welcome to psychology 101 in this course we will be exploring the question of what is psychology we'll begin with an introduction to the field of psychology first by defining what psychology actually is I'll then talk about the different fields the roots of psychology the five major perspectives and the key issues and controversies okay let's get started first let's start off by defining psychology what exactly is it the definition we'll be using for this class is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes so basically what we think how we feel and the ways we act these include our thoughts or cognitions our emotions our perceptions what are the ways we make sense of the stimuli coming into our senses how we reason and make decisions the different aspects of memory from encoding to retrieval as well as our biological activities think about instincts for example we have a basic need for food a biological imperative so how do these other Concepts come into play when talking about biology well if we look at Hunger from a broader perspective we can see that there are certain thoughts we have about food or about being hungry we may have certain feelings about it chocolate over vanilla ice cream for example our perceptions come into play when we smell see taste touch or hear food just think about the sound of baking frying with reasoning and decision making we might ask ourselves if we can have that second helping or use our decision-making capacities to figure out whether to eat lunch early or late memory is useful to remember where food is located whether it's from the refrigerator or a favorite restaurant there are many subfields in the field of psychology I will not go through this entire list and this is only a partial list but you can get a sense of the types of psychology in areas of specialization within the field so for example if you look at the middle of the the uh of the page and look at forensic psychology so those of you who are interested in CSI shows this would be a good example of how a forensic psychologist would uh come into play where a crime unit would uh have use the services of a forensic psychologist in a trial for example to assess um information about say the perpetrator um another one is uh Clinical Psychology so Clinical Psychology and that's towards the top of the page that's where we um an individual would see clients and would uh study the clients and diagnose and treat particular psychological disorders so when typically when you think about psychology uh many people think about Clinical Psychology just because you know it's like go to a therapist and get treatment so there as you can see there are a number of subfields and we'll be exploring uh some of of these as we go through the course for example Health psychology and see how um our mental health um affects our physical health okay let's take a look now at psychology's past where did it come from and how was it developed some historical techniques include trening and chronology about 8,000 to 12,000 years ago treening was being practiced when an individual would be exhibiting erratic or unusual behavior the um treatment was to drill a hole in that person's skull to let out the demons and this usually ceased the bad behavior but it also ceased the life of the patient as well so it was effective in stopping the behavior but it also did not um was not too beneficial for the continuation of the life of the patient so the uh next technique in the 19th century um phrenologists believed that the shape of the skull was a determinant in character or personality traits so they would um check out and feel the bumps on a person's skull and an Austrian doctor Fran Gall was the one who capitalized on this particular technique and uh this this technique was used in um in identifying whether someone might have uh criminal Tendencies for example and a large bump they identified a large bump in a specific location on the skull then that would be their um their verification that this person might have violent tendencies did you know that psychology actually has its Rooks in philosophy let's look at a few philosophers and what they had to say about about The Human Condition first John Lock he believed that an individual came into this world as a blank slate the term he used for this was tabular rasa what this means is that we have no prior knowledge before being born everything we know would then come from our environment and this would include language capacities and how our personalities are shaped according to him we are a blank page waiting to be written upon conversely Plato and deart believed that we come into this world already knowing certain information so that would be inborn knowledge this is an ongoing debate even today when we talk about nature and nurture and I'll talk more about that later psychology as a field emerged in the late 1800s thanks to the work of willham Broms he is considered the father of psychology and he was instrumental in Psychology being recognized as a scientific discipline the study of of conscious experience was a particular interest to him and he left a far-reaching legacy drawing on V's work Edward tickner developed the approach called structuralism a side note here that in some texts R is also credited with being the father of structuralism as the first school of thought and psychology structuralism strove to break down conscious experience into its component parts or building blocks of the Mind introspection was a major tool utilized to investigate thoughts feelings and perceptions about a particular stimuli in an effort to understand the basic conscious elements that could potentially describe all human experiences for example imagine holding an apple in introspection you might notice the color markings shape or texture of the Apple taking in as much detail about it as possible and then describing in detail to the researcher your experience of the Apple this might include any Sensations thoughts or emotions you may have about it for example if you're holding an apple you might notice the cool smoothness of the skin as you hold it in your hand and you might also notice it that it makes you happy the next school of thought to emerge was functionalism developed by William James in the late 1800s around the same time is structuralism the focus of this approach was on how the mind functioned rather than on its particular structure in contrast to structuralism structuralism equals structure exploring the components of the Mind well functionalism equals function exploring what the Mind does and what behavioral adaptations are that occur in a changing environment James believed that Consciousness was an Ever occurring phenomenon which he called a stream of Consciousness thoughts feelings associations wants yearnings beliefs continually passing through our field of Consciousness like a stream flowing in its bed I'll be talking more about some other influential leaders in the field of psychology later on in the course another school of thought is called Gestalt psychology which is an approach that looks at the human mind and behavior as a whole you've probably heard the saying the whole is greater than the sum of its parts what that means is we can look at an object and make meaning out of it by looking at the complete picture it makes versus each individual element for example in this picture there are Dash lines that look like a cursive be we don't normally look at all the dash lines separately but take them together to make some kind out of sense out of them in this next picture do you see two faces facing each other or do you see a black