James studied down-to-earth emotions,
memories, willpower, habits, and moment-to-moment streams of consciousness
● Psychology's first women:
, ○ Mary Whiton Calkins, first female president of the American Psychological
Association (APA). Denied her psychology Ph.D from Harvard because she was a
woman
○ Margaret Floy Washburn, who also wrote an influential book, The Animal Mind,
and became the second female APA president in 1921
○ Women now earn most psychology doctorates
1.4 Psychological Science Matures
● psychology was defined as “the science of mental life.” psychology was defined as “the
science of mental life.”
● Behaviorism: the view that psychology (1) should be an objective science that (2) studies
behavior without reference to mental processes. Most research psychologists today agree
with (1) but not with (2)
○ one of two major forces in psychology well into the 1960s. The other being
Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic psychology.
● Psychoanalytic psychology: emphasized the ways our unconscious mind and childhood
experiences affect our behavior
● Humanistic psychologists: a historically significant perspective that emphasized human
growth potential
○ Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow
○ focused on our growth potential, our needs for love and acceptance, and the
environments that nurture or limit personal growth
1.5 Contemporary Psychology
● 1960s is the cognitive revolution
● Cognitive psychology: the study of mental processes, such as when we perceive, learn,
remember, think, communicate, and solve problems.
○ Marriage of cognitive psychology (the science of mind) and neuroscience (the
science of brain) gave birth to cognitive neuroscience
● Cognitive neuroscience: the interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with
cognition (including perception, thinking, memory, and language)
○ Studies the brain activity underlying mental activity
● Psychology: the science of behavior and mental processes
○ Behavior is anything an organism does—any action we can observe and record
○ Mental processes are our internal, subjective experiences—our sensations,
perceptions, dreams, thoughts, beliefs, and feelings
○ Established from fields of philosophy and biology
● Nature-nurture issue: the longstanding controversy over the relative contributions that
genes and experience make to the development of psychological traits and behaviors.
Today’s science sees traits and behaviors arising from the interaction of nature and
nurture
● Natural selection: the principle that inherited traits that better enable an organism to
survive and reproduce in a particular environment will (in competition with other trait
variations) most likely be passed on to succeeding generations)
, ○ On the Origin of Species (Darwin): explained this diversity by proposing the
evolutionary process of natural selection
● Evolutionary psychology: the study of the evolution of behavior and the mind, using
principles of natural selection
● Behavior genetics: the study of the relative power and limits of genetic and
environmental influences on behavior
● Nurture works on what nature provides
● Epigenetics: how experience can influence genetic expression
● Plasticity: an enormous capacity to learn and adapt
● WEIRD cultures: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic
● Culture: the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group
of people and transmitted from one generation to the next
● Gender identity: our sense of being male, female, neither, or some combination of male
and female
● Gender identity: our sense of being male, female, neither, or some combination of male
and female
● Even when specific attitudes and behaviors vary by gender or across cultures, as they
often do, the underlying processes are much the same.
● human flourishing: on understanding and developing the emotions and traits that help us
to thrive
● Positive psychology: the scientific study of human flourishing, with the goals of
discovering and promoting strengths and virtues that help individuals and communities to
thrive
○ Explore the building of a “good life” that engages our skills, and a “meaningful
life” that points beyond ourselves
● Biophysical approach: an integrated approach that incorporates biological, psychological,
and social-cultural levels of analysis
● Levels of analysis: the differing complementary views, from biological to psychological
to social-cultural, for analyzing any given phenomenon
