hello there and welcome to the mr sin channel in this video we are going to be going over unit one topic one introducing psychology this is the first of many topic review videos that i'll be making to help you with your ap psychology class each topic review video focuses on concepts that are outlined in the course exam description that's provided by the college board this way you know that each of these videos is just covering the essential information that you need to know in order for you to do well in your ap class now this video is going fast and you're going to be hearing a lot about different types of psychological approaches domains and also influential psychologists so hit that subscribe button and let's get going psychology has been an ever-evolving field of study we can see its roots date all the way back to the ancient greeks philosophers such as socrates aristotle plato or rene descartes or john locke just to name a few looked at the concept of the mind and how does it work where does knowledge come from are we born as a blank slate or are we pre-loaded with information this line of questioning led to many deep philosophical debates that are still going on today however was not the true starting point for psychology as psychology was still seen as part of philosophy retraced the study of psychology all the way back to the late 19th century with william vundt who is known as the father of psychology vind created the first laboratory that was dedicated to psychology this research officially set psychology apart from philosophy and made it its own science eventually one of vun's students edward titcher created psychology's first theoretical approaches and this is structuralism now before we continue to break down structuralism i do want to point out that even though the first psychology laboratory was created in the late 19th century there were still plenty of people before that who have helped shape psychology into the field that it is today people like dorothea dix who reshaped the medical field by highlighting the unfair and inhumane treatment of mentally ill people dorothea dick sought to get people with mental illnesses the help that they needed instead of just ignoring them now like i mentioned at the start of this video we're gonna be going pretty fast and hitting just the essential points all the different people and approaches and domains in this video have a lot more information think of this video as kind of a great introduction and if you're finding value in this video don't forget to hit the like button and also subscribe this lets me know that you like this content and allows me to continue to make more all right let's go back now into structuralism and break it down this approach to psychology looks at the mind's different structures of consciousness through the individual parts so for example a structuralist who wanted to understand the inner workings of a car would look at the individual parts of the car to see how the different parts and the structures of the car that actually make up that video work now a person's mind is different from a car in order to study the mind this approach uses introspection and this is one of the problems with this approach introspection is the process of looking inward to observe yourself think of it in its attempt to observe one's own psychological processes this is extremely challenging to do if not impossible since most people can't actively focus on more than one thing at a time even though we might like to say we can for example if you're trying to build a computer you can't also watch yourself in your head build that computer at the exact same time alright so wood was the first person to open a psychology lab and edward titchener created the first theoretical approaches in psychology now since we're on the topic of first i would be remiss not to mention stanley hall he was the first american to earn a phd in psychology in the united states and he also went on to become the first president of the american psychological association he also opened the first laboratory for psychology in the united states of america now if we move into the 20th century we can start to see a new movement form in psychology and this movement sought to explain our perceptions this was known as gestalt psychology and it believed that our perception was whole what we had to do as individuals is not separate our conscience and perceptions into different parts rather we need to look at it as a whole experience this theoretical approach focused on organizational processes instead of just looking at behavior itself we'll talk more about gestalt psychology in our unit 3 topic 1 video now over time the field of psychology grew with people like william james writing the first psychology textbook james also created another theoretical approach in psychology which was known as functionalism functionalism seeks to understand how our mental and behavioral processes operate and not just as individual structures but as evolved functions of our mental and behavioral processes our consciousness has evolved over time and it serves a specific function it allows us to plan for the future to reflect on our past and change our present if we go back to our car example that we talked about when we were looking at structuralism we can see that a functionalist would approach the car a little bit differently here a functionalist would instead of looking at individual parts would turn the car on they would turn on the blinkers the radio they would see what it can do as a whole they would seek to understand how the parts are all interconnected and how they function to help the car run when looking at functionalism we can see the aspects of the evolutionary approach this theoretical approach looks at how our different traits are adaptations that have come from natural selection natural selection is the idea that the traits that are superior in helping an organism survive will be the ones that are passed on to succeeding generations while traits that are not that useful will die off and won't be passed on to future generations this idea was proposed by charles darwin who argued that our behaviors bodies they were all shaped through natural selection we will talk more about natural selection and also charles darwin in our unit 2 topic 1 review video another impact william james had on the field of psychology was he made it possible for more women to enter the field he taught mary whitten culkins she was admitted into james's graduate seminar even though many objected to this in fact when culkins joined james graduate seminar all the other students all of them which were male dropped out of the seminar so james tutored culkins alone unfortunately for culkins harvard denied her the degree that she had earned and instead offered her a degree from radcliffe college falcons refused to take the degree due to the unequal treatment but she still made significant contributions in memory research and went on to become one of the first women presidents of the american psychological association the honor of the first female psychology phd would later end up going to margaret floy who would eventually become the second female president of the american psychological association in 1921. today if you ask someone what they know about psychology they might give you an answer that has something to do with people laying on a couch in a room and talking with a therapist about their life and their feelings this comes from the psychodynamic approach of psychology this approach was first developed by sigmund freud it originally was called the psychoanalytic theory and it is still practiced today the psychodynamic approach focuses on unconsciousness freud found that people's personalities are shaped by unconscious motives and we could better understand our own subconscious by analyzing our dreams speaking openly about our expressions and experiences and trying to access repressed memories and feelings one of the ways in which freud did this was by using free