face how about this next picture do you see four lines coming together in the middle two angles touching in the middle four angles touching in the middle or across so this gives us an idea of how efficient the mind and perception can be by making it easier for us to make sense out of the stimuli coming into our senses so the whole is greater than the parts so that we can make that kind of sense out of our world take for example a sentence a letter by itself may have some meaning especially if it's an A or an I but when we take these separate parts these letters and put them with other letters we make words when we take words and put them with other words we make sentences we take those sentences we get paragraphs from paragraphs pages from Pages chapters from chapters books we'll spend a lot more time exploring this approach when we talk about sensation and perception now let's move on to the five major perspectives in Psychology that we'll be covering in this class Neuroscience psychodynamic behavioral cognitive and humanistic these perspectives will be the underpinning for many of the concepts we'll be covering during the course so you'll get a chance to spend some quality time with them the first one I'll talk about is neuroscience remember Plato and decart and the theory of inborn knowledge that would be an example of nature this approach has one's biology as the basis for Behavior this includes all biological functioning including the brain the nervous system the endocrine system among others this includes instincts and primary needs since this is an introduction to the five major perspectives I'll keep these explanations brief since we will be exploring these more in depth as the course progresses next is the psychodynamic approach founded by Sigman Freud in about the late 1800s his approach has to do with looking at What's called the depth or the history of an individual starting typically from relationship with mother and father his approach the psychodynamic approach is in his work particularly is not without its detractors that continue into this day um will'll be exploring more with his work during the personality content of the course so this perspective is based on The View that a person's behavior is driven by unconscious forces at work that we can't control according to this Theory conflicts are created during a crucial age of development for example a young child may be in the middle of potty training and receive a punishment for not going to the bathroom fast enough this could create a conflict that will affect the child later in life perhaps creating challenges ranging from a rigid attitude and anal retened Tendencies to a full-blown obsessive compulsive disorder behavioral perspective focuses on the actions of an individual it can be observed and it can be measured and you may notice that the behavioral approach is quite different than the neuroscientific and the psychodynamic approach both these are inner processes that affect Behavior but their primary focus is more interd directed and less directly observable when we talk about the behavioral approach what we're actually referring to is learning there are two types will'll be covering classical and operant conditioning in classical conditioning Ivan Pavlov and John Watson were instrumental with developing this Theory Pavlov with his initial work with dogs and Watson with his initial work with little Albert in operant conditioning BF Skinner was instrumental in the development of this particular approach where behavior is based on the consequences of behavior a key difference between the two learning approaches is that classical conditioning is involuntary and operant conditioning is voluntary classical conditioning is learning based on the association between stimuli while operant conditioning is learning based on the causes of an action and its consequences we'll spend quite a bit of time covering classical and operant conditioning when we get to the learning content the cognitive perspective looks at how people make sense of the world from the way they think how they reason make decisions how incoming information gets processed how language is formed formed and the way they remember information just to name a few an interesting aspect of cognition is how the environment informs and shapes our thoughts which in turn then influence our behavior for example if a person is always told that they're a bad person and will never amount to anything they internalize those thoughts start believing that about themselves and then start behaving in a way that supports that belief we'll explore many aspects of cognition from metacognition which is thinking about thinking to false memories to imagination the humanistic perspective is all about striving for and reaching one's full potential this approach emphasizes the ability to make choices as a natural way to find fulfillment in life this is complete contrast to the psychodynamic approach where unconscious forces are motivating behavior in the humanistic approach there is a natural movement to strive and develop for one's greater good Carl Rogers is one of the leaders in this field his approach is client centered and involves non-judgmental unconditional positive regard Abraham nzlo another influential theorist in humanistic psychology developed a theory of motivation that is based on a hierarchy of needs where certain basic needs need to be met first before reaching higher goal attainment for example a homeless person might be more concerned about seeking your next meal than finding spiritual fulfillment we will discuss this more fully when we talk about motivation moving on on now to some of the key issues and controversies in the field of psychology the first is nature versus nurture Are we more influenced by our biology or by our environment nature would be our biological nature and nurture would be environment and how we are influenced by it seeing through the lens of the five perspectives we can see that Neuroscience would definitely be nature and behavioral would be nature next is conscious versus unconscious causes of behavior conscious Behavior those behaviors in which we're aware of what we're doing and unconscious where we're motivated by Inner forces we're not aware of and have no control over this would be the difference between humanistic and psychodynamic the next is observable Behavior versus internal mental processes one is something that is directly seen and the any other is anybody's guess this would be the difference between behavioral and cognitive next is Free Will versus is determinism Free Will where we can make choices and determinism where those choices are made for us so this would be an example between humanistic versus Neuroscience an example of this that we discovered in class was when cohorts were being developed at the first day of class and you were given the choice of creating your own cohorts versus having me assign them so if I were to assign them that would be determinism so I would be determined what your cohorts are and since you have made the choice yourselves that is an example of free will this last slide gives you a snapshot of each of the five perspectives and the key controversies associated with each one we can see that there is some crossover in some and others are clearly defined from each other for example there is a very Market difference between the psychodynamic model and the behavioral model no crossover whatsoever this does not mean that there aren't other areas where there is some commonality as we shall see when we get further into the material okay that's it for now thanks for watching