All right, now we will be talking about the different perspectives psychology uses to look at behavior. So as I'm sure you're aware, psychology is an extremely broad field, and people can be trained in one particular perspective. And this is looking at behavior from a particular viewpoint.
And all of these viewpoints or perspectives have contributed. immensely to the field of psychology. So we talk about these perspectives throughout the remaining part of this course.
So it's really important that we understand them now before we go on to looking at specific types of behavior. Now the first perspective I want to talk about is the biological perspective. And I will say that's the type of perspective that I often come from because of my training. And here is they look at psychology. all right, in terms of its biological underpinnings.
So what is psychological, whether it's those outward behaviors or those internal processes, is a result of physical matter, all right? We understand that our brain is what controls our behavior. And so if we can understand the brain, then we can understand behavior in its individual parts. So people that come from the biological perspective tend to look at what are the brain chemicals that are involved in certain behaviors? What are the brain areas that contribute to given behaviors?
What are some of the genetic or evolutionary reasons that perpetuate a particular behavior? And so as you go through your readings and learn more about the biological perspective, you will learn that it was a tough push from our historical ancestors who mainly believed in the idea of dualism. And dualism was the idea that our mind is separate from our body, that our mind and our behavior is controlled by higher powers. And therefore, there's no point in looking at what controls our behavior, because that's controlled by something that is not material.
It wasn't until I would say the last hundred years or so that people started to believe in the idea of monism. That the mind is really the brain and the brain is made up of physical matter. Therefore if we can understand the physical matter of the brain we can understand psychological processes that we're interested in looking at.
So that's one perspective that psychologists take. Another important perspective is the cognitive perspective. cognitive psychologists are really interested in those mental processes.
How do we think? How do we have emotions? How do we have memory?
So those internal processes that we can't see. The cognitive perspective was born out of Wilhelm Wundt's structuralist approach and he really wanted to figure out the mind's individual elements and that's really what structuralism is. So what are the parts of our mind that control decision-making? What are the parts of our mind that control memory?
After structuralism came about, the next field of cognitive psychology was rooted in functionalism. And functionalism was brought about by William James, and he was more concerned not about the individual elements per se, but what those individual elements do. Why do we have memory? Why do we have decision making?
Why are there emotions? And that really is the root of functionalism. Another aspect of the cognitive perspective is gestalt psychology. So if you look at this particular image on your screen here, what do you see?
Well, I imagine most of you would say, I see the Canadian flag. Not many people say, I see a bunch of red triangles and white hexagons. and that's because gestalt psychologists say that humans come into this world ready to see the bigger picture we see the whole before we see the individual parts and so a big component of cognitive psychology is why are we able to see the whole picture before those individual elements and we'll come back to gestalt psychology a lot in in chapter five you And I can't stress enough how important the cognitive perspective has been in treating various psychological disorders.
So later on in the course, when we do talk about psychological disorders, such as depression and anxiety disorders, we learn that in these particular disorders, there's often irrational thought processes that happen in these individuals and distorted perceptions. And so one of the main aims of cognitive therapy is to change those maladaptive thought processes and change those distortions of perception. And that's all, as I said, rooted in the cognitive perspective, those thinking processes.
The next perspective I want to talk about would be the psychodynamic perspective. And the main person that is credited with the psychodynamic perspective would be Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud suggested that much of our behavior is actually in our unconscious, that we're not aware of what drives our behavior. That is because when we are born, according to Freud, we all have these internal rage, internal desires, animalistic tendencies that we learn very quickly are social taboo.
And so we learn to push those down into our unconscious. conscious, and yet those internal drives are still what pushes our behavior. And Freud would suggest that our unconscious isn't very accessible, but can come out in dream analysis and in slips of the tongues.
And Freud was the first person to suggest that we develop defense mechanisms as ways of coping with the anxiety. that the unconscious is pushing on us. So we'll talk about defense mechanisms later on in the course. And Freud is actually one of the first individuals that came about with psychoanalysis or specific talk therapies, that if we are able to talk about our problems, we can uncover our unconscious.
The next perspective that I want to talk about is the behavioral perspective. And we talk about this particular perspective a lot in the first half of this course. And the behavioral perspective said, it's not the thought processes that drive our behavior.
It's not those unconscious forces that drive our behavior, like Freud said. It's the environment that determines our behavior, that we are all born as a blank slate or tabula rasa. And who we are today is a result of the environment that we were raised in.
And so the behavioral perspective is rooted a lot in things such as classical conditioning and operant conditioning and how reinforcements and punishments throughout our life experiences have driven us to who we are today. So when we talk about the behavioral perspective, we'll come back to talking about the works of Ivan Pavlov and classical conditioning, Watson and Skinner with operant conditioning. The next perspective that I want to talk about would be the humanistic perspective.
And this particular perspective says that humans are different. All right, the behavioral perspective, going back to the last slide, would suggest that humans learn much the same way that animals learn through rewards and punishment. But the humanistic perspective takes a different look at this. They say that no, humans are born with internal drives that try to become a better human.
We are... control of our decisions we have that free will we have choices and that humans are always trying to become better people and that's really what self-actualization is so we talk a lot about the humanistic perspective our drive our self-esteem our self concepts and how those sorts of behaviors are what drives our our intentions And so we'll talk about Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers as we go through the course, when we talk about the humanistic perspective. And finally, the last perspective I want to talk about is the social cultural perspective. Humans are social creatures.
We like to be around other people. All right. And so how has the culture in which we have been raised in affect our behaviors?
We will learn that within cultures, we tend to see two specific types, individualistic cultures and collectivistic cultures. And as you do your reading, you will see that individualistic cultures are typically North American and Eastern European cultures, where our sense of identity is put in individual terms. We look for individual achievement. That's a lot.
different than collectivistic cultures such as Asian cultures and South American cultures, where their sense of identity is put in terms of being a member of a group. So they tend to value more family dynamics, their membership in society, their membership as part of a group. So we'll look at oftentimes the differences in how culture has affected our behavior.
Another important part of the social cultural perspective as how does our behavior result or differ being by ourselves as with being in a group. And I think you can probably attest to many times that when you're in the presence of others, your behavior is very different than if you were by yourself. So that's another big component of the social cultural perspective.
So looking together at all of these perspectives, all right. If I were to say I am coming from a perspective that is more concerned with those unconscious processes, I hope you would know that I'm talking about the psychodynamic perspective. If I say I am very much concerned with your thought processes, your decision-making processes, I hope you know that's coming from the cognitive perspective. If I say I want to... be concerned with how did you learn that behavior?
What is making you do that behavior in your environment? I hope you know that's a behavioral perspective. People who are psychologists who are concerned about the social aspect, all right, group dynamics, or how cultures affected your behavior, that's going to be coming from the social cultural perspective. If I am looking at what drives me to better myself, make me achieve at a higher rate.
That's the humanistic perspective. And if I'm more concerned about what are the genetics involved in a particular behavior, what are the brain processes, areas, and transmitters, again, that's going to come from the biological perspective. So hopefully that gives you some insight into those different perspectives.
And that actually is the basis of your assignment for chapter one. So make sure you are familiar with those different perspectives in psychology.