Answers
The profession of psychology today - ✔✔2015:3.4 million people had a bachelor's degree
207,000 hold a phd or psyd in psychology
American psychological association:
- scientific and professional organization of psychologists
-54 membership divisions
-diverse areas of interest and work
Psychology as a science - ✔✔3 ELEMENTS:
1. Systematic Empiricism
2. Production of public knowledge
3. Examination of solvable problems
1. Systematic Empiricism - ✔✔-structured observation
-theory driven
-tests hypotheses
*using our senses*
2. Production of Public Knowledge - ✔✔-findings submitted to scientific community for
scrutiny
-peer review
-replication and extension
,3. Examination of solvable problems - ✔✔-what are solvable problems
Early psychology-related practice - ✔✔America in the 1800's and early 1900's - NO
LICENSING or certification laws
Anybody who wanted to offer "psychological" services did so and could call themselves
anything they wanted
- there was practice of psychology (but not a profession) long before there was a science
Defining a "profession" - ✔✔Dictionary: an occupation requiring training and specialized study
Characteristics:
-specialized education
-exchange of information
-accepted standards of practice
-government certification and/ or licensing
The danger of charlatans - ✔✔CHARLATAN: a person who makes elaborate and fradulent
claims to skill or knowledge
PSEUDOSCIENCE: a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly reegarded as being based on
scientific method
Psychology's occult doubles - ✔✔PHRENOLOGY
PHYSIOGNOMY
MESMERISM
SPIRITUALISM
MENTAL HEALING
, Franz Joseph Gall - ✔✔German physician and anatomist
-different parts of the brain are responsible for different emotional, intellectual, and behavioral
functions
-talents or defects could be assessed by measuring bumps and indentations on the skull
Johann SPURZHEIM - ✔✔-further popularized phrenology
-died on american phrenology lecture trip in 1832
-21 emotional and 14 intellectual faculties=35
Orson and Lorenzo Fowler - ✔✔Clinics in NY, Boston, philadelphia
-trained phrenological examiners, and phrenology busts
-behavioral problems, relationship compatibility, and employee selection
THE PSYCHOGRAPH - machine meant to measure a persons head based on phrenology
The psychograph - ✔✔THE PSYCHOGRAPH - machine meant to measure a persons head
based on phrenology - technology does not equal science!
Efforts to increase phrenology's respectability - ✔✔-published a magazine filled with articles
(bogus) and testimonials of phrenology's "scientific legitimacy"
-popular for approximately 70 years despite rejection from scientific community
-popularity declined beginning of 20th century when new treatments came about
The "LAKE WOBLEGON EFFECT" - why people liked it - "everybody is above average" logic
- told clients what they wanted to hear