association this is when a word or image triggers another idea word or picture inside our head for example if i say the word large what pops into your head right now that is free association our next approach to psychology comes as a rejection to the psychodynamic approach one major criticism with the psychodynamic approach was it seeks to study something that quite frankly is hidden and it cannot necessarily be objectively studied psychologists such as john b watson ivan pavlov and eventually b.f skinner believed an approach that become to known as behaviorism this focuses on observable behaviors behaviorism believes that psychology should operate in an objective science that focuses on studying observable behaviors without referencing materials or mental processes that we cannot study ourselves things must be observed this approach to psychology can be broken up into two different approaches reflexes or classical and behaviors or opera this approach was first started by accident by ivan pavlov who at the time was studying dogs in their digestion what pavlov found was that dogs would salivate at an independent variable if it was continuously presented before the dog got food this was originally known as reflex conditioning but would later be known as classical conditioning a topic will be going more into detail during our unit 4 topic 2 review video later bf skinner would continue to expand on behavioralism but instead of focusing on reflexes like pavlov he would focus on behaviors bf skinner is known for operant conditioning which focuses on behaviors and also consequences both positive and negative ones but at the end of the day it would be john b watson who would be known as the official founder of behavioralism when he explained behavioralism in 1913 in a psychological review article titled psychology as a behaviorist season moving into the 1930s we can see the socio-cultural approach takes shape this approach analyzes a person's experiences and influences in life to better understand how culture shapes us as individuals for example how does your family your religion your neighborhood food music school culture or just society in general shape you as an individual in one way this approach can be measured when we're looking at the interactions we have with people and things around us but it's pretty difficult to measure culture itself moving into the 1960s psychology saw the emergence of approaches that went back to look at cognition how our mind processes and retains information approaches such as humanistic psychology cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience emerge humanistic psychology emphasized our potential as humans to grow as individuals this was led by carl rogers and abraham maslow they believed that behavioralism was too limited in its scope and should instead be focused on the potential for a personal growth this approach focuses on free will and its optimistic approach that focuses on differences of people and their growth and development one thing to remember when you're thinking of humanistic psychology is it emphasizes free will and also a person's desire to move towards self-actualization the cognitive approach on the other hand focuses on how we as individuals interpret process and remember information essentially this approach focuses on our inner thinkings our thoughts but again we are faced with a challenge in trying to study our thought process in an objective observable manner which in this case is essentially impossible many of our thoughts may be flawed and could be based on limited life experiences or our own emotions and since we're talking about the cognitive approach i also want to mention jean piaget and some of his accomplishments who developed a stage theory of child cognitive development two more approaches we need to talk about are the biological approach and also the biosocial approach the biological approach seeks to understand the links that exist between our biological and our psychological processes essentially how behaviors and mental processes are influenced or impacted by our nervous system on the other hand the biosocial approach looks at how our thoughts our feelings our behaviors impact our health this approach is somewhat of a combination of the socio-cultural approach and also the biological approach the last couple of topics that i want to highlight in this video are the different subfields or domains in psychology depending on what you are interested in with psychology well you have a variety of different paths to go forward if you're interested in research you could work on helping build psychology's knowledge base with basic research here researchers would be categorized as biological psychologists these are psychologists who seek to better understand the connections that exist between the body and the mind there's also developmental psychologists who focus on understanding people's physical and cognitive and social changes that happen throughout their lifespan next is cognitive psychologists who focus on experiments that look at how we think and solve problems and perceive the world around us from there we also have educational psychologists these psychologists are interested in understanding the influences on teaching and learning as well we also can see personality psychologists who study and focus individual feelings actions and overall characteristics then there's social psychologists these psychologists analyze the different ways in which individuals impact one another in society there's also positive psychologists which focus on studying what makes life most worth living focusing on individuals and societal well-being another domain in psychology that you could look into is the psychometric domain these psychologists try to better measure individuals attitudes and personality traits and abilities needed to be able to work in a specific field all these different basic types of research domains are focusing on research of psychology to help people know more about the field of psychology while applied research domains are psychologists who focus on applying research and taking on practical problems here we can see the industrial organizational psychology this is the application of different psychological concepts in the workplace that seek to try and optimize human behavior there's also counseling psychology these people try to help others overcome and cope with different life challenges and crisis traditionally that stem from events in life such as school or work relationships or marriage clinical psychologists on the other hand help treat people with psychological disorders focusing on their emotional and behavioral disorders oftentimes people confuse clinical psychologists and also counseling psychologists with psychiatrists psychiatrists are people who provide psychotherapy and they're medical doctors they're licensed to prescribe drugs and also treat psychological disorders today psychology is defined as the science of behavior and mental processes you can see that psychology seeks to answer these questions through a variety of different means now i realize that we just went through a ton of information in this video and i want to make sure that you can understand and remember all of it so in order to do that it's time for a pop quiz take some time answer the questions on the screen right now and when you're done check your answers in the comments section below that way you can see if you're getting the information also if you found value in this video and you want to make sure that i keep making more psychology videos hit that subscribe button and drop a like on the video this lets me know that i should keep making these videos and if you do need some help with your studies check out my discord server you can find a link for it in the description of this video there's already thousands of students on there who are studying and helping each other out from all over the world thank you so much for watching this video until next time i'm mr sin and i'll see you online you